My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, who moved my amendment in Committee; to the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for also adding their names to the amendment; to the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, whom I regard as my noble friend, who cannot speak due to procedural issues but who has given me her strong support; to my right honourable friend Yvette Cooper MP, who moved a similar amendment in the Commons; and to the Minister, for all the work that she has done on this important Bill—as she knows, I hold her in the highest esteem.
We have been on a long journey, but there is more to do to tackle gender-based violence and misogyny. Following the appalling murder of Sarah Everard, it is with deep sadness but increased determination that I speak to my Amendment 73. The disappearance and murder of Sarah highlights yet again the fear and reality of male violence for all women. The one thing that unites all women is the fear of male violence. As Margaret Atwood once said, men are afraid that women will laugh at them; women are afraid that men will kill them.
Women are tired of domestic abuse and stalking being considered a women’s issue. They have spent years being told that they should change their behaviour, they have made thousands of reports to the police which have not been listened to or properly recorded and they are desperate for change. The culture of misogyny has to change. Just last week, women were told not to go out after dark—the same advice that was given after the Peter Sutcliffe murders 40 years ago. As ever, the onus was put on women, whereas violence against women is a man’s problem. We need men to step up, to take ownership and responsibility and to create the urgently needed change that holds other men to account for their behaviours. We need to focus on perpetrators.
This is a time to look to the future to prevent the violence, abuse, coercive control, stalking and murder of women in our society. I cannot help but reflect, however, on the fact that, together with victims, survivors, their families and professionals, we have been urging the Government for many years to legislate for the effective identification, risk assessment and management of perpetrators and their inclusion on a national register.
Laura Richards, in the 2004 report Getting Away with It, a profile of domestic violence, sexual and serious offenders, published by the Metropolitan Police Service, highlighted that many domestic abusers and stalkers are serial perpetrators who go from victim to victim and that one in 12 of them raped inside and outside the home. The recommendation was made for serial domestic abusers and stalkers to be proactively identified, assessed and managed by police, prison and probation services, using the Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements and the violent and sexual offenders database. However, 17 years later, this is still not happening.
Two HMIC inspections revealed deeply troubling findings. The 2014 inspection into the police response to domestic abuse revealed no risk management of perpetrators, and the 2017 HMICFRS report into stalking revealed 100% failure by every police service and Crown Prosecution Service in six areas. Recommendations were made in both reports, but action was there none.
I draw your Lordships’ attention to four cases that are personally known to me, in which women were failed abysmally by lack of action and by not having a register or a perpetrators strategy including risk assessment and management. Jane Clough, an A&E nurse, warned police that her violent ex-partner Jonathan Vass was going to kill her when she separated from him. Vass coercively controlled Jane and threatened to kill her when she left him. He raped her repeatedly and assaulted her. Jane was terrified when Vass was bailed, having
been charged with seven counts of rape and three assaults. She moved to her parents’ house, the extraordinary John and Penny, with her baby. She did not leave the house for three months because she was so scared, but Vass started stalking her on Facebook. He waited for her to return to work from maternity leave and arrive at the hospital car park, and stabbed her 71 times. He had a history of abusing other women that was not joined up.
Hollie Gazzard was stalked and murdered by Asher Maslin in the hairdressing salon in which she worked. Hollie reported to police many times. There was no proactive investigation, risk assessment or risk management, despite Maslin being involved in 24 previous violent offences, including three on Hollie, 12 on former partners, three on his mother and four on others.
Helen Pearson called Devon and Cornwall Police 144 times over five years. She told police that she thought the person writing threatening graffiti saying, “Die, Helen, die”, damaging her car and putting out the windows of her flat was a man called Joe Willis. Helen was terrorised and became a virtual prisoner in her own home. Each time she reported another terrifying event, Helen told the police that it was part of a pattern and she read out the crime report number. The police closed the investigation and Helen attempted to take her own life, as she was at her wits’ end, but the abuse continued to escalate. Not only was Helen and her property targeted, but he targeted her parents and made their lives a living hell. The police did not investigate him, nor was he ever spoken with despite the fact that he had a history. Two weeks before he grabbed Helen off the street and stabbed her eight times with a pair of scissors, he left a dead and tortured cat on her doorstep. At no point was Helen or Willis proactively risk assessed or managed. The police in fact focused on investigating Helen, as they believed that she was making it up.
Zoe Dronfield was almost killed by Jason Smith, who had previously abused 13 women. No one checked his history and she was told to get a nicer boyfriend. His history was all at one police force, the West Midlands. He had victimised a police officer before Zoe, who said that he would seriously harm or kill a woman one day, yet nothing was done.
On 10 October 2017, the Minister told me, in answer to an Oral Question:
“Domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators can already be captured on the dangerous persons database and managed by police and probation under multiagency public protection arrangements, or MAPPA.”—[Official Report, 10/10/17; col. 106.]
We knew at the time that that was not working and now we have even more proof, with more women living in fear, being abused physically or mentally or, at worst, being murdered.
In that time, a great deal of guidance has been issued: a new framework has been adopted by Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, setting out arrangements for working with people whose convictions or behaviours include domestic abuse; and the College of Policing has adopted a set of eight principles on the
“identification, assessment and management of serial or potentially dangerous domestic abuse and stalking perpetrators”.
The amount of money being spent by charities on programmes to work with perpetrators has increased, thanks to the Government. All of this is very good, but not enough.
Since the Second Reading of this Bill in your Lordships’ House on 5 January, 30 women have been killed—the perpetrators all men: Sue Addis, Carol Hart, Jacqueline Price, Mary Wells, Tiprat Argatu, Christie Frewin, Souad Bellaha, Anne Turner, N’Taya Elliott-Cleverley, Rose Marie Tinton, Ranjit Gill, Helen Joy, Emma Robertson Coupland, Nicole Anderson, Linda Maggs, Carol Smith, Sophie Moss, Christina Rowe, Susan Hannaby, Michelle Lizanec, Wieslawa Mierzejewska, Bennylyn Burke, Judith Rhead, Anna Ovsyannikova, Tina Eyre, Samantha Heap, Sarah Everard, Geetika Goyal, Imogen Bohajczuk and Wenjing Xu. We honour these women, including through our determination to bring about change.
In a recent meeting with the Minister and her officials, for which I am grateful, it was agreed that the current system is not working. It was suggested that the problems resulted from gaps in practice, rather than gaps in process, and that more strategies and guidance will suffice. It will not. No matter how many tools are added to the tool-box, the gaps between practice and process will not be narrowed, as they must be, until there is a coherent and co-ordinated national system and those implementing the process have to do so by law. It is, for example, not good enough to rely on best practice; we know that that does not work. There are some great examples of best practice, but they are rare. That is why we need a clear, consistent, national approach, which must include the proper identification, assessment and management of serious perpetrators.
The amendment makes explicit the importance of utilising data and technology in the prevention of domestic abuse and the management of perpetrators. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, will focus on this. However, it is important to stress that, at the moment, perpetrators travel with impunity, but information about them is static.
On process, domestic abuser and stalker cases are currently not heard at MAPPA meetings. Ofttimes the cases are not seen as “serious”, despite guidance, and specialist domestic abuse and stalking services are not invited to attend MAPPA. Ofttimes there may be no physical abuse but high levels of coercive control. This is not seen as a risk by most professionals, yet research shows that it correlates significantly with femicide. In 94% of murders of women there was coercive control preceding separation and stalking post separation. That comes from a report from the University of Gloucestershire in 2017. The fact that a perpetrator is serial also increases the risk, yet this is not currently taken into consideration.
That is why my amendment requires a change in the law to create a new category—category 4—to ensure that serial and high-harm domestic abusers and stalkers are identified, monitored and managed by MAPPA-plus. MAPPA-plus would include domestic abuse, coercive control and stalking specialists around the table. This would create much-needed clarity that these perpetrators must be proactively identified, assessed and managed by police, prison and probation via the statutory body
of MAPPA. A new category would arguably create more clarity and ensure that perpetrators did not get lost or deprioritised among others. Guidance could include that each area must identify 10 to 20 serial and high-harm domestic abusers and stalkers to be heard at MAPPA under category 4. Equally, “serial” has been defined as two or more victims, and offences can be specified just as they currently are at MAPPA. The perpetrators must also be included on ViSOR, the violent and sex offender register. Data collection is needed as perpetrators travel and their detailed history must follow.
I was delighted to read in the Sunday Times:
“Ministers are considering plans for a national register to monitor men who harass or are violent to women in response to an outcry over the murder of Sarah Everard.
Priti Patel, the home secretary, and Robert Buckland, the justice secretary, are understood to support a ‘super-database’ that would log details of the estimated 50,000 men convicted annually of offences including harassment, coercive control and stalking.
Police and social services would be given access to the register, which would act as an ‘early warning system’ when men commit certain crimes or move into local areas. A minister involved in discussions over possible legislation”
is alleged to have said:
“‘These people are often in the system, but who’s keeping tabs on them?’”
How true.
Speed is of the essence. We need the Bill to deliver the register of perpetrators, but this amendment is not just about the register; is it also about a comprehensive perpetrator strategy for domestic abusers and stalkers that would improve the identification, assessment and management of perpetrators and ensure a more co-ordinated approach to data collection across England and Wales. Following the murder of Sarah Everard and the outpouring of concern, anger and grief by hundreds of thousands of women who live in fear, it is time to act. It is not for women to modify or change their behaviour: it is for men to change, to cease their violent actions; it is for society to bring about a cultural change in which misogyny is unacceptable; and it is for government to take leadership.
We can no longer rely on guidance, past or impending strategies or the potential sharing of best practice. We can no longer simply focus on victims; we have to focus on perpetrators. I am therefore pleased to support Amendment 81, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Strasburger, and I strongly urge the Minister to accept this amendment. If she is not minded to do so, I will seek the view of the House. I beg to move.
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