We have been in dialogue with Women’s Aid about assertions made by them that family courts frequently breach PD12J (practice direction in the Family Courts concerning domestic abuse) by allowing victims to be cross examined by their abusers. We wanted to understand their evidence base for this, which we understood to be a survey of Women’s Aid service users. We wanted more detail about that survey.

We raised these questions at the What about Henry? domestic abuse event at Parliament in November, in which Women’s Aid participated and we attended. There was insufficient time for them to answer them on the day. We wrote a blog post, and wrote to Women’s Aid asking them to answer questions raised at that event. You can read that here. Women’s Aid agreed to respond.

We have now received Women’s Aid’s reply. We set out the query and full response below, but for ease we first summarise the key points and our reaction.

The significant feature of the response is that Women’s Aid confirm that their evidence base is a self-selecting sample. They say :

Regarding the survey we undertook with survivors, this was a self-selected group of women who were offered the opportunity to participate in our survey via the Women’s Aid’s online peer-to-peer support platform. We do not ask women to qualify their experiences of domestic abuse in order to participate in our research.

Women’s Aid do not answer our specific queries about the survey. For example, they do not tell us the sample size, the questions asked, nor give any breakdown of the responses received [although a footnote to the APPG Report suggests the survey had 90 respondents*]. They do not respond to our query about other sources of information, such as studies based on attendance at court, but it seems clear that their only or main source of information is volunteered accounts from self-identifying survivors rather than any other group of court users or professionals.

It appears from the answer that this campaign is driven by the views of their most vocal members and users – which may be representative of a broader population of victims – or not. Whilst it is important to listen to the voices of the women raising these issues, it is concerning that the figures quoted by Women’s Aid are being reported as objective fact as to the nature and extent of the problem, when they are far from it (See here). Women’s Aid are a survivors organisation, and there is a pressing need for such organisations, but information sourced solely from their service users in the ways described should be treated with some caution – it may be a good starting point but it ought not to be the sole basis for policy formulation.

Women’s Aid don’t directly answer most of our questions, referring us instead to the APPG report on DV. You can read the APPG Report here (and a blog post about it here). We can’t see that it does answer our queries or we wouldn’t have raised them with Women’s Aid as we have.

We are told there is an Expert Advisory Group containing many eminent academics and legal professionals, and a Campaign Development Panel, which is “a formal opportunity for survivors, supported by key workers, to contribute their experience to the campaign, and for frontline workers to offer examples of good and bad practice.”

We note from the response that the experience of cross-examination without legal representation has been prioritised as a campaign issue. However, we are concerned that reliance upon self selecting-surveys and this Panel has the potential to create something of an echo chamber which might run the risk of making an undoubtedly real problem appear more prevalent than it really is.

Our request :

Women’s Aid through their Child First Campaign have asserted that Practice Direction 12J is frequently ignored. Could you explain the evidence base for your assertion please? From the Child First campaign materials we think that this is based upon surveys carried out by Women’s Aid. We’d like to know :
•    How many women took part in the survey(s), how they were identified (for example were they all current or former Women’s Aid service users)?
•    What was known about the victim status of the women who responded to the survey? For example, were they women who had been proven to be victims of domestic abuse through criminal convictions, cautions, findings in family court in either children act or non-molestation proceedings – or did they include women who had complained of domestic abuse that had either not been proven or where the family court had found their allegations not proved. Did the survey gather this type of information?
•    What questions were the women who completed the survey(s) asked? Can you give a statistical breakdown of the responses?
•    Whether Women’s Aid base their assertion on any other source of information beyond those surveys, for example through studies based on visits to court by Women’s Aid or surveys of any group other than complainants?
•    Are you able to give us any further information or detail of the concern you have raised about cross examination of domestic abuse / sexual assault complainants?
We’re really interested to hearing your answers – we think it’s hugely important that the extent and nature of the problem is better understood so that efforts to ensure proper compliance with the PD can be properly focused. We would like to publish your response on our blog to further discussion of this important topic and hope you will agree to this.

We are also hoping that Women’s Aid will continue this conversation by participating in an event which we hope to hold in 2017 on the topic of domestic abuse and the Family Courts, when we will launch the Guidance note on the topic that we are presently drafting. We’ll send you more details nearer the time, as present this is in the planning stages.

Women’s Aid’s reply :

Following the announcement made last week that the Justice Secretary is conducting an emergency review into how to ban alleged/convicted perpetrators of domestic abuse from cross-examining survivors of domestic abuse in the family courts, we will unfortunately now not be able to contribute a blog for your webpage, due to competing priorities for the team.

Having read your recent blog post, we feel that you set out clearly the issues with cross-examination. As you say yourself, I don’t think anyone would argue that perpetrators of sexual assaults or serious domestic abuse ought to be able to re-traumatise their victims by direct cross-examination of them in court. We are fully in agreement on this.

The answers to most of your questions can be found in the report of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Domestic Violence. The questions not covered there have been answered in this email.

Regarding the survey we undertook with survivors, this was a self-selected group of women who were offered the opportunity to participate in our survey via the Women’s Aid’s online peer-to-peer support platform. We do not ask women to qualify their experiences of domestic abuse in order to participate in our research.

Women’s Aid launched the Child First campaign and related campaigning and policy work due to an overwhelming response from survivors and our member organisations that this is the issue that they wanted us to campaign on most. All of our campaigning and advocacy work is determined by the voices of survivors and our members, who in this case tell us that the family courts is the area that most needs our influence and work. Furthermore, our campaign Expert Advisory Group contains many eminent academics and legal professionals, who advise on the direction of our Child First campaign, and peer-review publications such as Nineteen Child Homicides. Our Campaign Development Panel is a formal opportunity for survivors, supported by key workers, to contribute their experience to the campaign, and for frontline workers to offer examples of good and bad practice.

We will continue to be guided by survivor feedback and the substantial expertise of our members and campaign experts through all of our campaigning work. We will continue to base our campaigning asks and public policy positions on their experience, feedback and expertise.

*updated 11 Jan 17