Nigella

I agree tigger she has been very dignified.

I am full of admiration for Nigella Lawson who has maintained a dignified silence throughout...so far. Perhaps one day she might be brave enough to reveal the full extent of the abuse she endured throughout her marriage. He is obviously out of control if he can behave so badly in public but perhaps thinks money can solve everything. Some other woman tempted by his dosh will suffer the same fate. Every picture tells a story, photographs of her arriving back to Heathrow just before the divorce hearing show a drawn, stressed lady who has escaped to get out of the public eye. She has had such an unhappy time I do hope she can find true happiness again.

Well, I couldn't date it absent, but acknowledging rights and actually having legislation and guidelines for the police to follow isn't the same thing.

Ella46 When do you date the beginning of women's rights starting to be acknowledged? I was referring to an incident in the 1990s.

I think if both agree t o irretrievable breakdown and neitber is asking for financial support etc no custody etc it can be achieved within abt 6 weeks ( to get final papers) Any lawyers out there??

Henetha - possibly they were already going through a divorce when the incident happened?

Janepearce6 - I totally agree with you, but sadly some women dont recognize controlling behaviour - I didn't when it happened tome age 18 -it took me 9 years to leave - the constant fear , lack of self esteem, and wherewithal to get your act together to leave is very hard

I now chair a womens group that does a lot in the DV field, and supportsthe local refuge

Never have anything to do with a man you suspect is controlling - at the first sign - LEAVE!

henetha no money/child support issues to delay things, they both walk away.

sunseeker a brave man your DH, it takes courage to stand up to a bully. Well done him.

I used to live in a street where there was a womens refuge, speaking with the women many of them said they only found the courage to leave their abusive partner when he started hitting the children.

One day there was a lot of shouting coming from the refuge and when my DH and I went to see what was happening a man was outside shouting and swearing and demanding his wife and children come out. My DH stood between the man and the door and said if he wanted to hit someone perhaps he should try someone able to fight back. The man immediately backed down and left.

and, often, there is no-one there to witness the assault only the resulting injuries.

How did they manage to get divorced so quickly??

and of course those cases where police get called are tiny tip of iceberg. With many men just one or two blows in any single incident, not a prolonged beating.

I remember in the 90s, abused women waiting for their spouse to be bailed from court where I was on duty. She would know what to expect if she wasn't there, showing the world he was really a 'nice man.' The man would have in his hand a bail sheet bearing the condition 'not to appoach x directly or indirectly' and he would have broken bail before walking out of court. Police would be informed, no action woud be taken other than to police bail him and add breach of bail to his charges, and this would be addressed next time he appered at court, by which time she would have been assaulted again. Police were helpless to do anything other than follow the guidelines they had at the time.

It was only when the whole system was able to operate without the testimony of the victim, once her injuries had been photographed and she had made her initial complaint, if she was too frightened to continue, that prosecutions started to have some effect. The abuser would at last be seen as a high risk offender, victim protection was heavily resourced, and women started to have confidence in being able to free themselvesf from their abusers.

I don't disagree with you Ella and I'm pleased you acknowledge why many woman refused to press charges, through fear. And I don't doubt that you and you OH we're the types of officers who genuinely wanted to help. There were, and still are, many lovely people in the force.
I'm objecting to feetle's using the opinion of an unsympathetic officer as the truth and then digging a deeper hole in his next post. It ranks with the other sexists myths such as 'well she must have asked for it'.

Aka I don't dispute what you and absent say about the actions of some police officers, but that was the way it was before womens' rights started to be acknowledged.

However, my oh and I were both police officers, and I can assure you that it was fairly common for beaten and abused women to refuse to press charges,
which was frustrating for the officers trying to help.
Yes, they were afraid of their abusers, thankfully things have improved a lot, but not enough.

That's the problem Ana because the odd couple would get drunk and start shouting and beating up on each other and then turn on the police when they turned up, it perpetrated the urban myth that feetle has quoted. In these odd cases it may well be that this was a drunken 'domestic'...but not to be confused with the very real violence which is present in the vast majority of cases of assault. At least two women every week die at the hands of violent partners and that figure hasn't fallen in 15 years, even though with new laws and police training one might have expected a decrease.

(My post was in reply to Aka's)

To be fair, I have (in the past) witnessed the odd incident where the woman involved not only verbally, but occasionally physically attacked the police officer who was trying to calm the situation down. Usually alcohol was involved, but I do know that in the 70s and 80s the police were warned against 'interfering' in domestic incidents and were often powerless to act unless the woman (or man) made a complaint.

That just about says it all absent

For the record, it doesn't have to be the marital home that the police let the man back into. My house belonged fully to me (not even a mortgage) but the police suggested I should leave if I "wasn't happy" and refused to do anything about my violent partner.

ella the few who refuse to press charges are often too afraid to do so. 1By quoting that urban myth put about by certain police officers feetle was implying that the women were complicit in the assault and when the police interfered in a 'domestic' (which way of describing it is in itself perjorative) they found themselves being harangued by both the abuser and the abused. Complete and utter balderdash.
Jess says its 'incredibly sweeping and judgmental' too right it is. I have met women who have fled the house after an assault when the police officers have allowed the man back into the marital home with a sort of 'cool it mate' attitude.

I remember that the wives who were attacked often refused to press charges, and I think that is what feetle meant.

Good gracious feetle that is an incredibly sweeping and judgemental statement re "takes one of each sex". I am gobsmacked at your insensitivity.
As someone who has been the victim of domestic violence I am affronted. Are you suggesting that women (and the occasional man) who are regularly attacked by their partners are equally to blame for the incident?
And you presumably cannot see that the mere term "domestic" as used dismissively by police forces in the past was a way of dismissing violence against women.

And if you think it's a joking matter then that proves my point.

Of course it takes two to have a 'domestic' as the abuser needs a punch bag.
Of course feetle the woman is quite a happy participant in having her teeth knocked out and her eyes blacked and her jaw broken. She's obviously 'asked for it' hasn't she?
So yes, if that's what you truly think then you're part of the problem.