John Forsyth: Far from whole story on domestic abuse

Published on Tuesday 3 March 2009 20:18

GREATER Glasgow and Clyde NHS launched a £1.3 million domestic violence early intervention scheme last week, in which women who appear with injuries at A&E departments and health centres will be discreetly asked how they came by those injuries. In support, a Scottish Government spokeswoman said: "Domestic abuse must not be tolerated." Quite right. No-one disputes that.

The spokeswoman, however, continued: "It's important we do all we can to encourage people to report incidents so we can know the true extent of the problem, respond appropriately to victims and ensure perpetrators are properly punished."

Unfortunately, that is untrue. The Scottish Government knows it to be untrue, and it is cynical for ministers and spokespeople to suggest it is. The reality is this government and its Labour/Lib Dem predecessor does nothing to encourage men to report incidents. It does not want to know the true extent of the problem of men on the receiving end of domestic violence. It has set its mind against responding to men who suffer abuse or violence from a female partner. Ideologically, it does not believe women can be perpetrators.

A BBC Radio Scotland programme tells the story of several men who suffered, often for years, at the hands of a partner. There was nothing on the accepted checklist of abusive behaviour, from physical violence through the gamut of controlling and abusive behaviour, that they did not experience.

There were additional hurts. They reported being unable to leave because there was nowhere to go. If they left, their partner threatened they would never see their children again. And if they told anyone, the partner said she'd say it was him who had been violent. One reported that his wife taunted him: "Who will believe that me, 5ft 3in, could beat a 6ft man like you?"

The Scottish Government publishes statistics on domestic abuse each November. Last year, Scotland's police forces recorded 6,165 incidents in which males had reported abuse by a female perpetrator – an increase of 128.6 per cent since the statistical series began in 2000-01.

The figure for female victims of male perpetrators was 41,591 in 2007-8. The increase since 2000-01 is 29.9 per cent, on the back of hundreds of millions spent by the government on advertising and funding services encouraging women to report domestic abuse.

The Scottish Government declined an invitation to participate in the BBC programme, offering a statement repeating a well-worn excuse – it had conducted research that showed no demand among men for specific services.

It is scurrilous, cynical and shocking that the government is still using a bizarre and never replicated piece of research from 2002 to excuse its inertia in 2009. The research was conducted by a team from Keele University, led by Dr David Gadd, based on interviews with 46 men they could trace who had reported being victims of domestic abuse in 2000. Some of the men couldn't remember. Some thought they might have been part of the violence. What reason is there to think comparable research among women reporting domestic abuse would be significantly different if asked two years later?

The researchers' literature review fully acknowledges the phenomenon of male victim/female perpetrator domestic abuse and among its recommendations suggests efforts should be made by the Scottish Government to publicise such services as there are for men. (None that I found.) I asked through Freedom of Information how much had been spent specifically encouraging men to report domestic abuse since the Gadd research. The answer? "Nothing."

Apart from misrepresenting the research it cited as justification for doing nothing in 2002, the Scottish Government seems inexplicably reluctant to acknowledge it is eight years out of date. The reality on the ground has been staring it in the face for years. Its insistence that its ideology – domestic violence should only be viewed through a gender-based analysis of male structures of power in society – takes priority over the painful experience of thousands of Scottish men is unforgivable.

I tried over a period of months last year to contact Dr Gadd. Phone messages and e-mails elicited no reply. Eventually he picked up his direct line and told me he didn't want to speak about the research. In 25 years of journalism, he was the first academic I'd met who did not want to discuss his research. His only further reluctant comment was: "I'm not comfortable with the polarised way my research has been used."

A California court last year ruled provision of services based on a gender-based analysis was unconstitutional. Judges were emphatic – human rights belong to individuals, not to groups.

Reasonable people fully accept this is not a zero sum game; that acknowledging men can be on the receiving end, too, does not diminish or excuse those incidents where men are the perpetrators. Given the cosying up to the new US administration by the SNP government, I wonder what they made from Barack Obama's observation in his speech on the eve of his inauguration: "Truth is never revealed by ideology."

The reality for all victims is that domestic abuse is more complicated than the dogged ideological insistence on gender-based analysis can handle.

&#149 Give me a Voice is on BBC Radio Scotland at 11:30am today and at 4:32pm on Sunday.