Prelims

Half Title Page

VICTIMS’ EXPERIENCES OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESPONSE TO DOMESTIC ABUSE

Series Page

FEMINIST DEVELOPMENTS IN VIOLENCE AND ABUSE

Series Editors: Dr Hannah Bows, Durham University (UK) and Professor Nicole Westmarland, Durham University (UK)

Feminist Developments in Violence and Abuse provides a feminist forum for academic work that pushes forward existing knowledge around violence and abuse, informing policy and practice, with the overarching objective of contributing towards ending violence and abuse within our society. The series enables academics, practitioners, policymakers and professionals to continually build and explore their understanding of the dynamics, from the micro to the macro level, that are driving violence and abuse. The study of abuse and violence has a large scope for co-producing research, and this series is a home for research involving a broad range of stakeholders, particularly those working in grassroots domestic and sexual violence organisations, police, prosecutors, lawyers, campaign groups, housing and victim services. As violence and abuse research reaches across disciplinary boundaries, the series has an interdisciplinary scope with research impact at the heart.

Available Volumes:

• Victims’ Experiences of the Criminal Justice Response to Domestic Abuse: Beyond GlassWalls

  Emma Forbes

Forthcoming Volumes:

• Understanding and Responding to Economic Abuse

  Nicola Sharp-Jeffs

• ‘Rough Sex’ and the Criminal Law: Global Perspectives

  Hannah Bows and Jonathan Herring

• Rape Myths: Causes, Effects, and Societal Contexts

  Sofia Persson and Katie Dhingra

• Not Your Usual Suspect: Older Offenders of Violence and Abuse

  Hannah Bows

• Gendered Justice? How Women’s Attempts to Cope With, Survive, or Escape Domestic Abuse Can Drive Them into Crime

  Jo Roberts

Title Page

VICTIMS’ EXPERIENCES OF THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE RESPONSE TO DOMESTIC ABUSE

Beyond GlassWalls

BY

EMMA FORBES

University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

Copyright Page

Emerald Publishing Limited

Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK

First edition 2022

Copyright © 2022 Emma Forbes.

Published under an exclusive license by Emerald Publishing Limited.

The author will be donating all proceeds from royalties on this book to the Daisy Project.

Reprints and permissions service

Contact: permissions@emeraldinsight.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. No responsibility is accepted for the accuracy of information contained in the text, illustrations or advertisements. The opinions expressed in these chapters are not necessarily those of the Author or the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-80117-389-6 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-386-5 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-80117-388-9 (Epub)

Dedication Page

For my dad Charlie and his GlassWalls’ angels ….

And for my mum, who taught us both all the most important things.

With love

Contents

Acknowledgements

This book is based on doctoral research at the University of Glasgow with scholarship funding from the College of Social and Political Sciences. Thanks go to the wonderful women I was lucky to have as supervisors, Professor Michele Burman and Dr Oona Brooks-Hay.

The timeline relied upon to write Chapters One and Two was adapted as an interactive online resource as part of a Scottish Justice Fellowship, funded by Scottish Government, Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) and Scottish Institute for Policing (SIPR). Additional funding was provided by the Clark Foundation for Legal Education. I am fortunate to have the support of SCCJR, and they have continued to provide encouragement, despite my return to prosecution practice post PhD. I am grateful to Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service for their support throughout the original research. It is an honour to have Lord Hope, a veteran of both jurisdictions and the bench-mark of sound judgement, write the Foreword.

At the heart of this book lies the stories of ordinary women who have faced inordinate challenges and achieved extraordinary things. As one of the research participants told me, ‘I used to see stained glass in churches and wonder who made it. Now I look at it and think, I can do that’. I am so grateful for all I have learned from them. Thanks to Scottish Women’s Aid, the Daisy Project, ASSIST advocacy service and all the amazing women who shared their experiences with me. The beautiful images between the chapters of this book are reproduced with kind permission from Brian Waugh, artist and sympathetically photographed by Ian Marshall. The photograph at the start of chapter 7 is reproduced with kind permission from Colin Mearns of The Herald and The Evening Times.

This is the first time I have written a book and juggling it with full-time work in a pandemic was a stretch. Thanks to Professors Nicole Westmarland and Hannah Bows for having faith in my pitch and to Katy Mathers, Kirsty Woods and the fantastic team at Emerald for their patient guidance through the process.

I’m grateful to Gillian Baker for helpful chats on the civil process and to Peter Reid (University of Glasgow, PhD forthcoming) for insightful discussions on human rights and for reading an earlier draft.

Special thanks to Thomas and James for always asking how the book was going and telling me I could do it and to my amazing husband for reading every draft of every chapter no matter what else was going on.

Foreword

The criminal justice system has always struggled to understand the needs of victims. Part of the problem lies in the use of language. “What’s in a name?”, asks Emma Forbes in her Introduction. Quite a lot is the simple answer to her question. The word “victim” is not a suitable term within a court of law, as she points out. The court has to be guided throughout by the presumption of innocence. The prosecutor has to respect that principle too, as do the police. This means that a person cannot be referred to there as a victim unless and until that presumption has been overcome. That is why we use the terms “complainant” and “complainer” instead. But the fact is that those who are brave enough to complain to the police and to come to court in that capacity are almost always victims too.

I was acutely aware, when taking evidence from a complainer in gender violence cases during my time as an Advocate Depute in the High Court of Justiciary that I was not there to represent the complainer, however compelling her case might seem to me to be. I did my best, by careful and patient questioning and by maintaining eye contact with her throughout the whole process as we went over in public all the most intimate details, to set her at ease. But this was done at a distance across the court room, not by standing beside her or offering her any other kind of support. I had to leave it to others to look after her before and after her appearance in court. For those others she was still seen as a complainer until the verdict was announced. I could not speak to her during any adjournments, and I had to remain detached from her even at the end of the trial. I did not think that gender had much to do with this. It was the system I had to work with, and it was the system that left her friendless and alone.

Decades have passed since those days, and much has been done by means of legislation and policy changes to remove the glass barriers and to redress the balance in favour of the most vulnerable. This is especially with regard to gender violence and domestic abuse, in particular. But there are still problems that have not gone away and, as this perceptive and carefully researched book shows, much still remains to be done. Its value lies in the fact that the writer’s understanding has been gathered at first hand from her experience in practice as a prosecutor. So her research has been based on her observations of what actually happens before, in and after court. This provided her with the ideal setting for her discussion with victims at each stage in the process. She knew and understood what they were talking about because she was there too. The result is a vivid and compelling account of the emotions which pull in so many directions as each case evolves, and of the tensions that are created by the time it takes to resolve it.

Against that background the writer seeks to address what she sees as a stubborn misalignment between the policy vision, the legal framework and women’s reality. So there are recommendations. They range from small practical changes to improvements in education and reforms to law and to policy. For this reason alone the book deserves to be widely read. But there is much more to it than that. The way it is written draws the reader into the subject in a way that a mere textbook cannot do. Here is someone who feels deeply about the way women are still failed by the system, and who seeks to encourage others to think as deeply about how to address these failures as she does. The way forward, in other words, lies in the hearts and minds of those who practice in this field. I hope that in that way the book will achieve the success that it so obviously deserves.

David Hope

September 2021