Justice for Men and Boys

'No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.' Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)

A battered husband writes…

By 3 Comments

A letter published in the Daily Mail on 30 January, a few days after a piece in the paper reporting an increasing number of men are victims of domestic abuse:

“Having suffered myself, I can identify several reasons why an increasing number of men are victims of domestic abuse. In my experience, the police tend to treat male victims as if they deserve it. The Crown Prosecution Service doesn’t like to prosecute women and the Government and local authorities don’t provide the same amount of help or number of safe houses as they do for women.

I fell ill and ended up in hospital needing an operation, but while my back was turned, my (now former) wife was cheating on me with several men. When I confronted her, she came at me with a metal lamp. I raised my right arm to protect myself, but ended up with a split head and two broken bones. She was arrested while I was in hospital receiving treatment.

On leaving hospital, I attended a police station to give a statement, but a women police officer arrested me and shoved me in a cell for a day. I asked for a solicitor and in my police interview the female officer made it very clear that she took the side of my wife. She claimed my injuries were self-sustained. My solicitor and my father had to show her how those injuries had been sustained.

My former wife hasn’t been charged. I’m told it’s ‘not in the public interest’. The IPCC upheld my complaint against the police, but the officer involved hasn’t been reprimanded. I obtained a non-molestation order against my former wife and the judge said it was a clear case of GBH for which she should go to prison, but the police and CPS refuse to act.”

Why is it more ‘in the public interest’ to prosecute male perpetrators of domestic abuse than female perpetrators? Apart from anything else, we know most perpetrators of unreciprocated domestic abuse are women.

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  • I expect it’s politically difficult to oppose something so benign as a strategy fighting “Violence against Women and Girls” yet it’s the strategy behind the training of that Police officer and the legal minds of the CPS. Based on political ideology, not evidence, it nonetheless permeates the training and operational policies of public bodies. One can feel its influence in this personal tragedy and perversion of justice.

  • Thank you for making us aware of this letter and thanks to the man that wrote it, there are plenty more men in the same position who I hope will benefit from this kind of exposure. The message needs to get out there, there are men suffering, not only women. Only in this way can we end the isolation and invisibility of men in this regard and more importantly by challenging the myth that domestic violence is a gendered issue we can help to restore a sense of self worth and meaning for men who have been told that masculinity is the problem, that THEY need to change in order to help women feel safer, whilst in reality men make up 50% of victims of abuse. We can argue the finer details of that statement all you like, but to tell half the population they are responsible for all the violence and controlling behaviour in the world is simply wrong and when society is influenced by such beliefs it hurts men and boys very much, it hurts society very much.

  • Reblogged this on The Story of my Twin Boys and commented:
    Only in the UK , had to deal with police officers my self like this in the past year !

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