Delayed bills are the tip of the iceberg—victims of gendered violence are being failed across the board

Going off the headlines this week, you’d assume that rape was practically legal in the UK. Of the approximately 58,000 rapes recorded by the in England and Wales every year, only 1,758 are charged by the Crown Prosecution Service.

From there, the numbers drop even further: only a third of referred cases resulted in charges being brought against an alleged rapist. This is a drop from 62 per cent of referred cases being charged back in 2013/4.

Dig a little deeper into the numbers, and the results become even more shocking. While charges are low for men accused of rape in all demographics, it’s even lower if the accused is young. Less than a third of men aged 18-24 who are prosecuted for rape are convicted. Sarah Green of EVAW claims this could be because "juries may be more inclined to make excuses for young adult male defendants because of ideas about what crosses the line and what a real rapist is.”

The impact on a victim’s future—the potential PTSD, the risks of sexually transmitted diseases and cervical cancer, the shame—don’t seem to prey on the jurors’ minds so much.

The appalling statistics show how the justice system is routinely letting down women. Men who choose to sexually assault and rape women can take comfort in the knowledge that they are likely to get away with it. They can take even more comfort in the fact that the CPS has been urged to “take a more risk-averse approach” to rape cases.

Women reading these numbers, meanwhile, and remembering cases where victims are asked about their sexual history, choice of underwear, and drinking habits, will quietly choose to stop reporting. And who could blame them?

It’s not just the crime statistics teaching men that they can get away with gender-based violence. Government has been busy sending that message all week, too.

Thanks to the prorogation of Parliament, Theresa May’s flagship Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill has been dropped. Labour’s Jess Phillips responded that “yet again, domestic abuse victims are the collateral damage of party politicking.”

Published in January 2019, the Bill sought to finally define domestic abuse in law. It extended the criminalising of coercive control to Northern Ireland, set up a Domestic Abuse Commissioner, and banned alleged abusers from cross-examining complainants in court. It also laid out new plans for secure tenancies for women fleeing abuse—although campaigners hoped to see better housing provision in the amended Bill.

Now, thanks to Prime Minister Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament, the three years’ worth of work trying to secure a safer, fairer system for domestic abuse victims has been scrapped. Campaigners and MPs will have to start all again to get these much-needed changes in the statute books. (Boris Johnson has pledged to re-introduce the legislation with the next session, but uncertainty over when exactly that will be—and what the next government will look like—leaves things frustratingly up in the air.)

Domestic abuse is an overwhelmingly gendered crime. Eighty three per cent of those experiencing 10 or more incidents of domestic violence are women, and so it is women who will be disproportionately impacted by the decision to drop the Bill.

For controlling and violent men, losing the Bill is a gift, not least because the loss of changes to housing provision means their victims are more likely to have to return to an abusive home. A 2018 report from Women’s Aid found that eight per cent of women surveyed remained with their perpetrator because they could not find a safe, secure home.

The abandoned Bill wasn’t the only good news for men who abuse their partners this week. The news may well have been all about Brexit, but one aspect of crashing out without a deal hasn’t made the headlines. No deal could mean domestic abuse victims losing out once again—this time because UK citizens will no longer be protected by the EU Directive On Victims’ Rights.

This directive guarantees, for example, women’s access to specialist support services. Activists have been able to use it to protest austerity-driven cuts to women’s domestic abuse services.

This loss is happening at a time when the government has scrapped cross-party efforts to support those experiencing domestic abuse, has been forcing support services to close, and has been routinely failing rape victims.

Theresa May—despite her “This Is What A Feminist Looks Like” T-shirt—gave Geoffrey Boycott a Knighthood. Boycott was convicted in 1998 of beating up his then-girlfriend. So much for the jurors panicking that convicting a young man of rape will ruin his life.

The headlines have been packed with stories about how it’s not been a great week for Boris Johnson.

But the truth is, it’s been an even worse week for women.

And a very, very good week to be an abusive man.