Safety and justice

A response from the Social Issues Team of the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, an association, founded in 1922, of 467 churches in the UK.

As a body of churches, we are deeply concerned about what seems to be a rising tide of violence in society.  We strongly condemn every form of domestic violence: physical, sexual, psychological or emotional.  However, in our experience the most violence (particularly against children) occurs in situations of co-habitation, not marriage.

The Government’s proposals fail throughout to make any distinction between the situation of married couples and cohabiting couples.  And yet women are more likely to suffer violence when in a cohabiting relationship. An increasing body of evidence points to the fact that marriage, on balance, is more protective against abuse than conducive to abuse.

The Hackney Survey of adult female patients indicated that cohabiting women over the age of 16 were two-and-a-half times more likely to have experienced domestic violence than married women.  We see it as no accident that as marriage is in decline, so reported instances of abuse increase.

Children are safest when in a situation with both biological parents who are married.  Husbands who are also fathers are less likely to be violent as they have so much to lose - their children.  Women and children are more vulnerable to abuse outside marriage. Children are most at risk if their mother changes partners.  Child abuse and neglect are far more prevalent in mother-only or mother-plus-partner situations.

Many examples could be cited, including:


Abuse is often the cause of children being taken into care, and three out of four children being taken into care are from lone parent families.  A recent detailed study on homeless people aged 16-25 showed that most homeless youngsters were fleeing situation of neglect or abuse, mostly at the hand of their mother’s new partner (i.e. a man with no biological ties to them).  The consultation document does not acknowledge this, nor the high incidence of violence against children by their mothers (again, not so often in situations where the mother is married, more often in cohabiting situations). 

Therefore: we would urge the government to address the need to strengthen marriages, to teach young people about marriage, and to recognise the fact that the optimum situation for children is a stable married family.  Since ‘investigations [have] revealed that . . .  physical assaults may be more common and more severe among cohabiting couples [and given] that cohabitation as an alternative living arrangement has steadily increased since 1970, more individuals may be at risk not only of minor violence but severe violence.’ Moreover, child killings and child abuse is far more common in ‘new family forms’ (i.e.  lone parent or cohabiting situations) we believe that there is a strong connection between family break-up and increased child abuse. 

Part 2, point 23 deals with domestic violence during pregnancy.  It fails to point out that pregnant women in cohabiting relationships are far more vulnerable to abuse.  Data examined by the U.S. Department of Health and Social Services found that unmarried women are three to four times more likely to be physically abused by their boyfriends while pregnant than married women are by their husbands. 

The consultation document ignores the increasingly common scenario of a woman who wants a divorce claiming that she had been violently abused in order to secure the divorce more speedily; nor the increasingly frequent situation of a woman who wants a divorce using the ‘silver bullet’ against her husband and claiming that he has abused their children.  Violent abuse against partners and sexual abuse against children are terrible crimes which should be brought to justice.  Equally, justice demands that there should be actual evidence of such crimes.  Innocent people need to be protected from malicious false accusations, just as much as vulnerable people need to be protected from abuse.

Therefore, we would urge that accusations of abuse should only proceed to the courts if there is actual evidence to confirm those accusations.

The document begins with the ‘one in four women, one in six men’ statistic, which is grossly misleading.  That statistic fuels a panic mentality, which gears professionals to find abuse in every home.  In fact, about 80% to 85% of couples do not experience violence. The 1996 British Crime Survey indicated that 4.2% of women and 4.2% of men had been physically assaulted by a current or former partner in the last year.  This is a much more realistic and meaningful statistic.  The ‘one in four women, one in six men’ figure includes every possible category of abuse, including emotional or verbal abuse, which becomes so broad as to be meaningless.  Is every violent disagreement which may involve strong language to be classed as unacceptable abuse against which the force of law may be brought?

The document does not address the situation which we have come across where men with young children who are experiencing extremely violent abuse from their partner do not bring charges for fear that the violent mother will get custody of their children.  They prefer to stay and ‘absorb’ the violence themselves.

The document does not acknowledge the reality of the situation of many (not all) abused women - that there seems to be a pattern whereby they move from violent partner to violent partner.  Simply making it easier to convict the violent partner fails to help the underlying problems suffered by the woman.  For example there are sometimes mental health problems which need to be properly addressed, otherwise the cycle of abuse continues indefinitely.

In conclusion, as a group of churches we are committed to opposing and challenging domestic violence in whatever form.  We believe that a more constructive approach is to tackle the causes of domestic violence.  We believe that the breakdown of the two-parent married family is one major factor, and we are committed to helping married couples maintain their marriages and teaching young people about the advantages of marriage (while also being committed to ministering to all people whatever their situation or circumstances). We fear that the proposals in this report, some of which we would acknowledge to be constructive, actually address the symptoms of domestic violence, while failing to tackle the cause.