My Lords, I greatly support Amendment 137 and thank the noble Baroness, Lady Newlove, for such a powerful and comprehensive introduction, thus making it necessary for me to make only a few brief remarks. During my time at the Home Office, I remember a particular incident that demonstrates the attitudes at play in the issues before us.
In 2014 a so-called pick-up artist, Julien Blanc, was due to visit the United Kingdom giving lectures to men on how to successfully pick up women and get them into bed. On Twitter, the photo he used to advertise his tour showed Blanc with his hand around the throats of women. He then tweeted the photo with the hashtag #ChokingGirlsAroundTheWorld.
I spoke out, as my responsibility was for tackling violence against women and girls, to say how concerned I was by the sexist and abhorrent statements Julien Blanc had made about women and that if he was allowed to perform in the United Kingdom, I had no doubt cases of violence and intimidation of women would follow, because his thesis was that physical aggression made you more attractive as a man and would give you more success and more sex. Someone who, in my view, wishes to incite sexual assault should not be granted a visa.
I simply use this as an example of the mindset that is out there that illustrates how women are in jeopardy. In days gone by, that mindset echoed down the corridors of our judicial system; to an extent, it still does so, because we are debating it today. It is part of the history of women being blamed for their own rape. Not that long ago, a woman’s previous sexual history was used to exonerate a male rapist. There is a long
tradition in matters sexual to blame the woman for her own downfall: she wore a short skirt or a low top; she was asking for it, and so on. It put the onus for male behaviour on to the woman.
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Men often use non-fatal strangulation as a control mechanism or say that their partner consented to it or wanted it. Non-fatal strangulation is a crime in its own right, so it should have an amendment in its own right. It is great that the Government clearly acknowledge the need for this to become law. They tell us they will bring it forward in another Bill, but the Domestic Abuse Bill is exactly the right place for it because of that very close connection between strangulation and domestic abuse. As has been said, non-fatal strangulation often ends in fatal strangulation. We know that, where there is domestic abuse, any strangulation increases the odds of murder sevenfold. There is a clear path from escalating violence to homicide, with non-fatal strangulation as the final step before murder.
The chief executive of the Training Institute on Strangulation Prevention in the USA said,
“Statistically, we know that once the hands are on the neck, the very next step is homicide ... They don’t go backwards.”
We cannot consent to this.