The idea that violent men seek out fresh opportunities to attack people and property is hardly news. That one form of violence is a predictor of others, on the other hand, has yet to be fully recognised by the criminal justice system. If that were not the case, domestic abuse would be treated as the red flag it undoubtedly is, requiring much more effective identification, prosecution and management of offenders.
The latest example of violence in the home spilling into the streets comes from last summer’s riots. Two out of every five people arrested – 41% of the 899 individuals arrested for taking part in violent disorder, to be exact – had previously been reported to the police for domestic abuse, according to data obtained by the Guardian. The offences they were accused of included actual bodily harm, grievous bodily harm, stalking, breach of restraint and non-molestation orders, coercive control and criminal damage. In some areas where violence broke out on the streets, the figure was as high as 68%. In Rotherham, where 75 people were arrested after rioters set fire to an asylum hotel, 35 turned out to have been previously reported to the police for domestic abuse.
The irony is unmissable: in some towns, many of the men who claimed to be protesting about the savage murders of three little girls at a dance class in Southport had themselves been accused of attacking women. The profoundly misogynist rampage that killed Elsie Dot Stancombe, Bebe King and Alice da Silva Aguiar was hijacked, in other words, by “protesters” some of whose own record of behaviour towards women doesn’t stand up to a moment’s scrutiny.
There are two other statistics that need to be considered here. The 41% figure maps almost exactly on to the proportion of terrorist suspects who were revealed to have a history of domestic abuse by Project Starlight, a joint research project undertaken by counter-terrorism policing and the Home Office in 2021. Initial analysis of 420 individuals considered vulnerable to radicalisation by extremists showed that 39% had a link to a domestic abuse-related incident, either as an offender, victim or witness. This is much higher than the figure for the population at large.
It’s also important to remember that domestic abuse is an underreported crime. Victims are afraid to go to the police, fearing further violence from the perpetrator or that they will not be believed. They are right to be pessimistic: in the case of last year’s riots, police reports show that fewer than a quarter of the individuals accused of domestic abuse before the Southport protests had ever been charged.
This is nothing short of catastrophic. It’s alarming for victims, who have to live with the threat of a revenge attack by a man who has nothing to fear from the police. But it also creates a sense of impunity among perpetrators who think, correctly, that they have got away with serious offences. Many of the individuals who joined the disorder last summer would already have been familiar with the criminal justice process; they had been interviewed, perhaps even confronted with evidence in the form of statements from wives or girlfriends and photographs of injuries. Yet the bar for prosecution is set so high, and victims are so lacking in support, that most men accused of domestic abuse never see the inside of a courtroom.
The impact on their confidence, and propensity to commit further offences, is rarely considered, even though we know that perpetrators become bolder when they are not charged or convicted. It “legitimises” violence as an outlet for their rage and habituates them to the effects of abuse, seriously diminishing their capacity to feel sympathy for the people they hurt. That goes for current and future partners, victims of terrorist attacks and, in the case of last year’s riots, asylum seekers who were an easy target during a national outpouring of rage and grief.
There is now an unanswerable case for treating domestic abuse as a “gateway” offence, very much like indecent exposure. For decades, such behaviour was trivialised as “flashing” and received wisdom was that it didn’t lead to anything else. We now know that could not be further from the truth, a reality demonstrated by the rape and murder of Sarah Everard in 2021. Her killer, Wayne Couzens, had been reported for exposing himself on a number of occasions, but the offences were not properly investigated. He didn’t even lose his job as a serving police officer.
Another man, Abdul Ezedi, was convicted of indecent exposure and sexual assault at Newcastle crown court in 2018. He was sentenced to 36 weeks in prison for the exposure offence and nine weeks for the sex attack, but both sentences were suspended. In 2024, he drove to London where he threw a corrosive substance in the face of a former partner, causing “life-changing” injuries. His body was later found in the Thames.
What’s urgently needed is a revolution in the way domestic abuse is understood and handled by the criminal justice system. Allowing abusive men to avoid convictions is a failure of justice for their victims, but it also has terrifying implications for society as a whole. A domestic abuser register, along the lines of the sex offender register, would protect women by allowing monitoring of perpetrators released on licence.
But it’s not just the partners of such men who need to be protected. As last summer’s scenes of burning buildings and police cars showed, dangerous men are not choosy about their targets. A year on, the link between private and public violence has never been clearer.
Joan Smith is an author, journalist and a former chair of the mayor of London’s VAWG board. Her latest book is Unfortunately, She Was a Nymphomaniac: A New History of Rome’s Imperial Women
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