Millions of men in England and Wales pose a danger to women and children, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police has said.
Sir Mark Rowley said the figures were “eye-watering” and an “inconvenient truth” as he called for a much bigger effort, a national strategy and more money to tackle the problem.
He relied on an upcoming study produced for police chiefs nationally that says there are up to 4 million perpetrators of violence against women and children, who are mainly men, with one in 10 people being victims, who are mainly women or children.
Rowley, who is Britain’s most senior police officer, said the scale of offending by men against women and children was beyond the criminal justice system to tackle.
He told the London policing board: “When you look across violence against women and children, there are millions of offenders in the UK. Some of the numbers are eye-watering.
Lotta good stuff there, but two things in response:
First, I’m not so sure that people being comfortable with the idea of men being the abuser in most intimate partner violence situations is all that shocking. There is a long history of sexism, including systemic sexism, from men against women, dating back to Hammurabi’s Code. I think there’s a bit of an earned reputation there unfortunately.
Second, I would very much not lump self-defense into the category of domestic violence, as that equates the survivor’s attempts to protect themselves as similar or equal to a pattern of intensely destructive behaviors meant to gain power and control over them. The two are not remotely equal, and whether “mutually abusive” relationships even exist is still debated because of the dynamics of abusers and abusive tactics.
I completely agree.
My point with that article… isn’t that men aren’t. My point is that it’s pretty messy.
Is it self defense or retaliation? When they both claim to be the victim, which do you believe?
Further, self defense doesn’t really hold when you stay with that abusive person for years. Or decades.
I am not trying to say that men can’t be perpetrators. We can be. We frequently are. I’m trying to attack the notion that women can’t be perpetrators too, because the vast majority of men don’t ever report, and those that do are frequently not believed- and locked up for it.
It wasn’t domestic- but my experience. I was a Supe for contract security working onsite because a client had an event going and needed manpower.
A rich, drunk, and very grabby cougar decided we were going to have sex. Over the course of the incident, I popped her sternum to push her back (not a full punch, more of a shove with a knuckle. It hurts and it’s almost involuntary to step back,) to open space. She fell (again, drunk,) and didn’t get the message so I tased her.
Naturally, she was the only one showing injury. I was wearing a body cam that night and despite the sexual assault happening on two different security cameras, and my body camera, I was very nearly charged with assault, very nearly lost my job (for getting arrested)
The sexual assault was never charged and won’t be found on any official statistic. They slapped her with disorderly, which is a petty misdemeanor (on the order of a speeding ticket.).
And the cop that told me “dude, you should have just found a closet and fucked her,” still works as a cop, and was simply transferred out of the precinct because the lady-cop that specialized in sexual assault got pissed. His partner was never disciplined.
When both claim to be the victim…I mean, that’s basically every single case. There are signs you can look for, especially if you are trained on it, but where I’m from, the people who will be responding to it aren’t all that well-trained and sometimes the response is to provide IPV/SV resources to both parties. Which isn’t the worst option to fall back on. If you’re working with a survivor and trained, in my experience, you can usually tell pretty quickly who is the survivor and who is the abuser. But that eye is not trained into a lot of the people interacting with the situation legally, that’s for sure. And that hurts all genders. To your point: including men too because any gender can perpetrate and there is still the idea in so many places that men cannot be abused.
I will disagree with your point that self-defense doesn’t hold up if you stay for years or decades though. Leaving an abusive situation is a nightmare. The physical violence is never reported to be the worst part either; it’s the destruction of self that is the worst part. IPV is designed to make people helpless, hopeless, and reduce their access to all resources that can help. Sometimes all they feel like they have is self-defense in singular moments. I don’t think we can hold that against people.
What a shit situation, yo. I’m sorry that happened to you, and I’m glad you’re willing to call it what it was, a sexual assault. It sounds like your system largely failed you. I wish that wasn’t so often the case. Hope you’re taking care of yourself.