Category Archives: Domestic violence

Sorcery-related violence should be thought of as profoundly modern | Miranda Forsyth

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The attacks in Papua New Guinea may look like a barbaric relic from the past but have to do with poverty, inequality and the normalisation of violence

News broke last week about the horrific attack on two women in Port Moresby after they were accused of sorcery.

Senior leaders and police in Papua New Guinea expressed outrage that such violence was occurring in the nation’s capital. But as a researcher who investigates this type of attack, these stories are frustratingly familiar and predictable.

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Murdered Queensland mother-of-three Kelly Wilkinson remembered as ‘strong fierce woman’

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Hundreds gathered at a vigil to pay tribute to ‘beloved daughter, sister and mother’ who was killed last week

Mother-of-three Kelly Wilkinson has been remembered as a “strong, fierce woman with an enormous heart” at a vigil in the Gold Coast.

Hundreds gathered in Parkwood on Monday afternoon to pay tribute to the 27-year-old, who was killed last Wednesday. Her estranged husband has been charged with her murder.

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The UK’s femicide epidemic: who’s killing our daughters?

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In the latest part of our End Femicide campaign, we examine how stalking, coercive control and pornography lie behind so many of the killings of 272 young women in 10 years. Will the domestic abuse bill, due to become law this week, do enough to keep women safe?

Alice Ruggles was described by her friends and family as vibrant, witty and “sharp as a tack”. She loved life. Then, in January 2016, aged 24, she met Lance Corporal Trimaan “Harry” Dhillon, who was 26. She didn’t know that he had a restraining order taken out on him by a previous girlfriend.

Dhillon began to coercively control Ruggles, isolating her from friends. In July, having learned that he was cheating on her, she ended their seven-month relationship. Dhillon turned into a stalker. He frequently drove 100 miles from his camp in Edinburgh to spy on her, leaving unwanted flowers and chocolates. He continually texted and threatened to post intimate photographs. He told her on voicemail that he didn’t want to kill her, he wouldn’t kill her.

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Coercive behaviour must be prioritised in domestic abuse cases, court of appeal says

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New guidance for England and Wales welcomed but critics say it fails to address perpetuation of rape myths and ‘contact at all costs’ approach

The family courts should prioritise the issue of coercive and controlling behaviour when considering disputes between parents in domestic abuse cases, court of appeal judges have advised.

Three senior judges set out fresh guidance on how these sensitive cases should be approached as part of a 47-page judgment after hearing four linked appeals brought by mothers over child contact.

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Damage: the silent forms of violence against women

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How is it that those with the power to inflict most harm are blind to the consequences of their actions?

It is a truism to say that everyone knows violence when they see it, but if one thing has become clear in the past decade, it is that the most prevalent, insidious forms of violence are those that cannot be seen. Consider, for example, a photograph from January 2017. A group of identical-looking white men in dark suits looked on as their president signed an executive order banning US state funding to groups anywhere in the world offering abortion or abortion counselling.

The passing of the “global gag rule” effectively launched the Trump presidency. (It was scrapped by Joe Biden soon after his inauguaration a few weeks ago.) The ruling meant an increase in deaths by illegal abortion for thousands of women throughout the developing world. Its effects have been as cruel as they are precise. No non-governmental organisation (NGO) in receipt of US funds could henceforth accept non-US support, or lobby governments across the world, on behalf of the right to abortion. A run of abortion bans followed in conservative Republican-held US states. In November 2019, Ohio introduced to the state legislature a bill which included the requirement that in cases of ectopic pregnancy, doctors must reimplant the embryo into the woman’s uterus or face a charge of “abortion murder”. (Ectopic pregnancy can be fatal to the mother and no such procedure exists in medical science.)

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‘Ugliest crime’: Outcry in Sudan over lack of justice for killing of teenage girl

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Death of Samah el-Hadi, allegedly shot by her father, has led to outpouring of women sharing own stories of domestic violence

Thousands of people have signed a petition urging the Sudanese government to take action against a man released without charge by police after his 13-year-old daughter was shot dead.

Samah el-Hadi was shot three times and run over by a car, reports said. Neighbours have taken to social media to blame her father, who was briefly questioned by the authorities but released after telling them Samah had taken her own life. No postmortem was carried out on the girl’s body.

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‘Just write STOP’: the teenager helping Polish women flee abuse

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Schoolgirl’s fake cosmetics site helps hundreds of women as domestic violence rises during Covid

In April 2020, weeks after Poland went into its first Covid-19 lockdown, Krysia Paszko, a 17-year-old high school pupil, watched a TV report about Europe’s surge in domestic violence cases, which had increased by up to 60% on 2019, according to the World Health Organization. Poland’s largest women’s rights centre, Centrum Praw Kobiet (CPK), had reported a 50% increase in calls to its domestic violence hotline in March.

Learning from the report that France had implemented a scheme in pharmacies that women could use to report domestic violence using the codewords “Mask 19”, Paszko had an idea. With help from a graphic designer friend, she created a Facebook page for a fictitious cosmetics company.

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‘No more shame’: the French women breaking the law to highlight femicide

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Alarming rates of violence have inspired a poster campaign that has spread beyond France to more than 15 countries


On a weekday evening, in between coronavirus lockdowns and curfews, Camille, Natacha and Cindy are out with a bright yellow plastic bucket of glue, two large brushes and a wad of A4 paper, each sheet covered with a single letter.

The women, all in their 20s, stop on the main road of this Paris suburb by the wall of what looks like a former bank.

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De Klerk seeks accountability. What about his own?

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Apartheid-era South African president calls for justice for female victims of violence in Guardian article but some say his own record needs scrutiny

South Africans don’t give much thought to FW de Klerk these days. Like Mikhail Gorbachev, his fellow Nobel peace laureate, the last apartheid president is more highly regarded outside his own country than in it.

But some South Africans were taken aback to see De Klerk putting himself forward in a Guardian article on 10 March as an advocate of protecting women from violence and asserting that “holding perpetrators accountable, irrespective of how long ago the crime was committed, is essential to stamping out impunity and preventing future atrocities”.

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Nine in 10 councils in England see rise in people using food banks

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Local authorities reveal devastating toll of coronavirus on households who have struggled to keep a roof over their heads

A rise in the use of food banks and an increase in family disputes requiring mediation has been seen across most of England, according to new research that uncovers the pressures on families during the Covid crisis.

Most local councils in England have also reported increased numbers of people needing help for homelessness, with warnings that many poorer households will face “disaster” unless emergency support is extended well beyond the pandemic.

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‘The time for men to step up is right now!’: what all men can do to help end violence against women

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Over the past week, women have shared their stories of abuse, harassment and assault. Is it time for men to join the fight to dismantle the culture that allows this violence to flourish? A panel of male experts on masculinity and violence against women explain the vital steps men can take

In the wake of the killing of Sarah Everard, and the wider concerns about gender-based violence, women have shared their stories of abuse, harassment and assault. And the myriad ways they have tried to protect themselves from this. Men have, for the most part, listened. Now – given that violence against women and girls is primarily a male-perpetrated crime – is it time more men actively joined the fight against it? The Guardian convened a round table of experts to ask what men can do to help effect change among their friends and family, and in their workplaces.

Luke Hart of CoCo Awareness. In 2017, Hart’s father murdered his wife, Claire, and their daughter, Charlotte. Days earlier, Claire and Charlotte had left the family home after a lifetime of coercive control and abuse. Luke and his brother Ryan are now anti-abuse activists: This week, and Everard’s death, really took me back to what happened to my family. I feel deeply sorry for Everard’s family; it’s hard when things take on a life of their own and you just want to grieve. Events become something that other people feel they have ownership of. I remember, after my mother and sister died, some of the media reporting made me and my brother angry, to the point where we had to shut ourselves away. I remember one report saying that what my dad did was “understandable”. We started to despair. So I think this has to be a moment to remember Everard’s family because it’s so difficult when something you’re going through becomes public property.

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Boris Johnson comes under pressure to make UK safer for women

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Discovery of remains in search for Sarah Everard causes outpouring of anger as female MPs calls for tougher action

Boris Johnson came under concerted pressure to take action to tackle male violence and misogyny and make the UK safer for women, as the discovery of human remains in the search for Sarah Everard caused an outpouring of anger.

The inquiry into the disappearance of the 33-year-old marketing executive added poignancy to the annual International Women’s Day debate in the House of Commons as dozens of female MPs told moving and angry stories of the harassment they had been subjected to.

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Endemic violence against women is causing a wave of anger

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Analysis: Sarah Everard’s disappearance sparks furious demands to address misogyny in UK

Women feared this was coming. They waited, messaging each other in WhatsApp groups and on social media. They talked about their own attempts to stay safe, discussed their near misses.

When the news came on Wednesday evening – that police investigating the disappearance of Sarah Everard had found the remains of a body – a wave of grief crashed over them, followed quickly by anger.

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Lawyers seek justice for women jailed for killing abusive partners

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A failure to account for previous violence has led to at least 20 unsafe murder convictions, campaigners claim

It was a specific moment in which she thought she might die that drove Stella to the brink. “He had strangled me at the bottom of the stairs and that frightened me because you can get punched in the face or your hand broken, but I had never lost my breath before,” she recalled.

For Nicole, she was “pushed over the edge” when violence by her partner triggered a post-traumatic response to historic abuse by other men. “I was getting flashbacks of abuse ... everything came to a head and I just lost it.”

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‘Violence starts at home’: the Afghan women tackling domestic abuse at its source

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A new women-led initiative in Afghanistan is working to break down the barriers to help both victims and perpetrators

Nabila felt her diesel-drenched clothes stick to her skin, her lungs filling with fumes, hot panic rising.

It hadn’t been the first time an argument with her husband had escalated: he’d been beating her throughout their 30-year marriage, even tying her to a tree in the garden outside their small home in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, leaving her freezing in the winter cold.

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‘Nowhere is safe’: Colombia confronts alarming surge in femicides

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Vice-president joins activists in calling for zero tolerance of ‘machismo’ that has left hundreds of women and girls dead

When authorities pulled the lifeless body of four-year-old María Ángel Molina out of a river in rural Colombia on 13 January, the South American country mourned what was the 14th documented case of femicide this year.

Her murderer, Juan Carlos Galvis, also kidnapped María’s sister, and later admitted to authorities that he committed the brutal crimes in order to punish the girls’ mother for seeing another man.

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Judge’s remarks made mother ‘fearful’ for herself and her child, hearing told

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Barrister urges landmark appeal hearing for courts in England and Wales to set aside decision that father should be allowed contact with child

A family court judge has come under fire for “wholly inappropriate” comments made to a young mother during a private hearing on child contact arrangements.

Judge Richard Scarratt made the mother “fearful” and put pressure on her to accept that the child have contact with her father, a barrister representing the mother has claimed.

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Landmark hearing to examine handling of domestic abuse cases by UK courts

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Family lawyers hope test appeals involving allegations of partner rape and coercive control will help update approach of family courts

A landmark hearing in the court of appeal is under way to examine how cases of domestic abuse are handled by judges in the family courts.

It concerns four conjoined appeals which feature allegations including marital or partner rape and coercive control, which emerged during private proceedings to address disputes centred on access to children.

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The great opportunity: how Covid transformed global crime

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2020 led to surges in everything from domestic abuse to black markets in fake vaccines

By the end of March, one week into the UK’s first lockdown, recorded crime in Lancashire had dropped by a startling 40% compared with the four-year average.

“At first there was some mild panic,” says DCI Eric Halford, of Lancashire Constabulary. “Most senior officers expected a surge in demand.”

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