Category: Domestic Violence

A woman who wants to divorce her husband of 40 years because she says their marriage is unhappy has lost her case. Supreme court judges “reluctantly” told her she must remain his wife, because a joyless marriage is not adequate grounds for a divorce if one spouse refuses to agree.
Five judges at the UK’s highest court unanimously upheld rulings by a family court and the court of appeal that Tini Owens, 68, must stay married to Hugh Owens, 80, despite her complaint that the marriage was loveless and had broken down.
Tini’s case has thrust the country’s lack of provision for no-fault divorce into the spotlight. Even spouses mutually seeking to end a marriage must, unless they have been living apart, assign blame and make often damaging allegations that lawyers say inflame potentially amicable proceedings.
Tini petitioned for divorce, alleging that her husband had prioritised his work over their home life, his treatment of her lacked love and affection, he was often moody and argumentative, he had disparaged her in front of others, and that she had grown apart from him.
In an initial hearing in October 2015, a judge allowed Tini to expand her grounds for divorce to 27 examples. But he nevertheless dismissed her petition, ruling that her case was flimsy and exaggerated. The judge said that while Hugh was “somewhat old-school”, Tini was more sensitive than most wives.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jul/25/supreme-court-rules-unhappy-marriage-not-grounds-for-divorce-tini-hugh-owens

New Zealand has passed legislation granting victims of domestic violence 10 days paid leave to allow them to leave their partners, find new homes and protect themselves and their children.
MPs clapped and cheered as bill passed on Wednesday night with 63 votes to 57. It is the result of seven years of work by Green MP Jan Logie, who worked in a women’s refuge before she became a politician.
New Zealand has one of the highest rates of domestic violence in the developed world, with police responding to a family violence incident every four minutes. Family violence is estimated to cost the country between NZ$4.1bn and $7bn a year.
At present the only country other than New Zealand to have passed such a law at national level is the Philippines, whose Anti-Violence Against Women and Their Children Act of 2004 includes provision for victims to take up to 10 days’ special leave. Under section 43 of the act, employers trying to impede such leave face penalties. However, it is unclear whether these provisions are widely known, used or enforced.
Laws providing paid leave relating to domestic violence also exist in Canada at a provincial level, in Manitoba and Ontario.
In March the Australian government announced it would introduce legislation entitling workers to five days unpaid leave to deal with a family violence situation.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/26/new-zealand-paid-domestic-violence-leave-jan-logie

[D]espite heightened awareness and push back, violence against women and girls remains a global threat: half of humanity should be female, but 117 million women and girls are “missing” (dead) due to discrimination, systemic injustice, and a lack of human rights under patriarchy. That’s more deaths than World War I and World War II combined, according to the United Nations Population Fund.
Despite the progress made by the global feminist movement, attitudes are slow to change, violence and discrimination against women and girls continues, and legislation supporting the rights of women and girls remains contested and under threat.
It is perhaps due to advancements in women’s rights in recent decades that we are seeing an increasing culture of violence against and sexualization of females in popular culture, ranging from pop music to video games to social media to advertising. Today, women are told that being a sex object is empowering by the media as well as by liberal feminists. Indeed, accepting the objectification and pornification of the female body is treated as a necessary and progressive part of a modern, liberal society.
In this daily war against women, many women internalize misogyny to the point that they become the accomplices of their executioners. Men may be in charge, but women are often their soldiers.
Despite having no health benefits and, in fact, being

and social acceptance. Girls and women who undergo this practice generally suffer long term physical, psychological, and emotional consequences for the rest of their lives. FGM is not a religious requirement, either — it is not mentioned in the Quor’an, the Bible, or the Torah. Rather,the most common reasons for practising FGM are to control women’s sexuality and their desire, to ensure women cannot engage in “inappropriate” sexual and social behaviour, and to make them valuble candidates for marriage.
Similarly, it’s not uncommon for women participate in honour killing. in order to survive. During a discussion at the European Commission, the Secretary-General of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Mr Angel Gurría, said, according to their research, “one in three women believe that violence against women is justified” [24:45].
https://www.feministcurrent.com/2018/07/19/dont-consider-violence-women-girls-terrorism/

by Julie Bindel in an Opinion Piece for The Guardian
After we cleared Emma Humphreys’ name 23 years ago we thought the law would support women who had been violently abused. Her case resulted in a change in the law. Judges could now direct juries in such cases to take into consideration the whole life histories of women like Humphreys who ended up on trial for murder.
Feminist campaigners were buoyant, certain that the tide was turning and that other women in Humphreys’ position would be better understood, and treated fairly by the courts. We were wrong: 23 years after Humphreys was freed, very little has changed. Justice for Women is currently dealing with the cases of several women who have killed violent men and subsequently been convicted of murder. It is almost as though the huge campaigns of the past three decades never happened.
Sally now has a new legal team, and her appeal against the murder conviction will be heard later this year on the grounds that she was subjected to “coercive control” for decades. She was given a sentence of 22 years in 2011. The prosecution suggested that her motive was “jealousy”.
This is somewhat different to the way that many men who kill their female partners are treated. Infidelity is regularly used as a defence in such cases, often successfully, by men who kill, and yet women such as Humphreys are given no understanding of or sympathy for their experience of horrendous domestic and sexual violence.
Why are so many women charged with murder, as opposed to manslaughter, if there is strong evidence of domestic violence?
How different is the attitude to men defending property than to women defending their own lives or the lives of their children against violent men? When Richard Osborn-Brooks was arrested after stabbing a burglar who tried to break into his home, the hashtag #FreeRichardOsbornBrooks was launched alongside a petition calling for the Crown Prosecution Service to take no action against him. He was released without charge. “We have the right to protect ourselves in our own home,” tweeted one man, in support of Osborn-Brooks.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/10/women-kill-partners-men-emma-humphreys-abused