Oral evidence: Violence against women and girls, HC 594Wednesday 15 October 2014
Oral evidence, 15 October 2014.
The Chair
Good morning. I would like to repeat my welcome. Thank you very much for providing your written evidence and also coming here today. We do not take for granted that particularly voluntary groups give of their precious resource and time to come and assist us here in Parliament. This is part of an ongoing inquiry into violence against women and girls. If you could, please, introduce yourselves personally for the record, thank you very much.
Emily Burnage
My name is Emily Burnage. I am an education outreach worker based in Brighton at RISE.
Peter Grant
I am Peter Grant. I am the Co‑Director of Restored.
The Chair
Thank you very much. I will begin. Article 12 of the Istanbul Convention requires the Government to take the measures necessary to promote changes in the social and cultural patterns of behaviour of women and men with a view to eradicating prejudices, customs, traditions and all other practices that are based on the idea of the inferiority of women or on stereotyped roles for men and women. How do you think the Government can achieve that and are you aware of any current measures that aim to promote such changes and, if so, what has been your experience of those measures and the impact they have upon the communities that you particularly work with?
Peter Grant
To see change of this magnitude requires a very broad‑based response. When we look at patterns of what has achieved social change over the past decades, it has been the interaction of legal reform and structurally, but also a very wide range of cultural and other factors. What we see in the UK at the moment is a divergence between the strengthening of the legal frameworks, but the attitudes in society are probably moving in the wrong direction in terms of our popular culture, in terms of the objectification of women, in terms of the seeping of pornography into popular culture. What is required is a very broad‑based response, an ongoing response that includes a wide range of participants, from politicians through to those involved in the arts and media and also, given Restored’s particular focus, the engagement of faith and faith leaders in that response. Looking for a concrete example of the kind of movements underway, it was interesting, in your last discussion we were hearing about this idea of men’s movements and the engagement of bystanders and so on. Restored is working on a campaign called “First Man Standing”, which is asking ordinary men to respect women, to challenge each other and to sign up to the White Ribbon pledge never to commit, condone or remain silent about violence against women. It is when we get those popular movements coming from the bottom up, coinciding with a top‑down change in culture that we are going to see change in society.
Emily Burnage
I would echo that. What we need to see is a change in leadership. Certainly coming through the House of Lords today, what I saw was lots of imagery of men in positions of power and I think we need to see better representation of women in the Shadow Cabinet, in the Cabinet, here in the House of Lords and in leadership positions. That would be really helpful for young women and young men growing up and seeing that and seeing that your voice is equal whoever you are and wherever you are coming from. I work in schools and, certainly for me, my role is about trying to embed and entrench ideas around gender and equality in schools and adopting a whole‑school approach very early on, so that teachers are modelling good, positive relationships with children and their fellow teaching staff as well and modelling that from a very young age. We have those discussions around gender and violence against women very early on, because we do see those influences having a massive impact on how young people interact with each other and their relationships.
Sarah Teather
I am just laughing about the idea that we have any influence over trying to encourage other women to come in here. I have been trying for years. Following on from Elizabeth’s opening question, which was about the influence of culture, custom, religion, tradition or honour, I want to get your feedback on whether or not you think there are cases where such things have been used to justify criminal behaviour; whether or not you know of cases where that has been successful; whether you think the UK is doing enough to try to change attitudes there. It is a general question and I have some other supplementaries.
Peter Grant
We work very much with churches and with the Christian tradition and there is a stream within Christian theology—we sometimes call it “toxic theology”—which combines the idea of submission of women and a dominant role of men within relationships and it has been used to justify abuse. What we would argue is that what you need is people from each faith community, from each ethnic community who are in a position to be able to speak in and to challenge the tenets of each religion, of each community, in their own language and to be able to say that such behaviour and such theology is unacceptable. At Restored, we aim to promote positive Biblical interpretations that clearly show the nature of the Bible as being in favour of equality, in favour of respect of women, in favour of loving relationships and in which violence is completely unacceptable. We are engaged in church training to try to help churches to get to grips with those issues, but it clearly is an issue that needs to be addressed and that is why engaging with faith communities and other specialist communities is very important.
Emily Burnage
At RISE, where I work, we also do outreach work with BME communities, including travelling and Gypsy communities as well and that is about empowering the women in those communities and educating them about relationships and their autonomy in those relationships and keeping them safe. It is about educating those communities as well. Rather than us coming in and telling, it is about educating those communities.
Sarah Teather
Are you aware of any cases where it has been successful as a justification within the criminal justice system?
Peter Grant
Successful as a justification in terms of individuals?
Sarah Teather
Yes.
Peter Grant
Yes, there are individuals who would justify their behaviour through these kinds of theologies.
Sarah Teather
Do they get success within the criminal justice system with that?
Peter Grant
No. This would be self‑justification that needs to be challenged. However, it points to the fact that if we are really going to address this—and you talked about perpetrator programmes earlier—we have to challenge the attitudes and actions of men. We have to get to the deep level of beliefs and say, “What is driving this?” What do people have in their minds if they are willing to commit violence of this nature? What is their image of women, particularly? What is the framework that they are working from? Unless we get to those roots and start to address and challenge those fundamental frameworks, we are not going to see change.
Baroness Buscombe
I absolutely think this is a really important point. Peter, what you are suggesting and what you are saying takes huge courage. It was not long ago, I remember, when I was being thrown out of houses in Slough, among different faith communities, if I even began to question the position of women and particularly young girls and the way they are treated in their homes. Do you feel that we are making any headway on this at all and, also, do you think that what has happened and been exposed, ironically, by the media of what was happening in Rotherham may help in the longer term to change attitudes?
Peter Grant
Yes. What is emerging is an awareness of the fact that the need to speak out to protect women and children overrides the nature of traditions and so on within communities. I can only speak from within the Christian community perspective, but you asked about good examples of change. My Co‑Director, Mandy Marshall, was the Church of England’s representative to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women last year. They reached conclusions about violence against women that included a clear reference to the role of faith communities and that provided a foundation for action. Mandy was then able to participate in a debate at the General Synod earlier this year when the Church of England passed a motion on gender‑based violence. That, in turn, has provided a platform for training at the diocesan level and for going down to church level to start to challenge attitudes, to say this is an important issue, this is an issue that churches must take seriously and to start to confront those attitudes. So there is potential and one of the key things is getting faith leaders and other people in prominent positions to stand up and speak out on this.
Mr Sharma
You mentioned that the Church has produced some literature in different languages as well. Did I hear you correctly?
Peter Grant
I did not say that, no.
Mr Sharma
No, okay. I thought you said there was information available in different languages, but it is important, when you said that you meet with BME communities, that information in the different languages is also available, so that they are well informed. Is the Church communicating with other faith groups on this issue as well or not?
Peter Grant
I have only limited awareness of what is going on within other faith communities. My sense is that there are individual projects and programmes. At Restored, we would love to work with an equivalent organisation based within the Muslim faith, the Hindu faith and so on. That is certainly the way ahead, because what it needs, as I say, is people who know the scriptures and the practices of their own community who can then speak in to that and challenge it and then come together, perhaps, in some broader coalition in front to address that. However, I strongly support your argument for having resources in a range of languages. We have a church pack that outlines approaches that churches can take in responding to survivors of violence, to perpetrators, challenging theology and so on. That is available in English, Spanish and Russian. We would love to broaden it out as much as we possibly could.
Emily Burnage
I just wanted to add that in Brighton and Hove we also have forced marriage and FGM as part of our PSHE curriculum and it is on our SRE framework, so we are trying to already challenge ideas that this is around culture and tradition, that abuse is abuse wherever it is and make that very clear to young people from a very young age.
Baroness Buscombe
Can I just ask: are you allowed into all faith‑based schools, Emily?
Emily Burnage
I have 22 hours currently to do work in schools, primary and secondary, across Brighton and Hove. My work is about strengthening our PSHE framework, so I personally cannot go into every single school, but we have made our resources available online so any school can access them. Unfortunately, as you are probably well aware, PSHE and SRE are still non‑compulsory, so it really depends on what the school chooses to take, but the resources are there should they wish to.
The Chair
Just before we come to question 12, can I just ask whether either of you have had any experience of being denied access to any school? Obviously, not for timetable reasons, but that they just do not want your message in the school.
Emily Burnage
It would be hard to say. There are some schools that we have better success with in the city, but I would not like to say why that would be.
The Chair
Right, but if you have those concerns do you have a mechanism to feed it back to the local authority that there seems to be resistance in a particular school?
Emily Burnage
I work very closely with our standards and achievements team and they are excellent at challenging that and going into schools, so it is not an issue that has gone unnoticed; it is trying to be challenged.
Baroness Buscombe
Article 14 of the Istanbul Convention includes a number of provisions requiring state parties to take measures aimed at, first of all, raising awareness and understanding of violence against women, particularly amongst men and boys and, two, also the empowerment of women, including through educational materials. How do you think the UK is currently performing in this regard?
Emily Burnage
My view would be that there are pockets where there is some really good work being done, but provision in terms of PSHE and SRE is patchy, so it could be that some children and young people are leaving school with very little information around sex and relationships education. When we are talking about that, we are talking about violence against women and we are talking about consent, about healthy relationships and how gender underpins all of that. That is the work that we are trying to embed in schools currently in Brighton and Hove. What we really want to do is give children and young people the opportunity to talk about gender from a really young age and understand why it is important in terms of their relationships, in terms of aspiration and expectation and why things need to change for them. What we want to see is that SRE should be made a compulsory provision in both primary and secondary schools and it should be adequately resourced and supported by specialist providers on violence against women and girls. In Brighton and Hove, for example, the PSHE framework has been written, but with partners like me in the domestic violence programme, also from WISE, which is a specialist provider for sexual exploitation and also the Survivors’ Network, which provides support around sexual abuse. It is underpinning the whole framework with a gender‑based approach as well, because we know how important that is and it is giving young people and children the opportunities to explore that.
Baroness Buscombe
Is PSHE a national plan or is it local to your area?
Emily Burnage
PSHE is Personal, Social and Health Education, so—
Baroness Buscombe
Yes, but is there a national strategy for it? One of the add‑on questions for this is: are there any specific difficulties with establishing a national plan for the provision of teaching materials for children about violence against women and girls?
Emily Burnage
There is a programme, but at the moment it is non‑statutory, so although there is a framework and there are recommendations that schools should be providing PSHE, they do not have to provide it. At the moment, with the current climate in education where attainment is really important, PSHE is one of those things that can go by the wayside.
Peter Grant
I would like to fully support those comments. We have a particular focus on men and boys and the coverage just is not there. We know from research by the University of Bristol and the NSPCC of the very high levels of violence in teenage relationships that are there and yet there is not the framework that says not only how you recognise abuse but what a good relationship looks like. There is a very positive aspect to this, which is saying how much can we promote what good, healthy, positive relationships look like and then putting domestic abuse and so on in that context. However, for boys particularly there is a huge issue around masculinity as well, of saying, “What does it mean to be a good man in our society?” when so many of the role models that are out there are violent, abusive and measuring success in ways that we would see are detrimental to women.
Baroness O’Loan
I just want to ask a quick supplementary. I have two issues actually. One is: do you experience violence by girls against girls in schools as a problem? In some areas I think it can be a growing problem. That is question one. The second question I want to ask is: can you give us any idea how many schools do not provide PSHE as part of the curriculum, as part of creating a context within which children will learn well?
Emily Burnage
The issue with PSHE is how it is delivered. For example, some schools might have one day a year when they will do a condensed day and give all the subjects in one go and they have then ticked the box, it has been covered, but is that a meaningful way for young people? I do not think it is. What it needs to be is embedded throughout, from reception and across the curriculum as well. For example, I have given advice to RE teachers about FGM and how we can talk about that in the context of RS, so it is about looking and being creative about it is as well. However, for PSHE, if you looked at different schools they would have different models and would prioritise it differently as well. Does that answer your question? I am not sure.
Baroness O’Loan
I also just wondered whether there is a problem of violence by girls against girls.
Emily Burnage
I think there has always been violence by girls against girls and boys against boys. It does happen, but certainly what I see as the presenting issue at the moment is violence by boys against girls and men against women.
The Chair
Could I just ask a brief supplementary question? Do either of you do any work in terms of PSHE in the independent sector? We do tend to focus in these sessions on the provisions within the state system, but obviously this is no respecter of income.
Peter Grant
No.
Emily Burnage
No.
The Chair
Do you know of any organisations that are providing resources into the independent school sector?
Emily Burnage
No. If we were asked, it is something that we would go in and be able to do a workshop in, but no, I am funded by the local authority, so my focus is on local authority schools.
Peter Grant
I have nothing to add.
The Chair
Article 15 of the Istanbul Convention requires the state to provide or strengthen appropriate training of the relevant professionals dealing with victims or perpetrators of all the acts of violence covered by that Convention. What has been your experience, if you have any, of the level of training of professionals dealing with victims or perpetrators that you have come across in relation to your work and the communities that you serve?
Peter Grant
Our reflections on this would be largely second‑hand. We are an alliance of organisations working on these issues. We would reflect on Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary report on the police and reflecting, basically, a patchy response. There are very good areas of practice; there are other areas where clearly the quality of professional services provided is inadequate. We see a tremendous role for peer groups of professionals, whether it is medical, going across legal, indeed, even into the military and so on, to be able to raise standards themselves, to challenge, to bring about good practice and so on. That is an area we would like to see development in.
The Chair
Can I just ask you specifically in relation to professionals dealing with victims? Often, I presume, the vicar or the minister is the first or early point of report. Is it a standard part of the training at theological college for ministers to have some kind of awareness as to how to deal with victims who present and then where they can connect them within the local statutory framework?
Peter Grant
I think churches are incredibly important portals in that regard, whether it is in working with young people, as you say, with people disclosing violence and also having to deal with perpetrators. I would say that across the piece church leaders, vicars and so on are not well‑qualified or trained. There are some patches of it. There has been good work that has gone over the years, particularly in the Methodist Church and, to some extent, in the Baptist Church, the Anglican Church in specific dioceses and so on. However, we would love to see a much more comprehensive approach to injecting these issues into the core of theological education, because we need to get trainee ministers and so on aware of these issues and knowing how to respond right from the beginning.
Emily Burnage
I would echo that. What we see is professionals who may not have had a lot of pre or post‑qualifying experience or training around domestic violence and I am talking about teachers, social workers and the police. It is not only their understanding of domestic violence and abuse and the dynamics that go on around that. It is also about the understanding and the impact of trauma as well and how that can play out and the legacy of abuse and how long that can take. Quite often, we will work with women in crisis, but we will work with women and families years after they have left an abusive relationship and the impact of that relationship is being played out in their children’s education, in their behaviour and the whole family dynamic as well. Therefore, better understanding and ongoing training and we would also argue that it should be included in core competencies for professionals, like social workers, health care professionals and the police. I should just add that Brighton has White Ribbon status as a police force, but there are still improvements to be made.
Mr Sharma
Article 12 of the Convention talks of the general obligation to take measures that take into account and address the needs of persons made vulnerable by particular circumstances and to place the human rights of all victims at their centre. Do you think the UK is complying with this obligation in relation to the communities you serve? As a supplementary to that, do you think the UK approach in this regard takes account of the intersectionality of victims?
Peter Grant
The broad answer to that, we would say, is no. There are some very good high‑level statements that are made, but the evidence of this would be there if there were resources provided at the grassroots to the often very small organisations that are able to respond in a very much survivor‑centred, victim‑centred approach to this violence. The evidence is that the resources for those types of organisations, including faith‑based organisations, are diminishing. We have that feedback from Mothers’ Union, which is one of our members, saying that at the grassroots it is very difficult to get the resources to make that kind of a commitment into a practical reality.
Emily Burnage
We would see that as well. Our capability is impacted hugely by the amount of public sector cuts. Regarding our funding streams, we are looking at more cuts again, so that really compromises our ability to support survivors in the community.
Sarah Teather
We have talked a lot about standing up and preventing something from happening and changing attitudes, but when you find people who perhaps might accept that they have behaved in a way that they should not do—I am thinking about men—what work is in place to help them go on and to change their behaviour in the long‑term, effectively long‑term rehabilitation?
Peter Grant
The rehabilitation of men is absolutely critical and is equally under‑resourced really. The evidence on perpetrator programmes is rather mixed. We would advocate that they have to have a very strong common basis in the dynamics of power and control and an understanding of the nature of the violence and so on in order to change men’s attitudes and actions. On top of that, there is scope for additional, much more customised modules in those kinds of programmes to address the specific needs of men in different communities.
Sarah Teather
My question was more general really. A lot of what the session has been about today has been attitudes that are widely pervading rather than necessarily the ones that are so obvious that they come to the attention of the police, so that people will be referred into a perpetrator programme. However, for something that is much more under the radar, for those men what kind of support is there to help them to change?
Emily Grant
One of the things that we piloted and are now running that we started six years ago is a programme called Break4Change, which is child‑to‑parent violence. It is trying to to, firstly, not label young people who are acting aggressively or violently at home as perpetrators, because what we understood was that a lot of the young people who are accessing that service had come from abusive relationships and witnessed that themselves. Therefore, it is trying to get in there early and look at those relationships and those dynamics and how that is played out. Part of the whole‑school approach that RISE and the standards and achievements team in Brighton developed was about looking at the broader scope around violence. So, at one end, I will go in and do an intervention with young people who have experienced abuse at home, but talking about protective behaviours and looking at trying to negotiate conflict in the playground as well. It is looking at how you can stop those violent behaviours progressing and the acceptance of violence as a way to resolve problems.
Peter Grant
Perhaps I could highlight as well our “First Man Standing” campaign. That is aimed at men who are not violent, calling on them to respect women and challenge each other, but out of that comes inquiries to us and to others about men who are saying, “Well, I think maybe I am being abusive” or, “How do you reflect on this behaviour?” Having that safe environment in which men can challenge each other, can talk about these issues is essential to that prevention and addressing men who perhaps are struggling with these issues as well.
Sarah Teather
Do you get success out of that?
The Chair
Sorry, I think we do need to wind up at this point. Thank you so much for attending and thank you particularly to members of the public as well who have come to hear the evidence today. If there is anything further that you wanted to raise that we did not ask you about, then please do get in touch with the Committee staff. Thank you for your time to give evidence. Oral evidence: Violence against women and girls, HC 594 2