Evidence: To the House of Lords Committee on the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, on its impact

By: Women Against Rape, Support Not Separation & Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign

Summary
Our evidence focuses on the ways the Domestic Abuse Act is rendered ineffective because the law is not properly enforced by the police, CPS and courts, and does not do enough to protect women and children from violence and abuse, both in criminal and family courts, including because it:

Is gender neutral, when domestic abuse is a gendered crime. Victims are overwhelmingly women and perpetrators overwhelmingly men.
Is undermined by biased implementation: more and more women are being arrested for domestic abuse instead of their violent male partners, even when they make the initial report. Police powers to remove perpetrators are being used to unfairly remove mothers from their homes, sometimes forced by police to leave without their children.
Has done nothing to address the pervasive racism, misogyny and other prejudices of police and other criminal justice agencies.
Did not address the need for resources for a safe escape, recovery and life together with their children after leaving a violent man. Without statutory provision of money, housing and other necessities regardless of immigration status, women are left vulnerable.
Did not address the fact that women’s poverty is a crucial factor in making women and children vulnerable to violence. When mothers are poor, so are their children, and children’s poverty is also a key driver of sexual abuse and exploitation of children.
Has done little to address the appalling and worsening living conditions of asylum seeking women, most of who are destitute and are unable to report violence for fear of arrest, detention and deportation.
Recognised that children are victims of domestic abuse yet the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s report revealed that the response to children experiencing domestic abuse has so far failed to meet the requirements of children and young people as listed in Section 3 of the Act.
Has offered little support to thousands of mothers who end up in family court after leaving violent partners because they are trying to protect children from unwanted and/or unsupervised contact with abusive fathers. The Act did not abolish “presumption of contact” recommended by the Harm Report which results in children being routinely forced to have contact with or even live with violent fathers.
Has not addressed how a hostile, prejudiced or uncaring police response has a serious impact on a woman’s ability to oppose social services/family court removing her children.
We make a series of recommendations for inclusion in the Violence Against Women & Girls strategy and for overhauling the family courts.

Evidence on the impact of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021

Who we are

Women Against Rape (WAR) is among the oldest women’s anti-rape organisations in the UK. We are multi-racial and we campaign for justice for survivors of sexual/domestic violence, including asylum seekers. Our casework with hundreds of women each year shapes our campaigns. We won the criminalisation of rape in marriage in 1991 after a 15-year campaign and have helped set legal case precedents such as the first private prosecution for rape in England and Wales. WAR is an active member of the Support Not Separation Coalition.

The Support Not Separation Coalition (SNS, started in 2017, co-ordinated by Legal Action for Women) includes organisations of single mothers, women of colour, women with disabilities, rape/domestic violence survivors, breastfeeding advocates, psychotherapists, men and individual social workers and former social workers who share our perspective. We defend mothers and children against unwarranted separation and the devaluing of the mother-child relationship. We are in contact with hundreds of mothers and other primary carers, children, family law professionals, organisations and concerned individuals. Our publications include Suffer the Little Children & their Mothers published in 2017 and updated research published in June 2021.

The Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign (DMRC, co-ordinated by WinVisible – women with visible & invisible disabilities) brings disabled mothers together to defend our right to have and to keep our children. We campaign to stop the cruelty and discrimination we face from social services and the family courts which use mothers’ requests for council support as an excuse to label us “unfit” and take our children from us. DMRC is an active member of SNS.

Our Evidence

We are of course glad that the Domestic Abuse Act (DAA) exists. However we are very frustrated by the ways in which it is rendered ineffective because the law is not properly enforced by the police, CPS and courts. Our evidence focusses on ways in which the DAA does not do enough to protect women and children from violence and abuse, both in criminal and family courts.

The Act is significantly weakened by being gender neutral, when domestic abuse is a gendered issue. This was established in the Istanbul Convention and various other international instruments. Gender neutrality puts women in even greater danger by hiding the violence we face and enabling perpetrators to portray themselves as victims. Victims are overwhelmingly women and almost all perpetrators are men. At the end of 2024, 91.3% of defendants being prosecuted for DA were male (Refuge) This is particularly stark in relation to more serious domestic violence like GBH, rape and murder. It thus has serious consequences. On average, two-three women every week are murdered by their partner or ex, often after many calls to police for help, and this figure has not gone down for years.

The Act is undermined by biased implementation

We describe here some of the serious flaws in the implementation of the Act, undermining both women’s ability to get legal protection, and women’s inability to flee violence rooted in poverty, sexism and racism.

Some aspects of the Act have improved women’s safety, particularly because it includes different kinds of domestic abuse such as coercive and controlling behaviour and economic abuse. But the positive impact is severely limited by the comprehensive lack of implementation by police, CPS, social services and courts, both criminal and family.

Shockingly, in our experience more and more women are being arrested for domestic abuse instead of their violent male partners, even when they make the initial police report. It has for years been common for abusive men to lie about violence and to claim they are in fact the injured party. The police are still far too influenced by the perpetrator’s counter-allegations, which are a way of deflecting or denying their violence and/or coercive control, including economic abuse. We are aware that this issue has also been raised with the CPS by women’s organisations, but we haven’t seen any improvement as a result. It appears to be spreading.

Around half of rapes in England and Wales are by partners and former partners, so are a key form of domestic abuse. In criminal court, rape remains among the crimes least likely to end in a conviction. Where the man is an intimate partner or husband, rape is even less likely to result in a conviction.

Domestic abuse against women has gone up from 2019 when it affected 1 in 6 women, to 2024 when it affected 1 in 4 women. (Refuge) Analysis by the police found that there were 115,000 recorded cases of child sexual abuse in 2023. Two to three women every week are murdered by a partner or ex, often despite police involvement. One in six homicides in England and Wales are linked to domestic abuse, and the estimated number of female victims of domestic violence aged 16+ in England and Wales, year ending March 2023 was 1,377,000. Over 900 victims of domestic violence in England commit suicide each year – fear of further violence and having children removed are leading causes.

The police receive a domestic abuse-related call every 30 seconds.Yet it is estimated that less than 24% of domestic abuse crime is reported to the police. (Refuge)

The Act never set out to reform police practices, although it gave the police more powers to remove perpetrators without any direction on how to implement them. Instead these powers are being used to unfairly remove mothers from their homes, sometimes forced by police to leave without their children, including breastfeeding babies.

The Act has also done nothing to address the pervasive racism, misogyny and other prejudices of the police and other criminal justice agencies. Legal protection is generally less accessible for women from a disadvantaged social background, such as those of us who are Black, have a disability, insecure immigration status, are a sex worker/have a criminal record, suffer drug/alcohol abuse, are working class, etc. We are more vulnerable to violence, and also more likely to also suffer police, CPS and court discrimination. Like every other law, the DAA is limited in how it helps women who are socially disadvantaged, reinforcing the disadvantages suffered rather than helping to counter them. Laws are also generally more punitive to women from disadvantaged backgrounds, so women often face prosecution and harsher treatment than men.

Disabled women are two to three times more likely to suffer domestic violence than non-disabled women, and face added barriers to being able to leave, such as dependence on care provided by a partner, no personal care if fleeing to a refuge, giving up adapted accessible housing and worse benefit problems from changing address.

Domestic abuse by non-related non-family paid or unwaged carers against disabled women/people is not recognised, but should be. WinVisible/Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign supported the proposed amendments put forward by Stay Safe East which were not agreed in the Act.

Since the introduction of the Act, the police and courts have been found to be in an appalling state of disarray, with courts having over 459,000 case backlogs, waiting times of 4-6 years for rape, and basic poor functioning such as courts not having safe waiting areas or proper screens. Despite successive governments’ strong law-and-order propaganda, these institutions have actually been driven to the edge of collapse.

Police take years to investigate and make a decision about charging, while the use of a digital strip-search (downloads of phones and other personal records) drags it out for more years, and puts the focus on the woman’s character and sexual history rather than the alleged crime of the accused.

Many women reporting rape and other violence are not being kept informed of their rights, are deprived of a named contact officer to stay in touch with, and suffer blatant errors such as evidence being misinterpreted, damaged or lost. Some women are actually put at risk in civil courts, such as family courts, where even men with convictions for murder and exclusion orders have been allowed to attend without any security for the victim.

Police training has been utterly inadequate, as exposed by Operation Soteria, which found that many officers also lacked crucial supervision. They found many officers share misogynist and other prejudices about women and girls, resembling those of rapists. Soteria further found high numbers of officers didn’t think it was their job to investigate rape if the victim had been drinking, or was homeless or a sex worker.

Police credibility and effectiveness has also been undermined by their refusal to tackle rape, misogyny, homophobia and racism among their own colleagues, as documented by the Baroness Casey review. Police have for years enabled serial rapists and even murderers. Sarah Everard’s murder and the appalling racist treatment of the bodies of Mina Smallman’s murdered daughters, among many other scandals led to major media exposure, sackings, and some prosecutions followed. It took all this to make them act, after many years of impunity and promotions of officers accused of crimes, and inaction by the spell out IOPC, which had put the public at risk. For as long as police officers including those in senior positions of power and those armed with deadly weapons are above the law, training is not an effective remedy.

Resources essential for women and children – housing and money

1 in 4 women have been raped or sexually assaulted since the age of 16 whilst 1 in 6 children have been sexually abused. Analysis by the police found that there were 115,000 recorded cases of child sexual abuse in 2023. Two to three women every week are murdered by a partner or ex, often despite police involvement. One in six homicides in England and Wales are linked to domestic abuse, and the estimated number of female victims of domestic violence aged 16+ in England and Wales, year ending March 2023 was 1,377,000. Over 900 victims of domestic violence in England commit suicide each year – fear of further violence and having children removed are leading causes.

In this context, resources for a safe escape, recovery and life together with their children after leaving a partner are crucial, but again the Act didn’t address this. Without statutory provision of money, housing and other basic necessities regardless of immigration status, service providers in the community can be only a sticking plaster. In fact, many services have been further cut since the Act became law.

Women’s Aid’s national audit 2026 found that despite a year-on-year increase in bed spaces, of the 10,665 women and 11,732 children who were supported by refuge services last year, almost two thirds (65.2%) of refuge referrals were rejected. This marked the highest proportion of referrals rejected in five years, primarily due to a lack of space and capacity.

Community-based services providing women help for example to lever safe housing out of overstretched and often unhelpful obstructive housing authorities, are themselves often oversubscribed, underfunded, and sometimes prejudiced against women. Some councils refuse to accept that a woman is fleeing domestic abuse without a police report, but this is in breach of the woman’s rights. Without an advocate helping to press for such rights, many women remain homeless after domestic abuse. But many charities are narrowed by local or national funding restrictions so will only help in one particular geographical region, or one social group. This inevitably leads to social exclusion, often of the most vulnerable women and children.

Domestic abuse caused by poverty & financial dependence

It is essential to take into account who is the main perpetrator and who is the main victim in domestic abuse investigations, and there is typically a power dynamic between women and men because women have less social power in the society generally.

The abusive man who is generally the main or sole earner, uses money and other resources as a weapon. The man often holds the purse strings, and may own the house or be the sole tenant. Women are the main carers in 90% of households. The woman, who almost always has less money and overwhelmingly takes most responsibility for the children, may also face threats to remove the children if she won’t comply with demands for sex or other demands.

Women without children earn 14% less than men. The Institute for Fiscal Studies notes the average earnings of men are “almost completely unaffected by parenthood” but women’s earnings fall sharply after they have a child. Seven years after the birth of a first child, women’s earnings are on average less than half of men’s.

Women’s poverty should never be ignored as a factor in making women and children vulnerable to violence. When mothers are poor, so are their children, and children’s poverty is also a key driver of sexual abuse of children.

Women’s and children’s poverty have significantly increased in the past five years, especially under severe benefit cuts (the two-child limit, only just now abolished after causing immense damage leading to mothers of more than two children ceding custody to violent fathers) the total benefit cap, Universal Credit sanctions against single mothers, disability benefit cuts and many claimants cut off in the forced move to Universal Credit), diminishing social housing and profiteering housing providers.

The Women’s Budget Group found that 86% of the austerity cuts since 2010 targeted women. This has in our experience hugely increased women’s vulnerability to rape and domestic abuse and cut women’s escape routes.

Any improvements in protection and justice under the Act have thus been undermined by increasing poverty and financial dependence on abusive men.

Surviving Economic Abuse says a victim of economic abuse is killed by a current or ex partner every 3 weeks. ‘Economic abuse kills. Evidence shows that it is a serious risk factor for homicide and suicide.’ (quoted in Metro 5 March 26) The DAA recognises economic abuse as a crime, but there is no account taken of how common this is or how this should shape an investigation or prosecution.

One older woman with multiple disabilities we supported was raped at home by strangers after she was forced to ask them for help after being denied social care by the local authority. Every cut to social care and increase in care charges, makes older women and women with disabilities more vulnerable to violence as they are often forced into dependence on family, friends or strangers who then turn abusive.

The Act made no reference to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme, and nor did this consultation - a key oversight. This is a life-saving cash fund for victims of crime, including domestic abuse, but the awards are too low given the devastating and life-changing effects on women’s and children’s lives. And the government must remove the prejudice caused by refusing an award to all victims with an unspent criminal conviction, not just those victims who can ‘prove’ they committed the crime due to their abuse, as some bodies have put forward.

The DA A has done little to address the appalling and worsening living conditions of asylum seeking women, most of whom are destitute. Women are unable to report violence for fear of arrest, detention and deportation. The government’s policies to further restrict immigration, and the disregard of the rights to safety of women migrants and their children are themselves an invitation to rape. The hostile climate against asylum seekers and immigrants worsened by the draconian laws about to be enacted.

Impact on children

The DAA recognised that children are victims of domestic abuse. Yet the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s report Victims in their own right? Babies, children and young people’s experience of domestic abuse April 2025 revealed that the response to children experiencing domestic abuse has so far failed to meet the requirements of children and young people as listed in Section 3 of the Act. Thousands of children are being left with nowhere to turn after suffering abuse or facing long wait times for both therapeutic and non-therapeutic support such as CAMHs, housing (part 4 of the Act), school and therapy due to austerity with 51% placed on endless wait lists and the rest just turned away for support and recovery services. 56% of all domestic abuse support services have suffered severe financial cuts and 29% have stopped providing services for children all together including counselling, play therapy and even emergency housing.

Family courts

The DAA sets out that victims of domestic abuse will be considered vulnerable and automatically able to get additional support to help them to feel safer in court, including in family court. However this relies on CAFCASS and a family court Judge to accept a woman is a victim of domestic abuse.

The DAA has offered little support to thousands of mothers who end up in family court after leaving violent partners because they are trying to protect children from unwanted and/or unsupervised contact with abusive fathers. The Domestic Abuse Commissioner found 87% to 90% of cases contain domestic abuse, highlighting it as "everyday business".

Despite overwhelming evidence of domestic abuse in most cases — 73% in hearings and 87% in case file reviews — my office found evidence of how a pro-contact culture and a failure to recognise abuse contributed to decisions that may have put children in harms way. Affirming what survivors and the domestic abuse sector have long stated.

Mothers repeatedly described how they were dissuaded from raising allegations of domestic abuse by being told it would have no impact on whether the abusive parent would be granted contact. Others said they felt pressured into accepting potentially unsafe child arrangement orders out of fear that if they contested, an even worse outcome would be granted. In nearly half of the cases reviewed by the Commissioner, unsupervised overnight contact was ordered

The real scandal is that rape has been practically decriminalised, with a conviction rate of under 1%, and cases that take an average of two years to reach court. This has a knock- on effect in family courts, which have for too long ignored or over-ridden established rape and domestic violence laws, long fought for in criminal courts. A single judge, often heavily influenced by CAFCASS, has the power to rule on whether they believe a mother’s testimony of violence – they often decide to reject it, on the “balance of probability”, and accuse the mother of lying despite evidence to the contrary.

A hostile, prejudiced or uncaring police response (as documented by Women Against Rape) has a serious impact on a woman’s ability to oppose social services/family court removing her children. If there is no police record (often lost or not recorded at all), it is easy for other authorities such as housing, employers, DWP, social services to dismiss the woman as lying or exaggerating and thus deny her any resources or help and accuse her of neglect, removing her children.

CAFCASS has maintained its links to the domestic abuse denying misogynistic men’s organisations including having them as stakeholders. The extent of rape and domestic abuse being perpetrated against mothers and children has continued to be ignored or not believed by CAFCASS, local authorities, psychologists, and judges in family court which have continued to make decisions placing both mothers and children at real risk of harm.

Children are routinely forced to have contact with or even live with violent fathers, who rely on the presumption of contact and allegations of “parental alienation” to press their case. When the father has been violent to the mother and when children report violence themselves, they are rarely believed or listened to. When this happens, protection in the DAA such as not being cross examined by their abusers, are ignored and women who are too traumatised to answer are seen as lying or being evasive. They inevitably loose their children to the abusers and are told by their own lawyers to play down or not mention the domestic abuse as this will lead to their children being removed.

Contact with violent men endangers children and mothers, causing physical and psychological harm, even death. The Sunday Mirror documented 69 children killed (2004-2020), 78% by fathers with a history of violence (domestic and sexual) who had been known to police, children’s services, family courts. And a BBC investigation found five mothers died – some taking their own lives and one having a heart attack after contact was given to violent fathers.

All these issues had been widely publicised before the DAA became law, in particular in The Harm Report (2020). Despite lobbying by a wide range of groups, Parliament refused to include the abolition of the “presumption of contact” in the DAA as recommended by the Harm Report. It is now contained in the draft Courts & Tribunals Bill which is welcome but long overdue, as has been the discrediting of “parental alienation” as junk science along with banning the use of unregulated experts in family court.

Evidence of harm in Family Court

From our own casework: Ms X is a Muslim woman of Asian descent who came to WAR and SNS for support in 2022. She had been living with her partner, her three-week-old baby, and his parents. She suffered domestic abuse, with coercive and controlling behaviour. She called the police to help her safely leave the home, together with the baby who was still breastfeeding. Officers chose to believe the father who alleged Ms X had mental health issues so told her to leave the house, and said that if she took the baby she would be arrested. Because of the violence she had experienced, she felt compelled to leave without the baby. Ms X started family court proceedings after the father refused to let her see the baby. She was criticised for leaving without the child and disbelieved when she reported what the police had told her. After fighting for three years, she finally got her child back. But her son was deprived of his mother’s love and care and she was deprived of the precious early years of her child’s life.

We refer to cases like Re:C in which Sarah, whose two daughters were abused by their father and an “expert “was allowed to tell the police to ignore what they said and not investigate and sent them to live with their abuser ; and Re;Y where a mother was not allowed to see her children for 6 years because she raised abuse and despite the children being victims, they were sent to live with the perpetrator. Even when the child in this case ran away, his abuse at the hands of his father was still ignored and he was removed again from his mother and placed into foster care. The Act did not prevent the horrific fate of Sara Sharif who was sent to live with her murderer father despite family court and social services knowing he was a serious abuser.

Publicity about cases like these which can now be reported in the media are slowly changing the climate for victims of domestic abuse in family court but they highlight that the DAA did not go far enough in ensuring mothers and children are protected.

Our demands

We are calling for the Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy to act on the following:

Recognise that victims of domestic abuse are overwhelmingly women, and men the perpetrators, including when other men are their victims. Domestic abuse is a gendered crime.
Sack and prosecute police officers who are misogynist and racist; or who refuse to investigate rape and domestic violence, lose or ignore evidence. Stop sexist and racist stereotyping.
Stop police investigating women victims instead of perpetrators. Stop police invasive digital strip-searching, lack of protection and information, untrained, unsupervised and overloaded officers.
Police and CPS must stop prosecuting rape and domestic violence separately when they are committed by a perpetrator against one woman.
Prosecute and sack police rapists and domestic abusers, stop promoting them. Stop the strip search of children by police officers. This is an abuse of power, disproportionately used on children of colour.
Make gender-based violence a genuine priority for police and CPS. Deprioritise armed police units, which according to Baroness Casey’s 2023 report are generously-resourced, toxic and out of control.
Rape and domestic abuse investigations should be prioritised over the increasing criminalisation of non-violent protests.
Provide money and safe housing for victims trying to leave violent men. Refuges must be affordable to all women including those on low incomes. Increase housing benefit and social housing. Charities are essential but their impacts are limited if there are no resources for women.
Extend carer’s allowance and introduce a care income to all women caring for children or other relatives.
Stop protecting men who abuse children, and expose and prosecute corrupt police officers who have covered it up.
End destitution, detention and deportation of asylum seekers, so that women who flee to the UK from domestic violence or rape can access protection and resources.
Abolish the No Recourse to Public Funds policy.
End violence against sex workers. Prostitution must not be cited as violence against women and girls. It is not rape and implies that sex workers can’t tell the difference between consenting sex and rape.
We support the English Collective of Prostitutes demand to decriminalise prostitution for safety’s sake. Criminalising women or their clients increases stigma and discrimination, putting women at greater risk of violence.

Family court demands

Reinstate legal aid for all family court cases including appeals
Abolish “presumption of contact”
Ban allegations of “parental alienation”
Put spending on S17 on a statutory footing, so support is funded and prioritised over removal. just as spending on S47 is.
Recognise the importance of the mother/child bond
Remove the profit incentive from all aspects of children’s social care
Forced adoptions must be made illegal and the practice of foster to adopt stopped.
Using “possible future emotional harm” to justify removing children must be abolished.
Mothers and children need justice and an end to practices based on sexism, racism, class bias and disability discrimination in family court,

Women Against Rape war@womenagainstrape.net

Support Not Separation sns@legalactionforwomen.net

Disabled Mothers’ Rights Campaign mumsrights@winvisible.org

20 April 2026