A UK lawyer in high-profile cases on violence against women has expressed concern about victims of abuse who have committed crimes as a result of coercive and controlling behaviour.

Harriet Wistrich is the founder and director of the UK’s Centre for Women’s Justice, which aims to change the “structural disadvantage” females faces across the criminal justice system.

Harriet Wistrich – founder and director of the UK’s Centre for Women’s Justice.

She is not only looking at prosecuting offenders but also at women who commit crimes as a consequence of being coerced – the criminalisation of victims of abuse.

The legal charity she set up is focused on holding the state accountable around violence to women and girls.

“We are very concerned about the way women who are victims become criminalised by their abusers,” Wistrich said.

Coercive and controlling behaviour has only been recognised legally as an offence since 2015 and only in a handful of other countries.

The majority of women in prison have offended as a consequence of being victims of abuse, she said.

They sometimes use violence as a form of self-defence or are made to participate in fraud or hold stolen goods and drugs.

“In far too many cases, no account is being taken of the fact that prosecuted women have been seriously abused, which is the reason why they committed the crime,” Wistrich said.

Police accountable

The legal heavyweight is today addressing an event organised by Pink magazine and Gracy’s on the occasion of International Women’s Day, talking about ‘How the law should better protect and empower women’. 

Winner of the Liberty Human Rights Lawyer of the Year award and Legal Aid Lawyer of the Year for public law, among other accolades, Wistrich has acted on behalf of women who challenged the police and parole board in the case of serial rapist John Worboys, which she considers one of her most ground-breaking cases.

She said it established an important legal precedent for women victims of violence – that the police could be held accountable under the Human Rights Act if they failed in their duty to investigate.

Often, in a relationship… it is a build-up of controlling behaviour

Her biggest criticism, in fact, is towards the police force. When called out to a situation, they may only look at a single act of violence and are not considering the pattern, she said.

“Often, in a relationship, this does not happen out of the blue; it is a build-up of controlling behaviour,” Wistrich said.

“Police officers are not very good at identifying that.

“If it is often pointed out to them and they ask the right questions... it is potentially an offence they can charge someone with.”

Wistrich’s organisation assists women to help challenge the police if they are not picking up on this coercive and controlling behaviour.

In her experience, the attitudes of prosecutors and judges towards women are also “as bad as ever”.

Her criticism echoes similar local complaints about the Malta police’s “insensitivity and lack of knowledge” of gender-based violence, particularly in the aftermath of the Paulina Dembska rape and murder, which saw the force come under fire from human rights activists and women’s organisations. 

She said that the resulting introduction in Malta of femicide as a concept in the criminal code was “significant symbolically”.

Wistrich also welcomed the fact that, following the Polish student’s brutal killing in Sliema, the crime of passion defence will no longer be a mitigating factor in femicide cases, equating it with honour-based violence and saying it was “just an excuse”.

Second-class citizens

“The big issue for us is not so much that we need new laws but that we need more effective implementation,” Wistrich said.

“The key issue is ensuring that those investigating and prosecuting have a proper gender-based understanding of violence against women and what they are doing and are accountable if they fail to do it.

“They need to understand the power differentials to identify who is the real victim as well as training to deal with these cases.”

Wistrich’s demands are similar to those recently made by local civil society groups, which include the updating of sex and relationship education guidelines in schools.

“We are never going to change the criminal justice system unless we also change attitudes and challenge power differentials within society,” she notes.

“So long as women are second-class citizens and the language of hardcore pornography – which is so widely available and promotes the lie that women want to be violated and treated as sex objects – is still around, we are not going stop people who work in the criminal justice system from absorbing those attitudes that play out in the process.”