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One woman tells of her experience of abuse and police failings
Thousands of people are at risk of harm or even murder because of widespread police failure in England and Wales to tackle domestic abuse, a report says.
The response from many police forces is alarming and ineffective, the report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary said.
Home Secretary Theresa May said she would chair a new group to look at the issue and called for a radical change to the way police responded to it.
Police chiefs said they were working to improve their response, despite cuts.
'Serial offenders'Greater Manchester, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Gloucestershire police forces were specifically criticised in the report, which said Bedfordshire had only one dedicated domestic violence officer.
And it accused forces of unacceptable weaknesses despite domestic abuse being linked to 8% of crimes and police chiefs saying abuse was a priority.
Continue reading the main storyEngland and Wales, Sept 2012-13
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269,700 Total domestic abuse-related crimes
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57,900 Cases involving high risk of serious harm or murder offences
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96,000 Cases of assault with injury
SPL
Of 600 domestic assault files, half did not include pictures of injuries - a standard piece of evidence for a prosecution - the report said.
HMIC said police received more than one million calls a year relating to domestic abuse and almost 58,000 victims - the vast majority of them women - were at risk of serious harm or murder. It said three women a fortnight were being killed by a partner or former partner and a third of all assaults recorded by the police related to domestic violence.
'Not an easy journey'
Kimberley [not her real name] was abducted and assaulted by a former partner, leaving her with injuries to her face and all over her body.
She says the first officer sent to interview her was "very inappropriate".
"I had to suggest to him, 'Don't you think you should take some pictures?'" says the 29-year-old.
The officer, who was eventually disciplined, discussed his personal life, she explains.
"He was saying he had a friend in the force who would really like to take a girl like me out."
Her abuser was charged and convicted.
But she says: "It was not an easy journey. It could have been made a lot less traumatic, a lot less stressful, because it was already, as you can imagine, bad enough."
She says she has received help from other agencies to get over her ordeal, but adds her experience will never leave her.
In an exceptionally critical report, HMIC said chief officers must recognise that domestic abuse constituted a major problem that demanded comparable resources and focus to those devoted to tackling other high volume crimes such as burglary.
The report said only eight out of 43 forces were responding well to domestic abuse.
HMIC said that victims faced a "lottery" in how they were treated.
Sixteen of the 43 forces had no systems in place to prioritise calls from known victims or to prepare emergency response officers, and HMIC blamed many of the failings on the culture and ethos of individual officers.
"HMIC is concerned about the poor attitudes that some police officers display towards victims of domestic abuse," said the report.
"Victims told us that they were frequently not taken seriously, that they felt judged and that some officers demonstrated a considerable lack of empathy and understanding."
HM Inspector of Constabulary Zoe Billingham said three out of 10 police statements were missing "very important" pieces of information, while arrests were made in just 45% of cases in some police force areas.
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Home Secretary Theresa May says the report findings are "truly disturbing"
"We're asking them to do their job - and their job is, where there's a crime that looks like it's been committed, to arrest. And if they don't they need to give a justification for not arresting," she told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme.
Mrs May, who commissioned the report, said it made depressing reading and the findings were deeply worrying.
Forces praised
- Lancashire
- Dorset
- Durham
- Norfolk
- Northumbria
- Suffolk
- Thames Valley
- Warwickshire
"HMIC makes a series of recommendations to forces and I expect them all to be implemented quickly," she said.
"I am establishing a new national oversight group, which I will chair myself. I expect chief constables to respond to this report by changing radically their response to domestic violence."
Assistant Chief Constable Louisa Rolfe, of the Association of Chief Police Officers, said domestic abuse presented "a huge challenge" to police forces.
"It's complex, it's difficult, and it's not something we can do alone," she told BBC Breakfast.
The UK's justice system "doesn't always lend itself to the complexities of personal relationships", she also said there was "really good practice" in some forces.
'Second-class crime'Diana Barran, chief executive of charity Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse (CAADA), said police and crime commissioners and chief constables had a responsibility to tackle the problem.
"We look forward to seeing the leadership, accountability and transparency that can move domestic violence from being treated as a second-class crime by the police to one where victims get the response that they deserve," she said.
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Laura Kuenssberg reports on the different ways police and prosecutors deal with cases
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said Labour had been warning that action against domestic abuse has "deteriorated" for three years, branding the situation a "national scandal".
"We need answers from the home secretary about why things are getting so much worse and what she will do to improve action by the police, prosecution and support services too," she said.
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