“Paula” was married to a Metropolitan police officer for more than a decade, during which time, she says, he attacked her with a knife, exhibited coercive and controlling behaviour and filmed her covertly in her own home 24 hours a day for several years.
“He’d provoke me and I would shout back while he sat there calmly because he knew the cameras were on. He wouldn’t let me sleep at night, so at times I was irritable with my child. He edited my worst moments on film into a montage and had me arrested for child cruelty,” Paula says.
“Soon after, I reported him for domestic abuse. While I spent the night in a police cell, he was allowed to continue in his job in surveillance. When I told the desk sergeant about the coercive behaviour, voyeurism and attacks, he said he’d call my then husband in for ‘a chat’. My abuser was not arrested and footage of him assaulting me was not seized. The differences between how the police investigated me and how they investigated him are like night and day.”
For months, Paula was only allowed to see her child twice a week with supervised access until cleared of the charge. The officer investigating the case of child cruelty against her had made representations to the magistrates in the criminal case and in the custody case about the seriousness of the video. She subsequently admitted she had not viewed it.
Three years on, Paula is still embroiled in a custody battle. Her ex-husband and more than 20 of his police colleagues are under investigation to determine whether a charge of “discreditable conduct” proceedings is actioned. It is a long drawn-out process, Paula says, about which she has received little information and in which she has no confidence.
On Wednesday, the legal charity the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) will publish a damning report, titled Police Perpetrated Domestic Abuse. Has Anything Really Changed since the 2020 Super-Complaint?
A super-complaint is a mechanism to identify and address systemic issues in policing. In 2020, the super-complaint, largely upheld, drew on the experiences of 19 women spanning 15 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales that now employ around 150,000 officers.
Common themes then included failures to investigate complaints, workplace victimisation of women who were themselves police officers and victims arrested when the abuser made a counter claim. A police review in 2022 found that only 40% of reports of police perpetrated domestic abuse (PPDA) resulted in a misconduct investigation and only eight cases out of 122 were referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). Criminal charges occurred in only 9% of cases.
Following the super-complaint, reforms were promised. So, almost five years later, is PPDA now properly recorded, investigated, addressed and monitored to ensure justice for victim-survivors and to restore trust in the police?
“Change is slow and making it happen is a giant enterprise,” says Harriet Wistrich, the founder and director of CWJ . “Each force is led by a chief constable with his or her own priorities. A few forces are really trying but others aren’t doing very much at all. Many of the women, caught in a horrendous web, are experiencing exactly the same problems as we first encountered in 2020.”
Since then, more than 200 women married to police officers (45% of them serving officers themselves) subjected to PPDA, have contacted the CWJ. Their cases are shocking.
Rose, a police officer, tried to report her ex-husband, a fellow officer, for controlling and coercive behaviour, excessive drinking and emotional cruelty to their children. Her inspector said no record would be made because the force couldn’t be seen to be “taking sides”.
Lorraine said her abuser had two separate rape allegations against him from two women with no prior knowledge of each other. He was promoted to chief inspector.
Another police employee said that she had made a complaint of rape and controlling and coercive behaviour against her police partner. She learned his previous partner had also made a complaint of rape. The man had retired but was rehired by the force as a civilian investigator, incredibly, in its professional standards department.
Wistrich says that in 2024, as in 2020, the lack of accurate data on PPDA means that the scale of the problem is still unknown. Safeguards to ensure that the officer investigating a PPDA complaint doesn’t have links with the accused have been introduced, but are they effective? In one case, the investigator was also the accused officer’s mentor.
The CWJ wants a bespoke reporting channel, with women able to make a complaint directly to the IOPC; PPDA investigations handled by an external force; and legal reforms to ensure every allegation of PPDA is recorded, investigated and reported to the IOPC.
Wistrich says: “We are also concerned that the voices of women impacted by PPDA are not being heard to inform what changes are needed, which reforms are working and where issues remain.”
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Another major concern is the defective system of vetting that permitted rapist Met officers Wayne Couzens and David Carrick to remain in their jobs in spite of multiple horrific complaints. In one period surveyed in the Met police, 500 officers had been investigated for misconduct including sexual and domestic abuse between three and five times. Only 13 with more than one misconduct case had been dismissed.
Operation Onyx is now retrospectively reviewing 1,636 previously concluded cases of sexual offending and/or domestic abuse over a decade and has a new Met vetting policy.
Nationally, although vetting has been improved, instances of misogyny, domestic abuse and coercive and controlling behaviour are frequently not triggers for a review of vetting. “When a police officer has committed any act of VAWG [violence against women and girls], that information should automatically result in a review,” Wistrich says.
She also says coercive and controlling behaviour is not properly understood by investigators. “It is too often seen as ‘unpleasant’ behaviour and part of an officer’s private life and therefore not a criminal matter.” Some women have told the CWJ that their ex-partners had been promoted into senior roles working directly with victim-survivors of domestic abuse despite having been the recipients of such allegations themselves.
Wistrich says: “Abuse of power and exploitation of vulnerability in the home should be recognised as significant risk factors for policing outside of the home too.”
What has clearly changed since 2020 is the priority policing now gives to tackling VAWG. A tidal wave of frameworks, guidelines, training and reviews by the IOPC, the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) and the College of Policing recognises that VAWG is a national emergency for policing. The Labour government has promised to half the rate of VAWG in a decade.
Deputy chief constable Maggie Blyth, the NPCC’s first lead for VAWG and deputy CEO of the College of Policing, told the Observer: “How policing deals with officers accused of VAWG is under the microscope, and rightly so. We know change hasn’t been quick enough and much more needs to be done.
“We must foster a policing culture which ends criminal behaviour and misconduct and also calls out acts of misogyny and sexism, which are systemic within policing and undermine our high standards. We want officers to be upstanders, not bystanders, and call out bad behaviour. Victims must be at the heart of every investigation … Changing the way we respond is crucial … We are fully committed to honouring the findings of the CWJ’s super-complaint.”
Wistrich says: “A significant gap still exists between police commitment and actual change. It may be that something more radical is needed. One major issue is that while there are various oversight mechanisms such as the NPCC, it can only recommend and not enforce. Is it time to ask for a tougher system nationally to hold police to account?”
According to the police, one in 20 people is a perpetrator of VAWG. If that one in 20 is also a serving police officer, currently he has little reason to fear the law.