Hundreds of domestic abuse victims face jail under new law
Hundreds of domestic abuse survivors are being arrested for assaulting emergency workers, often in traumatic confrontations with police. Campaigners warn the law is backfiring, criminalising victims, not protecting them.
by SIAN NORRIS —
Senior investigative reporter at openDemocracy.
Author of Bodies Under Siege: How the Far-Right Attack on Reproductive Rights Went Global.
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What you need to know
🔹 Women victims of abuse are being arrested after reacting during police interventions, often when distressed.
🔹 Assaulting emergency workers law, introduced in 2018, is disproportionately affecting abused women.
🔹 Many police forces do not track abuse histories of arrested women.
🔹 Campaigners urge justice reforms, calling for protection over prosecution of domestic abuse survivors.
W hen Jane’s* abusive ex-partner turned up at her house and began “screaming abuse” and “threatening her”, she called the police.
But when officers arrived, they said they couldn’t do anything as, despite her ex being stood opposite her home, he was technically outside of the restraining order area.
“I got angry and kicked off,” Jane told the Prison Reform Trust charity. “So they arrested me.”
Jane’s story is not unusual. At least 1,486 women who were accused of assaulting an emergency worker in the four years to November 2024 had been victims of domestic abuse in their lifetime, openDemocracy can reveal. The findings raise concerns that vulnerable women are being criminalised when they seek help to deal with an abuser.
The true figure is likely much higher, as only 7 of England and Wales’ 43 police forces responded to our Freedom of Information requests. The vast majority said they do not record whether people arrested for assaulting officers are known to have been domestically abused.
Recalling the circumstances that led to her arrest, Jane said: “Of course I’m going to be angry [at the police’s refusal to act]. They had no idea what he’d put me through. They just saw me as the one kicking off.”
“This data confirms what we see every day in our frontline work,” said Lucy Russell, head of policy and public affairs for Women in Prison, in response to our findings. “Women are being criminalised for the domestic abuse they experience. In these cases, for assaulting emergency workers, often as a direct result of their trauma and abuse.
“This offence is quite new, and it has horribly backfired, by disproportionately criminalising women. Women need to know that they can call for help without fear of ending up in handcuffs because of the trauma and abuse they are going through.”
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Assaulting an emergency worker was made a crime in 2018, following legitimate concerns that frontline staff were facing violence when carrying out their duties.
Anne*, who also spoke to the Prison Reform Trust, was arrested for assaulting an emergency worker when police attended her house during an incident with her abuser.
“Maybe because you’re the one that’s suffering you tend to be the one that’s going to kick out at the police,” Anne said. “My arrests have been when I feel trapped and then it’s just like everything’s like a volcano because you think, I’m getting framed here by my abuser and nobody seems to understand.”
Anne described how during the arrest, “your abuser tends to be … dead calm… You just think, ‘I’m trapped again, I’m trapped.’”
Vanessa Bettinson, a professor at Northumberland University who specialises in coercive control and the criminal justice system, recognises Anne’s experience as common to women who are arrested during domestic incidents.
“When a woman responds with violence in this way, we still talk about what’s wrong with the victim and not what is wrong with the perpetrator’s behaviour,” she said.
“We need to be asking questions about the reality of a victim’s experience and what options she had. Women who have experienced the police responding in a certain way, such as by arresting the victim, or siding with the perpetrator, will not call the police again.
“This is something called social entrapment, where women become trapped in abusive situations because they don’t think they have a route to safety.”
openDemocracy’s analysis of news reports revealed multiple incidents where women have been victimised by abusive partners or former partners before being arrested for assaulting an emergency worker.
They include Carly Lane, from Rugby, who in 2020 was sentenced to 5 months in prison after assaulting two female police officers during a domestic incident. Lane had a deep wound to her forehead when the police arrived.
Another woman, Lisa Rudman, who had a history of assaulting emergency workers, was arrested in 2023 after her partner showed up at her house in Swindon, despite her not wanting him to be there.
Sarah Cunningham was known to be in an abusive relationship when in 2023 she was sentenced to 18 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, for assaulting an officer called out to a domestic incident.
“At the time she was in an abusive relationship and her family had cut her off because they didn’t like her partner,” said Cunningham’s solicitor, Janet Sime. “That exacerbated her mental state and she felt isolated.”
Victims and suspects
The Conservative government increased the maximum penalty for assaulting an emergency worker from 12 months to 2 years imprisonment in 2020.
At the time, an equality impact assessment published by the government found that women were nearly twice as likely (30%) to face criminal charges for the offence than other violent offences of equivalent severity (15.2%).
There is no excuse for attacking an emergency worker, who has the right to be safe when doing their job. But, as Bettinson observed, in a number of cases “the reason women are attacking emergency workers is because they are themselves being attacked”.
To understand the scale of this issue, we initially asked police forces across England and Wales how many women had been arrested or identified as a suspect for assaulting an emergency worker since 2020. Thirty-two forces provided a response: 21,500 women.
We then asked how many of these women suspects or arrestees had been recorded as a potential victim of domestic abuse, had a domestic abuse marker associated with their name or address, or had a restraining order against a former partner.
The majority of police forces did not respond, saying they did not record this data in a way that would be easily retrievable.
The seven forces that did respond reported that a total of 1,486 women suspected of or arrested for assaulting an emergency worker between 1 January 2020 to 30 November 2024 had at some point been recorded as victims or possible victims of domestic abuse.
In 62 cases, a woman was recorded as assaulting an emergency worker during a ‘domestic incident’ where she was the victim of the incident.
All the women suspected by Dorset Police of assaulting an emergency worker during a “domestic incident” had “been victims in domestic assault-related crimes previously” and were flagged as being at risk of domestic abuse.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary confirmed that 12 women recorded as the suspect for assaulting an emergency worker were also listed as victims of domestic abuse. One of the 12 was listed as a victim and suspect of the domestic abuse incident.
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Essex Police arrested over 1,500 women for assaulting an emergency worker in the past for years. Of these, almost two-thirds (907) were known to have been victims of domestic violence within that same time period.
An Essex Police spokesperson said: “We take domestic abuse and tackling violence against women and girls incredibly seriously. As a force we are also committed to keeping our officers safe in their line of duty to protect our communities, and we will arrest those who are seeking to harm our officers when we are responding to incidents.
“Every day we see the complexities of domestic abuse offences and are committed to providing the right support, working with our partner agencies, to victims across our county.”
Greater Manchester Police confirmed that 525 of the 1,496 women arrested for assaulting an emergency worker during the same time period had, at some point in their lives, been identified as domestic abuse victims. This was more than a quarter of female arrestees.
Women in Prison and the Centre for Women’s Justice, alongside Advance, Agenda Alliance, Hibiscus Initiatives and Women’s Aid have now launched a campaign to end the criminalisation of domestic abuse victims, with a demand that the Ministry of Justice includes domestic abuse as a critical priority in the Women’s Justice Board’s strategy.
“The government has recognised the prevalence of domestic abuse among women in prison, and now it must actively take steps to prevent survivors from being criminalised,” said Women in Prison’s Lucy Russell. “We hope this will be strongly reflected in the Women’s Justice Board strategy expected in spring, so that we see an end to the criminalisation of domestic abuse survivors.”
*Names have been changed
GOING FURTHER
Open Letter to the UK Government: Provide Support, End Unfair Criminalisation of Women | WOMEN IN PRISON
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