An open letter: Addressing misogyny, poor responses to VAWG, and trauma in policing and criminal justice

An open letter to government, leadership, police forces and CPS

I am writing openly to you today to discuss some key themes that have come out of my five years of working with police forces and CPS around the issues of misogyny, VAWG and trauma-informed policing.  

I have been working closely with numerous police forces on their approach to misogyny, VAWG, and ‘trauma-informed policing’, and have recently finished writing the new training trauma-informed training for the CPS which will be rolled out nationally. I have just had the pleasure of rolling out an anti-misogyny, trauma-informed Subject Matter Experts programme of learning for the L&D team in one force where they will be reviewing all training inputs and materials across their entire force (which is no small task).

I have also conducted attitudinal and knowledge audits with thousands of police officers at all ranks, and have evaluated the impact of training and inputs. I have been working on this solidly for five years, and I would like to offer my observations that could be useful for everyone involved in this work, especially as we are now having more conversations this week about VAWG and misogyny in policing and CPS.

I have noticed some repetitive themes across over 15 police forces, and within CPS, and wondered if you would like to discuss them or think about them within your own work. Whilst I absolutely support the move towards anti-misogyny, trauma-informed policing and justice, there are many hurdles to jump to get us all towards that approach. Before you read the below, please note that I write this email to be as supportive as possible. I have met and worked with hundreds of brilliant officers, staff and leadership during this time, and I spend lots of time talking honestly with them about their concerns, their misunderstandings, their resources, capacity, training issues, uplift, recruitment, selection, management skill, standards and conduct issues. I supply the below observations so we can all work together to move forward in the best way possible. I am in a very privileged position to have worked with thousands of officers in the last five years, and have undertaken evaluations with them in rural and city forces, across different sizes and teams. I listen carefully, and the patterns are clear. I would like to work with everyone to address my observations below, for everyone. The workforce deserves a trauma-informed approach to their own burnout, vicarious trauma and fatigue. Victims and witnesses deserve a better service than anyone currently offers. The public need to trust police and the CPS again.

Below are my observations and findings from across the UK:

MISOGYNY AND VAWG

• Many police forces misunderstand misogyny, and have strong beliefs that misogyny training is about ‘man bashing’, which I have successfully addressed and overcome in each force – there is a technique to this to break down this assumption

• In some cases, the SLT or Chief Officer Teams are suggesting all misogyny and poor practice sits at officer and sergeant level, and are not willing to consider their own leadership and role in misogyny and poor responses to VAWG. In others, they are much more willing to look at their own roles.

• In several forces, the SLT is split – with around 40-50% of the SLT accepting that misogyny exists as a systemic and personal issue, and the remainder denying its existence or presence  

• All forces are failing to understand or recognise internalised misogyny, and as far as I am aware, I am the only person delivering any substantial work around this issue – misogyny in policing cannot be tackled without talking about internalised misogyny. Women are part of this problem, and lots of us prop up misogyny, victim blaming and contempt for women and girls. Where women make up the majority of leadership teams, misogyny is not lessened.

• Misogyny never occurs in isolation, and forces are missing vital opportunities to use this time to include intersecting discrimination such as racism and homophobia which commonly co-occurs with misogyny

• Myths and misconceptions about trauma, mental health, abuse, rape and other offences are being used during investigation and prosecution which need to be deconstructed in both policing and CPS

• CPS are willing to make change and I am building a resource for them at the moment about being able to use evidence to push back against common myths and misconceptions used against women and girls in VAWG cases – I will be making this free resource available to all police forces too, to ensure everyone has the same evidence base

• Victim blaming is common, as is self-blame – this is something I can successfully break down and our evaluation demonstrates our success rate

• Several forces have developed anti-feminist cultures in which anything VAWG related is instantly hated and resented, and campaigns for change are not working because of the growing resentment towards a warped view of feminism – I have managed to break this down several times but sometimes it is very embedded

• VAWG is now accounting for over 1/5^th of crimes recorded, meaning that all officers need to understand the scale, types, cultures, attitudes, impacts and myths around VAWG and misogyny in order to do their jobs effectively

• When we survey female officers and staff, less than 1% say they would report a rape or sexual assault if it happened to them. The majority of female officers do not trust the CJS process, and choose not to report when things do happen to them

• We have overt items across thousands of officers which have tested agreeableness to items such as ‘If a woman acts like a sl*t, she deserves what happens to her’. In some forces, the agreement rate to that item is 20% of officers. The average agreement rate is around 10%.

• Most forces have issues with the new recruits coming up through uplift. New recruits are more likely to be sexting each other, more likely to be engaging in inappropriate behaviour, there are higher levels of sexual assault and sexual coercion, and misogynistic bullying. There is higher turnover than anticipated in several forces, and there are more PSD investigations than usual.

• I have come across a couple of police forces in which myths and attitudes are trumping the law. Two examples from last year include a team who said they believed that having sex with a sleeping woman without her consent was legal, it was a kink, and it was not a police matter. Another team argued that choking and strangulation of women in sex was a personal choice and not an offence – and that women enjoy it. Several teams cannot explain the SOA 2003, and do not know how to accurately define consent.

• Some courts are up against severe sexism and misogyny of the local area. In some forces, they can predict whether a rape or abuse case will go guilty purely by where the jury will be selected from. This means that some RASSO teams feel demoralised and as if there is no point trying to build a case of rape or sexual assault due to the local culture of the population who will then sit on the jury.

• In almost all forces I have worked with, they reference the way misogyny and sexism has become a ‘buzz-word’ and liken it to the way ‘BLM’ and ‘anti-racism’ was used, before it eventually fell off, and is no longer focussed on properly. We never did deal with our institutionalised racism, but the focus changed, and now officers and leadership are feeling jaded. Whilst I do not accept this as an excuse for inaction, when officers have seen campaigns and issues come and go, unsuccessfully, with no real change, it makes sense that they believe this will happen with misogyny and VAWG, and they tune out.

• Some CPS lawyers are misogynistic, engage in victim blaming and are known problems in certain RASSO teams. In other areas, there are brilliant CPS lawyers who have excellent relationships with RASSO teams and give police the support they need to investigate and secure charges. This is very patchy, and there is little consistency. Some forces try to avoid certain people, or have made multiple complaints to no avail.

• There are PCCs in place that are not respected or trusted by their respective police force, usually this is where PCCs are known to be misogynistic or inappropriate to women, and where no action has been taken to remove them. When forces are under (justified) scrutiny around their own conduct and misogyny, it is not effective or fair to have PCCs who are known locally or nationally to be misogynistic or sexually inappropriate.

• The same can be said for leadership – in some forces there is a culture of ‘failing upwards’ in which men who have been abusive, misogynistic or sexually inappropriate have been managed sideways or promoted upwards because no one wanted to work with them. This is talked about openly in several forces, but then means that there are SLT teams that have people within them who are overtly misogynistic, and no action is taken to address them. This causes lack of belief and trust from the rest of the force, who stop listening to the COT/SLT.

• Some forces are in denial about their levels of misogyny and sexism – however, I have found this to be more common in forces in southern, affluent areas. This sometimes comes across as an attitude of ‘we are better than other areas, we don’t have problems/people like that here’. There are some cultures of reputation-guarding and PR, that come above the need to reflect and address misogyny and racism.

TRAUMA INFORMED POLICING AND JUSTICE

• Many police forces do not understand what it means to be ‘trauma-informed’, and are using many different approaches that are not consistent or evidence-based

• Most people, including leadership and force specialist leads, cannot define ‘trauma-informed’ when I ask them

• Forces are not considering that to be trauma-informed, this also means addressing vicarious trauma of their workforce. Forces urgently need to look at the trauma, burnout and compassion fatigue of their own officers and staff

• We have been delivering vicarious trauma modules across police forces for several years now, and there are a lot of issues that are reported to us – the psychological impact of the work is not being adequately addressed by Occupational Health teams.

• The scale of the work to achieve trauma-informed policing is broad and detailed, and includes reviewing everything from new recruit training about trauma and abuse, to the way police respond to ‘mental health calls’

• Police are being asked to collect/request significant third party materials, especially in RASSO offences, that are disproportionate and unnecessary – this is something I have raised with CPS and will continue to encourage police officers to be more confident in challenging

• Mental health records are being used against victims and witnesses, which is not compatible with trauma-informed policing or the EA 2010

• Use of police forces as a service to address crisis, suicide, self-harm and trauma is blurring the boundaries between their role in crime, and their role in ‘safety’. This means that trauma-informed policing is not possible, as police officers are being sent out to people in distress, who are then further traumatised by the presence of police, being detained under the MHA or being escorted/removed to somewhere else. This is also an issue when paramedics or medical staff attend certain addresses, where ‘mental health’ is flagged. Due to pathologisation and stereotyping, police are then enlisted to accompany medical staff, where neither the paramedics or the police are adequately trained to respond to someone in a trauma-informed manner who is suffering distress and trauma

• College of Policing curriculum contradicts itself in several places and is applying approaches that are not trauma-informed, whilst also requiring forces to be more trauma-informed. This is occurring because there is not a good understanding of the theoretical approach of a trauma-informed lens. It is not as simple as just accepting that trauma exists and impacts people.

• CPS barristers, solicitors and staff are traumatised, desensitised and tired. I have spoken with many of them who have talked to me about their own vicarious trauma, and the way this is not addressed or discussed

• Occupational Health teams are not trauma-informed, because they are primarily medical model professionals, and therefore increasing numbers of police officers are being told they are mentally ill, have ADHD or Autism instead of their trauma and burnout at work being validated or supported – I am hearing increasing numbers of police officers tell me that they have recently been assessed for ADHD when they had accessed OHT when they were traumatised or impacted by an incident. This is poor practice, pathologisation, unnecessary and can impact their careers and lives moving forwards.

• Psychiatric language and misunderstanding is common. I have worked with some homicide teams who genuinely believe that all people who commit homicide are ‘schizophrenic’ and ‘psychotic’. Many officers have concluded that all murderers are mentally ill, as they couldn’t kill someone otherwise. This is not accurate, and their policing and investigations are being impacted by their poor knowledge.

• Police officers are referring women and girls into mental health services following serious crime and trauma, where the victim is then diagnosed with a mental disorder or personality disorder that is later being used to discredit them as unreliable and mentally unstable – we are impacting our own cases in these examples. Police officers are referring them in as there are no other trauma-informed alternatives.

• Training materials around these topics (where they exist) are often inaccurate or contain case examples or resources that are inappropriate, traumatic, graphic, or unhelpful

As you can see from this list, there are considerable areas for development in policing and in CPS. There are many more observations, but these are the ones that I think require urgent conversation.

Moving to anti-misogyny, trauma-informed policing and justice is the right thing to do, but it is not a small job. In some places, this is understood, and the force or team are looking at it as a slow and careful process. In other forces, there are half-day training courses on ‘being trauma-informed’, or ‘misogyny and sexism’ - and they are wholly inadequate, inaccurate, lacking in evidence or philosophical understanding and are complicating policing.

Our approach to cultural change must be force-wide, and justice-system-wide. This change is possible, but we must look at this as large scale reform and development. This will not happen quickly.

I have been working alongside and within the CJS since I was 19 years old, and it is very important to me that we address these issues for everyone. I would welcome any discussion with anyone in leadership, government, policing, law, or public services who would like to work towards addressing the issues laid out in this letter.

I released an article that I thought you might be interested to read. This one focusses on the way psychiatry can be misused in law, especially in VAWG where women and girls will be framed as mentally ill, unreliable or non-credible when they are traumatised by crimes committed against them – the link is here: (5) 4 ways 'mental health' is misused in criminal and family law (substack.com)

In 2022, I also released a guide for statutory services to explore how to implement trauma-informed approaches to VAWG in policing, health, social care and education. The document has checklists of what would need to change: https://irp.cdn-website.com/4700d0ac/files/uploaded/Implementing%20TI%20Approaches%20to%20VAWG%20-%20VictimFocus%202022.pdf

Thank you for reading today, I understand this is probably quite a heavy read and presents a lot to think about - whether you are a professional or a member of the public.

I did not want so much experience and so many important observations over the past five years in police forces, to go to waste.

With our new government in place, and with their promise to tackle VAWG and our growing crisis of trauma and mental health, I wanted to provide useful and clear points for change and development.

Please do feel free to share and send this letter on to others with an interest in addressing misogyny, MVAWG, trauma and burnout in our criminal justice system.

Yours Sincerely,

Dr Jessica Taylor

(PhD, AFBPsS, CPsychol, FRSA, PGDip)

CEO of VictimFocus

Email: Jessica@victimfocus.org.uk

Visit us: www.victimfocus.com