Focus on domestic violence (From Bucks Free Press)

Focus on domestic violence

9:56am Friday 18th June 2004

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MP Cheryl Gillan spoke out in the House of Commons this week about the horror of domestic violence.

Mrs Gillan, the Conservative MP for Chesham and Amersham, is shadow Home Office minister, and was speaking on Monday during the second reading of the Domestic Violence Bill.

This will, among other things, make it a criminal offence if people breach court orders telling them to leave their partners alone.

Mrs Gillan said men, as well as women, were victims of domestic violence but 81 per cent of the time the victim was a woman.

She said: "Currently in the UK, two women are killed at the hands of their current or former partner every week."

She described domestic violence as a horror and said one in four women would experience it at one time or another.

"That means that there will undoubtedly be women known to each other and every one of us and perhaps men as well, who will have endured domestic violence without our ever knowing that has happened to them."

And she said the trauma this could cause to children was incalculable.

"Many children who watch a parent being abused may go on to become abusers themselves. This makes tackling violence an even greater priority."

The legal system needed reform and people knew that, she said.

But good intentions did not necessarily lead to good laws.

Mrs Gillan said every aspect of the bill had to be examined to make sure it conformed to human rights legislation.

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