This coming week the committee for the Assisted Death Bill at Westminster will consider whether doctors assessing for assisted death should be given training on coercive control and financial abuse. The Other Half think that many hundreds of domestic abuse victims will be given assisted deaths each year - see our written evidence here.
That’s why we’re so pleased to talk to one of the leading experts in domestic homicide here in the UK - Professor Jane Monckton Smith. Once a police officer, she is now Professor of Public Protection at the University of Gloucestershire and the author of In Control, which upends the myth that a domestic homicide is a loss of control.
In this astonishing conversation we ask:
Why is no one talking about domestic abuse, coercive control and assisted dying?
The UK is a trailblazer in defining coercive control in legislation. Why would we think other countries with assisted dying have good models for dealing with coercion into assisted death?
How suicide of domestic abuse victims is so overlooked: and how this dwarfs homicides by perpetrators. What might suicide look like if lawful death is on offer?
How abusers think when illness hits their victim and their control is disrupted. How this leads to victims of abuse being more likely to be diagnosed only when their illness is terminal and not treatable.
Why training in domestic abuse is a good amendment to make to this bill: but Jane is sceptical given we call all the time for more training for police and agencies.
We want MPs to hear what Professor Monckton Smith has to say, so please share this widely.
Last week the committee voted down all safeguards supported by eating disorder charities. Still little sign of this bill becoming the safest law in the world. Will this change?
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