{"id":568,"date":"2018-02-19T10:16:05","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T10:16:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/?p=568"},"modified":"2018-02-19T10:16:05","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T10:16:05","slug":"new-bill-has-been-passed-in-the-scottish-parliament-against-controlling-behaviour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/2018\/02\/19\/new-bill-has-been-passed-in-the-scottish-parliament-against-controlling-behaviour\/","title":{"rendered":"New Bill has been passed in the Scottish parliament against controlling behaviour"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/files\/2018\/02\/scottish-parliament-pic.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-569\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/files\/2018\/02\/scottish-parliament-pic-300x194.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"403\" height=\"266\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Scottish Parliament passed a bill on the 1st February 2018 making it an offence to engage in behaviour that is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>abusive towards a partner or ex-partner<\/li>\n<li>likely to cause the partner\/ex-partner to suffer physical or psychological harm<\/li>\n<li>intending the course of behaviour to cause harm or was reckless<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The bill also provides for some changes to criminal procedure, evidence and sentencing in domestic abuse cases.\u00a0Existing offences such as assault could still be cited\u00a0where a case of abuse is not covered by the proposed offence (e.g. where a single incident rather than a course of behaviour is prosecuted). The bill includes\u00a0a good range of definitions of abusive behaviours, for example, it\u00a0explicitly includes sexual violence\u00a0and provides a definition of psychological harm. The bill\u00a0also addresses a gap as there is known difficulty in disclosing sexual violence within relationships.<\/p>\n<p>There have been suggestions relating to strengthening\u00a0the laws further:<\/p>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li>The documented use of manipulation and\u00a0\u2018gas lighting\u2019\u00a0techniques used by an abuser to convince their partner that they are insane could be covered by further\u00a0legislation.<\/li>\n<li>The defence of reasonableness needs greater\u00a0definition,\u00a0this section of the bill\u00a0implied that the onus is\u00a0on the prosecution to prove that the behaviour was not reasonable beyond reasonable doubt.<\/li>\n<li>Additional prosecutions for perpetrators if there are grounds for child abuse charges.<\/li>\n<li>Training<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>will be needed to help those involved in investigation and\u00a0prosecution of the offence understand\u00a0the range of behaviours and controlling\u00a0relationships.<\/li>\n<li>It is more likely the\u00a0complainant feels\u00a0s\/he is\u00a0no longer in\u00a0a relationship whilst the accused is continuing to believe they are. Therefore\u00a0if an ex-partner or a potential\u00a0\u2018victim\u2019\u00a0of this offence wants to challenge the relationship status, it could mean they cannot access the protection of this law.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>You can access an article discussing the\u00a0implications for training the Scottish police\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/society\/2017\/dec\/28\/scottish-police-to-be-trained-to-spot-new-domestic-abuse-offence\">here.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>More information on the BBC news website is available\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-42890990\">here.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Many thanks to Professor Liz Gilchrist and Professor Erica Bowan for their contributions to this post.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Scottish Parliament passed a bill on the 1st February 2018 making it an offence to engage in behaviour that is: abusive towards a partner or ex-partner likely to cause the partner\/ex-partner to suffer physical or psychological harm intending the course of behaviour to cause harm or was reckless The bill also provides for some &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/2018\/02\/19\/new-bill-has-been-passed-in-the-scottish-parliament-against-controlling-behaviour\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;New Bill has been passed in the Scottish parliament against controlling behaviour&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-policy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568\/revisions\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/advance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}