CCChat-Magazine_Issue-27-Survivors-Speak

It's only when the relationships
becomes abusive that the victim finds
out who they are dealing with, but
when you're a judge, a guardian ad
litem or a social worker, they often
only see the nice front- of- house
persona, they don't have the
experience of what it is like to live with
that person and unless they have a
solid grounding in understanding the
dynamics of abuse, then all they see is
this earnest and sincere guy and we all
know what that is like because, let’s be
honest, that is exactly how they
managed to woo us.
C: It’s a conundrum, to say the least.
unhealthy person, when they’re not
even willing to acknowledge that they
might have that shortcoming?
M: I can give you an answer that isn't
going to be popular. You wait for them
to die, and you wait for the new breed
of judges. Here in the UK, it’s still the
case that a lot of barristers, and
certainly judges are public school
educated, so automatically, there’s a
level of affluence there. You're looking
at boarding school and you're looking
at a position of privilege that doesn’t
necessarily understands what it is like
not to have that.
“ How do we convince them that maybe they don't have the knowledge base to be
able to discern between a healthy parent or a healthy person and an unhealthy
person, when they’re not even willing to acknowledge that they
might have that shortcoming?"
M: When I realised I was actually
allowed to have emotions, I spent so
much time getting angry at
professionals. Why can you not see?
Why can't you see it? It's taken me a
long time to realise that, of course they
can't see it. I couldn’t see it at first. I
thought he was wonderful and I was
the luckiest person alive. I didn't see it
for a long time. How can I expect
others to see it?
C: It was me talking about things that
people don't like to talk about, which is
hard. I guess that ties in with
patriarchy for me, because I think
most judges are white males, a lot of
lawyers are white males, and so how
do we convince them that maybe they
don't have the knowledge base to be
able to discern between a healthy
parent or a healthy person and an
C: I think you're right, though, your
point about that is going to happen
when they die, is I think you're right,
we need more women in positions of
power and more diversity.
M: Definitely. It needs to be a
population that is more representative
of society. People who can actually
relate to and understand bias and
poverty and know the price of milk,
understand how to buy bread and
budget for it, understand how to
change a nappy and do the school run
and have a genuine understanding of
what it is like for the people they are
seeing in the courtroom. What I see
and hear a lot is where a professional
might see numerous cases of domestic
abuse, that there is this automatic
assumption that they have some expert
Making The Invisible Visible