‘Victims of domestic abuse need own courts’
DOMESTIC abuse victims should have their own court, according to the Police and Crime Commissioner for DyfedPowys Police.
Dafydd Llywelyn has made the call in order to support those who have suffered at the hands of their abusers after seeing incidents of controlling behaviour double in the space of a year.
In 2018 alone there were 413 incidents of controlling behaviour in the Dyfed-Powys Police area and the force has stepped up to tackle the issue of domestic abuse head on by featuring it on all of its forms.
Mr Llywelyn, in the Senedd session which was held by Bethan Sayed, AM for South Wales West, said: “We need to have courts for domestic violence.
“We want to take it to the appropriate court process if we could devolve policing and criminal justice to Wales.”
He added: “There’s a lot more being done now than there has ever been five or 10 years ago.
“It’s also about the privatisation of resources and that requires some dedicated investigative skills.
“We need to get away from this fixation on police visibility on the street – it’s about having the right people in the right place to support the victim.
“We are working tirelessly to safeguard victims.
“Perpetrators programmes has to be the next step – the police use a risk matrix,” he said.
“The highs are not the high risk because they are being managed well – it’s the middle and the low.
“The murders were from the low and the medium risk.”
Bethan Sayed, AM for South Wales West, said: “This is such an important issue.
“Domestic abuse, in all its forms, is a society-wide epidemic which can have lasting and appallingly
A police and crime commissioner says domestic abuse victims should have their own court (picture posed by model) damaging impacts on victims and their families.
“Coercive control is something that’s often hidden and can often manifest itself in small ways, ways which some might not associate with domestic abuse, but if someone is subjected to a controlling partner for years, decades even, the mental health impact on a victim and their family can be enormous.”