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Neither safety nor justice: the UK

government response to domestic
violence against immigrant women
a
Sundari Anitha
a
School of Politics and International Studies , University of
Leeds , UK
Published online: 27 Nov 2008.

To cite this article: Sundari Anitha (2008) Neither safety nor justice: the UK government response
to domestic violence against immigrant women, Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 30:3,
189-202, DOI: 10.1080/09649060802550592

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09649060802550592

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 Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law
Vol. 30, No. 3, September 2008, 189–202

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Neither safety nor justice: the UK government response to domestic
violence against immigrant women
Sundari Anitha*

School of Politics and International Studies, University of Leeds, UK

Based on research findings, this article examines the extent to which Labour
government’s policy towards immigrant women experiencing domestic violence
responds to their needs. The research itself was conducted in 2007 and included
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qualitative interviews with 30 South Asian women with no recourse to public

funds due to their status as recent marriage migrants, who were living in the
North West and Yorkshire regions of England. The working of a key concession
within the Immigration Rules (2002) which theoretically offers an opportunity of
exit to immigrant women facing domestic violence – the Domestic Violence Rule
– is examined in light of the reality of South Asian women’s experiences, including
the nature of domestic violence they face, their patterns of help-seeking, pathways
out of the abusive relationship and their experience of service provision. The
central thesis of this paper is that the effectiveness of this legislation is severely
hampered by a failure to take into account the multiple dimensions of
disadvantage that recent marriage migrants face.
Keywords: domestic violence; immigrant women; no recourse to public funds;
Domestic Violence Rule

Introduction
Women who come to the UK to join their fiancés on a six-month visa, within which
period they are expected to enter into a marriage or civil partnership (paragraphs
290–291, Part 8, Immigration Rules, 2002), or come to join their husbands, are
subject to a two-year probationary period of residency, also known as the ‘two year
rule’. Through marriage, these women acquire their immigration status from their
spouse’s residency or citizenship rights (paragraphs 281–282, Part 8, Immigrations
Rules, 2002). If their relationship breaks down during this period, they no longer
have the right to remain in Britain and face deportation back to their country of
origin (paragraph 287, Part 8, Immigration Rules, 2002). Due to a recent change in
the law, if domestic violence is the cause of marital breakdown and they are able to
provide requisite ‘evidence’ of this, they can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain
(ILR) under the Domestic Violence Rule in paragraph 289A of the Immigration
Rules (2002). However, until a decision is reached on their application for ILR,
women have no recourse to public funds (NRPF) such as benefits or social housing
(paragraph 281 iv and v, Part 8, Immigration Rules, 2002), making refuges
inaccessible to them.1

*Email: s.anitha@leeds.ac.uk
ISSN 0964-9069 print/ISSN 1469-9621 online
# 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/09649060802550592
http://www.informaworld.com
 190 S. Anitha
Although evidence indicates that violence against women is present across all
countries (Krug et al. 2002, pp. 89–91), the specific forms it takes, the often varying
service responses to women from different communities and to different forms of
violence against women, and, consequently, the impact of domestic violence, can
vary. For women from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the abuse may be
perpetrated by multiple members of the family, and notions of honour and shame
may be deployed to prevent women from leaving and to stigmatise women who do
manage to leave. For Hindu and Sikh women from India whose families may have
paid huge dowries to get them married to men settled in the UK, this creates
additional pressure from their own families to ‘make their marriage work’.
Recognising such difference among women does not preclude the possibility of a
feminist analysis which reflects on the commonality of women’s experiences of
oppression, while taking account of how the various intersections of social
inequality including race, immigration status and class converge to create a
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qualitatively different ‘matrix of domination’ (Collins 2000) for women of colour

(Crenshaw 1991, Raj and Silverman 2002, Cline 2003). Black and minority ethnic
(BME) women’s experience of domestic violence and their responses to it are
conditioned by their gender and community identity as well as by the nature of the
state’s response to this problem (Burman and Chantler 2005). It is from this
standpoint that this paper reflects on the effectiveness of the Domestic Violence
Rule in meeting the needs of a very vulnerable group of women. The women whose
experiences this paper examines have come to the UK from India, Pakistan and
Bangladesh to join their fiancés or husbands who are British citizens or have
Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK.

The problem: domestic violence and the ‘two year rule’

While international migration to the UK has a long history, asylum and immigration
have come to be reconstituted as a ‘problem’ by successive governments and by
populist political discourse over the last few decades (Schuster and Solomos 2004).
Successive legislation has closed immigration routes into the UK and revoked rights
previously available to asylum seekers to the detriment of BME women experiencing
domestic violence (Imkaan 2003, Joshi 2003). The primary purpose rule,2 the
probationary period and the ‘no recourse to public funds’ requirement are all part of
the measures that were introduced to prevent marriage from becoming a means of
settlement in the UK.
Before 2002, women who faced domestic violence during the probationary
period had the tough ‘choice’ of either enduring the violence because of their
insecure immigration status, or leaving the abusive relationship and returning to
their country of origin, often to face further abuse from their own family for having
ended the marriage, or staying here as an ‘illegal immigrant’. It was following
campaigning by BME women’s organisations such as Southall Black Sisters that the
impact of domestic violence on recent marriage migrants was recognised in 2002
under paragraph 289A of the Immigration Rules.3 Under the Domestic Violence
Rule, a woman could apply for ILR even if she was not living with her husband if
she could prove that the relationship broke down as a consequence of domestic
violence.
 Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 191
However, this concession was only available to marriage migrants, not to women
who had accompanied a spouse on a student or worker’s visa, or those who were
classed as illegal entrants. It was a historic concession and an important theoretical
step whereby women’s experience of violence was the basis of a re-examination of
immigration law, which has traditionally been framed with little regard to gendered
realities. However, in order to ‘prove’ that domestic violence had occurred, women
had to provide as evidence one of the following: a court conviction; a police caution;
an injunction order, a non-molestation order or a protection order against the
abuser.
Domestic violence is underreported across all cultures and classes, but this is
even more so by BME women (Mama, 1990, Gill 2004). Research indicates that only
in a minority of cases are police contacted about the abuse (Yearnshire 1997), and
even in these cases rates of positive action such as a caution, arrest or conviction
remain dismally low (Grace 1995, Kelly 1999, Hester 2003) and inconsistent
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(Hanmer and Griffiths 2001, Hester, 2003). The evidential requirements set out in
the ‘Domestic Violence Concession’ simply did not reflect any understanding of the
nature of domestic violence or the criminal justice response to it.
Following further campaigning by women’s groups, the evidence required was
extended in April 2003 (paragraph 289A, Part 8, Immigration Rules, 2002). If none
of the previously required evidence was available, two of the following were now
deemed as acceptable proof of domestic violence: a medical report from a hospital
doctor; a letter from a GP; an undertaking given to a court that the perpetrator of
the violence will not approach the applicant who is the victim of violence; a police
report, a letter from a social services department, a letter of support or report from a
women’s refuge, or other service provider recognised by the Home Office.
While this was a victory for campaigners, in reality, the evidence required still
relies on a successful contact with services which are expected to record the
disclosure. The situation is even more tenuous for women who become ‘overstayers’
when their abusive partner refuses or neglects to apply for ILR as a means of
exercising control over the women through threats of deportation and to prevent
them from leaving the relationship, which is another aspect of the abuse experienced
by women with insecure immigration status. In theory, their situation is recognised
by the Home Office but previous research (Imkaan 2003, Lewis 2004, p. 6) indicates
that, in practice, the processing of their application is made even more arduous due
to the lack of legal representation and the length of time taken to reach a decision.
Rights granted with one hand were also taken away with the other when the one year
rule was extended to two years in 2003 in order to appeal to populist right-wing
discourse on immigration.
In the same year, the government consultation paper, Safety and Justice (Home
Office 2003), outlined a range of measures towards developing a national strategy on
domestic violence and was followed by the Domestic Violence Crime and Victims
Act 2004. Despite intensive campaigning by women’s groups, this legislation makes
no provision to extend access to public funds nor does it adequately extend the
evidential requirements in the Domestic Violence Rule. In a continuation of
conservative government policy, controlling the migration of certain groups into
Britain has been at the heart of the Labour government’s policies and beliefs since
1997, one that overrides concerns about the rights of survivors of domestic violence.
 192 S. Anitha
The extent of this problem: some estimates
Southall Black Sisters’ surveys between 1999 and 2003 indicate that the problem of
domestic violence affects about 600 women with NRPF a year (Southall Black
Sisters & Women’s Resource Centre 2006, p. 4). These figures primarily represent the
women who have contacted services, and are thus likely to be underestimates. While
this problem affects several categories of women, it remains very difficult to
document even the number of women who enter the UK and/or who are present in
the UK in a given year. However, statistics do exist on the number of wives and
fiancées granted entry into the UK for a probationary period, the category into
which most women who have sought help from women’s groups fall. In 2005, a total
of 27,285 women came to the UK for the probationary period on the basis of their
marriage or engagement. Of these, a significant number, 11,310, were from Pakistan,
India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka (Home Office 2006).
Analysis of separate domestic violence prevalence studies has consistently found
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that between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence over their

lifetimes, and between 6–12% of women suffer domestic violence in a given year
(Mooney 1994, Council of Europe 2002). Given these statistics, it is unlikely that of
the 27,285 women who came into the UK in 2005, only a few hundred will experience
abuse in any given year. Additionally, since the probationary period now lasts for
two years, at any given time there are likely to be women who have entered the UK
that year and those who have entered the previous year who fall within the ‘two year
rule’. The figure now goes up to more than 55,000 women, based on the entry
statistics for 2005. Hence the real figures are more likely to be between 3000 to 5000
women with NRPF experiencing domestic violence in any given year, and these
figures only represent marriage migrants.
However, only a small percentage of women facing domestic violence seek to
leave the abusive relationship at any point, and this is also the case for women with
NRPF. During the period 18 December 2002 (when Domestic Violence Concession
came into effect) to 30 September 2007, a total of 3144 applications were made for
ILR on the basis of this concession, of which 1043 applications were granted and
2101 refused (Domestic Violence Entry Clearances 2007). One likely reason for such
few numbers is the no recourse to public funds requirement – research indicates that
in the absence of any safe accommodation or the means to make a living, most
women in this situation are unable to avail of the Domestic Violence Rule (Amnesty
International and Southall Black Sisters 2008, Anitha 2008, Imkaan, 2008). The high
percentage of refusals – two-thirds of the applications – is almost certainly
attributable to the unrealistic evidential requirements, which shall be examined in
this paper.

Research methods
This paper draws upon research commissioned by Saheli, a specialist domestic
violence service, and funded by Oxfam, with additional contributions from Care
Services Improvement Partnership (National Institute for Mental Health England),
University of Huddersfield and the Manchester Partnership. The aims of this
research, conducted in 2007, were: (a) to document the nature of domestic violence
faced by South Asian women with NRPF and the process of leaving the abusive
 Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 193
relationship; (b) to explore their service pathways during and after exit and their
experience of health, welfare and legal services; and (c) to inform policy changes
based on the research findings. This study was conducted using the model of
community engagement within the tradition of action research, defined as ‘… a
participatory, democratic process concerned with developing practical knowledge in
the pursuit of worthwhile human purposes’ (Reason and Bradbury 2001, p. 1). The
community researchers who helped collect the data were survivors of domestic
violence and service users of Saheli, two of whom had no recourse to public funds
when they left the abusive relationship. They were provided with research training,
training about domestic violence and service responses to the problem, as well as
regular supervision and support during fieldwork. The research was guided by a
multi-agency steering group, which consisted of representatives from statutory and
voluntary agencies working on domestic violence, community organisations and
academics. The interview schedule was developed in consultation with the members
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of the steering group, who were able to indicate the evidence gap, as well as with the
community researchers, who wanted it to reflect their need to ‘tell their story’.
Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted in community languages
with 30 South Asian women who had experienced domestic violence and had NRPF
who were living in the North West and Yorkshire regions of England. Eight
specialist refuges for South Asian women which are based in England also completed
a questionnaire to document the numbers of women with NRPF who had contacted
their agency and the nature of the service response to their needs in order to gain a
‘snapshot’ of the problem rather than to collect comprehensive statistics. Twenty
research participants interviewed were accessed through generic and specialist
refuges, domestic violence services and social services, and therefore had made a
prior disclosure of domestic violence and had left the abusive relationship. The
strategy of deploying service users as community researchers proved particularly
fruitful as the researchers used word-of-mouth and snowballing techniques to access
10 women who were living with family, friends or strangers, all but two of whom had
left the abusive family home. Given the difficulty of reaching women with insecure
immigration status and those not living in social housing in particular, this
represents a reasonable sample size.
A limitation of the study’s sample was that only two of the 30 women who
participated in this study were still living within their abusive family home. By
mapping the experiences of women before they left the abusive relationship, some
understanding was gained about the needs and experiences of women still living
within the abusive relationship. However, not all women manage to make a
successful contact with services and to leave the abusive family home and there
remains a need to further document the experiences and needs of this group of
women.

The Domestic Violence Rule: the theory and the reality

While welcoming the Domestic Violence Rule, women’s groups who responded to
the questionnaire drew attention to the continued bar on receiving public funds
which renders this rule inaccessible for a majority of immigrant women facing
domestic violence. Most women cannot contemplate leaving the abusive relationship
 194 S. Anitha
without having a safe place to go to and some modicum of financial security. The
findings of this study also indicate that the evidential requirement under the
Domestic Violence Rule, in the form of successful contact with a service which
records women’s disclosure of abuse, is narrowly defined. At the broadest level, there
is a failure to comprehend the hidden nature of domestic violence and the barriers to
disclosure that all women experience. Additionally, for BME women, their
differential experience of service delivery is not acknowledged. Furthermore, the
Domestic Violence Rule is even less cognisant of the particular constraints faced by
recent marriage migrants due to the nature of abuse, language barriers and lack of
knowledge of service provision. The barriers to disclosing abuse, women’s pathways
into services, and the nature of service responses all interact to produce a unique set
of experiences for recent marriage migrants which the Domestic Violence Rule, as it
stands, takes little account of.
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The nature of domestic violence for women with insecure immigration status
It is well documented that domestic violence may include physical, sexual, emotional
and financial abuse (Dobash and Dobash 1992, Burman and Chantler 2005).
However, this study documents several co-existing and overlapping patterns of abuse
which seem to be intensified in the case of recent marriage migrants from South Asia.
These patterns of abuse can be attributed to an imbalance of power between the
perpetrators and the women, an imbalance exacerbated by the immigration laws
which leave women with very few viable alternatives, thus reinforcing the patriarchal
structures within their communities. Women who participated in this study reported
particularly intense forms of violence, which rapidly escalated, were accompanied by
threats of being ‘sent back home’ should they disclose the abuse or leave their
abusers, and were, in all but two cases, perpetrated by multiple family members.
Eighteen out of 30 women reported physical and sexual abuse by the partner,
and for many women who were perceived to have no ‘protection’ from their
husbands while they lived with the abusive family, an additional dimension of the
abuse they endured was sexual abuse perpetrated by known men, particularly their
husband’s relatives. Another common form of abuse recounted by women included
exploitation of domestic labour accompanied by a denial of the women’s most basic
needs. This included starvation, imprisonment, denial of adequate food, warm
clothes, privacy, a bedroom or even a bed, and the denial of labour-saving devices
such as washing machines and vacuum cleaners to assist in doing the housework.
… once here, I soon came to know that they only wanted a servant for their house… I
was busy the whole day doing housework and when my sister-in-law used to come to
her house from work at five o’clock, she would ring her parents for me. So I always
had to go her house, make food for her family, do some cleaning and come back to
my home at night… to make food for my in-laws’ family. That was my routine … My
visa expired but (they) were not ready to apply for indefinite leave for me. His mother
always used to say, ‘Deport her!’
Both women who had managed to disclose the abuse and to seek help while they
were in the abusive relationship, as well as those who had not managed to do so until
after they had left their family home, reported a combination of factors which
impeded disclosure. Research indicates that domestic violence is under-reported by
women from South Asian communities for a number of reasons such as stigma,
 Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 195
fear of being ostracised from wider kinship networks, lack of adequate provision for
non-English speakers, extreme isolation, feelings of shame and guilt and fear of
jeopardising marriage prospects of sisters (Gill 2004, Izzidien, 2008).
For women with NRPF there were also additional factors such as the absence of
any contacts within the UK and fear of further violence to family in the
subcontinent. Most women also reported that their husband and/or his family
monitored their movements to minimise the possibility of a disclosure and, in some
cases, kept them imprisoned in their own homes. Their status as newly arrived
marriage migrants, often unable to speak English and unaware of the laws in the UK
also contributed to their vulnerability, as the perpetrators threatened them with
deportation, arrest and, in two cases, with being sectioned if they disclosed the
violence or approached the police:
He told me several times that he had told everyone I was mad … no one would listen
to me. If I contacted the police, they could consider me mad and arrest me.
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From the women’s perspectives, these threats must have seemed very real. Police
in the subcontinent seldom take reports of domestic violence seriously. Research in
India has documented how men have used the directives of the Mental Health Act,
1987 and the Lunacy Act, 1912 in collusion with mental health professionals to
declare women ‘mentally unfit’ (Patel 2003) and consign them to mental asylums or
debar them from property rights. Recent marriage migrants have no means of
knowing the law and the workings of the health service or police in the UK, and their
abusers are able to exploit these gaps in their knowledge to enforce their silence
through threats.

Mapping women’s pathways out of abusive relationships: help-seeking from informal

sources
Nineteen out of the 30 women who participated in this study had disclosed the abuse
they were experiencing to informal sources of support such as their family, friends or
both, and sought support and advice while they were living within the violent family
home. Eleven women were unable to discuss their abuse with anyone and did
everything possible to survive, whilst continuing to assess their options until an
alternative presented itself. The interview sample largely consisted of women who
had managed to leave the abusive relationship; it could be argued that the extent of
non-disclosure would be much higher among women still living within the abusive
relationship.
Many women had at least one friend or family member to whom they attempted
to speak when the abuse became ‘unbearable’. Even then, women did not always
reveal all of their circumstances but tested out the reaction to limited disclosures to
ascertain who their allies were.
I didn’t speak to anyone initially. Then I spoke to a friend about not having a physical
relationship with my husband … she told me (to) try harder. I then spoke to a couple
who were family friends and they sympathised with me … It still took a while to talk
to my own parents because I was scared of letting them down.
Women who participated in this study reported that when they first disclosed the
abuse, they themselves were often found wanting, their behaviour was scrutinised
and they were told to preserve the relationship and, thereby, the honour of the
 196 S. Anitha
family. Within South Asian communities, the notion of family honour is often tied to
the woman’s ability to remain constrained within and uphold the patriarchal norms
that govern social relationships. Where women resist such normative constructions
of feminities, it is the disclosure of the abuse and leaving an abusive relationship that
is seen as stigmatising to the family – both the husband’s and the woman’s own
family – rather than the abuse itself (Wilson 2006, pp. 34–35). In this study, we found
that women who had the opportunity to disclose abuse in a safe way often tried to
talk about what was happening to them with one person after another, until they
found the support they needed.
While some women managed to contact services and make a planned departure
from the abusive husband and/or family, a majority of women had thought about
leaving but had not made a definite plan to do so. Six women were thrown out of
their marital home following ongoing and escalating domestic violence. For many
women, the decision to leave was taken in response to a deterioration in what was
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already an intolerable situation of ongoing, severe abuse. For some women this last
straw came at the onset or escalation of sexual abuse by family members. For others
it was when they became fearful for the safety of their children.
I kept trying to make my marriage work. … I tried everything possible to please my
in-laws but I failed … But when my daughter was born, they became very abusive. My
daughter was only three months old when they hit me and even slapped her. I then
went to neighbour’s house and they rang the police.
Nine women, mostly with children, contacted statutory services which helped
them to leave the abusive relationship and move into supported accommodation. A
further nine women made contact with a relative, friend or met a stranger who gave
them an initial place of relative safety to go to. The welcome they received on arrival
varied; very few women were secure in the knowledge that they could stay indefinitely.
This was particularly so where they were staying with women friends or relatives who
were themselves subject to constraints from their in-laws and had little power within the
household to take in a houseguest. Ten women, particularly single women who had not
managed to access any means of support, left with nowhere to go to, unable to speak
English and often unaware that domestic violence services existed in this country.
While there were similarities in women’s experiences on account of their
immigration status, women exercised their agency in the context of the constraints
and opportunities presented by their location within power structures. For example,
women with children reported, on one hand, greater pressures to remain in the
abusive relationship for fear of losing their children and, on the other, that violence
against or neglect of the children triggered some women to leave the relationship.
Once women had left the abusive relationship, social services were more likely to
support women who had children due to their obligations to the child under the
Children Act 1989. However, where this did not happen, women with children found
it harder to find accommodation or work.
What was common in all the stories told by the women was the rapid escalation
in the scale of abuse. For many women, it was only after they left that they found
themselves able to talk fully about what had happened to them. However, existing
policy does not take into account the diversity of women’s experiences as they
struggle to survive a life- threatening situation. What is expected of women facing
domestic violence simply does not match the reality of their experiences. The
 Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 197
Domestic Violence Rule requires that women be able to ‘prove’ that they have
experienced domestic violence by contacting agencies before they leave the abusive
relationship. These agencies are also expected to be able to provide letters of support
on the basis of their records. The research findings show that more than a third of
the women who managed to leave did not contact service providers while they were
within the abusive relationship, and yet others did so only at the point of departure
or some time later, if at all. This is particularly so for women who have not made a
planned exit into social housing but have initially been accommodated by friends,
relatives or strangers. Evidence of women’s service contacts after they have left the
abusive relationship are treated as suspect by the Home Office when women apply
under the Domestic Violence Rule, particularly if these contacts take place some
time after the exit. Not surprisingly, only a small number of women who have
contacted the agencies while they lived in the family home, often at great risk to
themselves, would be in a position to provide the kind of evidence that the Home
Office requires. This evidence, too, will only be available if the service the women
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contacted understood them and recorded their disclosure. The next section explores
women’s experiences of contacting services, both before and after they have left the
abusive relationship.

Mind the gap: women’s experience of service provision and the assumptions of the
Domestic Violence Rule
While the barriers that South Asian women face in speaking about the abuse they
experience have been rightly highlighted in existing research, the focus has often been
on the women themselves and on their culture, rather than any inadequacy in service
response. In a research project conducted for the Fawcett Society, evidence was
gathered about the support and services available to women facing domestic
violence. This study shows that, on average, a woman facing domestic violence has
to make 11 contacts with agencies before getting the help she needs. However, this
rises to 17 if she is from BME communities (Brittain et al. 2005).
Contrary to the stereotypes of South Asian women being unwilling to approach
services, this study shows that South Asian women with NRPF do make repeated
attempts to contact services despite the additional and significant barriers they face
in doing so. Twenty-eight women had contacted an average of four services each,
many of whom did so after they left the abusive relationship. These statistics do not
include repeated contacts of the same service. For example, one woman had monthly
contacts with her GP for over a year and another had called the police to her home
five times in the last four months. Two women had not contacted any services at the
time of the interview. However, it took most women several contacts with services to
receive the help they needed and many women had not received any help at the time
of the interviews despite several attempts to access support.
Several women recounted difficulties they faced in accessing information about
the impact that leaving an abusive relationship would have on their immigration
status and their entitlement to welfare and health services:
I think there should be some leaflets to advise (us) about (our) rights in the UK if the
marriage breaks down. Can you get national insurance number? Can you register with
a doctor? Where can you get help? You are completely at the mercy of your husband
and in-laws. I have not seen anything anywhere. I thought once I have got (spouse)
 198 S. Anitha
visa I have the same rights everyone else. Then for a long time I thought I was an
illegal because my case worker said I must file my case papers.
Women’s experiences of services were highly variable. Obstetric services,
specialist domestic violence services, community mental health services, Law
Centres and the Citizen’s Advice Bureau received positive evaluations while a
majority of the women remained dissatisfied with Accident and Emergency (A&E)
services, GPs, the police and Social Services. These evaluations were based on
whether the agencies had effective systems in place for enabling disclosure, were
effective in recording disclosure, validated women’s experiences by taking their
disclosures seriously and offered advice, information and referrals that helped
women to eventually leave the abusive relationship.
For example, six out of the 30 women who participated in this study had
accessed A&E services following domestic violence, of whom five were accompanied
by the perpetrator(s) who explained away their injuries to the A&E staff:
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He [my husband] once grabbed my hair and pulled my neck back – I couldn’t move
my neck. At the hospital, my mother-in-law told them that I had fallen down the
stairs.
The women interviewed indicated that no attempt had been made to question the
injuries or to pursue the explanation given despite research which indicates that a
high percentage of women attending the emergency department in the UK are
survivors of domestic violence (Boyle and Todd 2003, Sethi et al. 2004).
Similarly, nine women contacted GPs, often several times, for help in dealing
with the mental and physical impact of the abuse. The majority of the women
reported dissatisfaction with the service due to a failure to deal with the causes of
their symptoms, failure to take women’s disclosures seriously and poor referral
mechanisms.
I couldn’t talk about the sexual abuse as I was too embarrassed. … I started getting
headaches and taking paracetamol. Eventually I told the doctor a bit about what was
happening at home. He said, ‘Don’t think about it.’ But I say, how can I not think
about it?
Although GPs’ response to physical injuries may have improved over the past
decade, the situation often continues with regard to mental health problems caused
by the experience of domestic violence. Research indicates that GPs often fail to
pursue the underlying causes of mental health problems and treat the symptoms like
headaches and panic attacks (Humphreys and Thiara 2003, Wilson 2006, pp. 111–
127, Anitha et al. 2009). For the three women whose GPs probed their symptoms
and offered them support, this eventually enabled them to leave the abusive
relationship.
A few women also indicated that when they first contacted their Local Authority
(LA), the social worker offered to take their children into care rather than support
the family. This is confirmed by other research findings, which suggest that such
statements are commonly made by certain LAs (Amnesty International and Southall
Black Sisters 2008, Imkaan 2008), some of whom seem to be aware that women
perceive them as threats (Imkaan 2008). Women who have faced such a response are
unlikely to pursue that LA again, or indeed divulge personal details for fear of
having their children taken into care and thus will have no ‘evidence’ of reporting
their abuse despite having contacted a service.
 Journal of Social Welfare & Family Law 199
This study indicates that, despite barriers, women with NRPF do attempt to
access services to find the help they need to leave the abusive relationship, often
repeatedly. However, the effectiveness of services in validating their experiences,
recording it, and meeting their needs remains highly variable and inconsistent.

Conclusion
Where the immigration status of women is dependent on their husband, the power
imbalances within a marriage are further weighed against women by state laws. For
women facing domestic violence, the choices are stark: leaving an abusive
relationship can mean deportation, and this threat is a powerful tool in the hands
of the abusers. Due to the stigma associated with the break-up of the marriage and
the blame that is attached to the women for leaving the relationship, many women
who participated in this study feared further violence from their own families if
deported. Honour killings are common in the regions of the subcontinent from
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which women who participated in this study originate (Amnesty International 1999,
Hariharan 2004).
The Domestic Violence Rule is a significant concession that has enabled some
categories of women with NRPF to leave abusive relationships, despite the serious
limitations posed by the continued bar on accessing public funds. However, the
existing evidential requirements under the Domestic Violence Rule take little
account of the nature of domestic violence experienced by (im)migrant women or the
particular constraints faced by recent marriage migrants. Many women who
experience domestic violence are unable to contact service providers while they are
living within the family home, and do so only after they leave the abusive
relationship. Others who do come into contact with services are unable to disclose
the abuse because of reasons including the inadequacy of the services, lack of
knowledge about service provision in the UK and language difficulties. Assumptions
about service delivery made in the Domestic Violence Rule do not match the reality
recounted by women who do manage to contact these services, as the requisite
evidence of domestic violence is still not documented by many services, which remain
variable and inconsistent. Women’s ability to leave abusive relationships is
constrained by the lack of support by statutory services; additionally, the fact that
‘evidence’ under the Domestic Violence Rule requires a successful service contact
which records the abuse, in effect, penalises women for the ineffectiveness of services.
The problem of domestic violence faced by women with insecure immigration status
is a human rights issue, not one of immigration and needs to be tackled as such.
There is an urgent need for a reform of the law, particularly the evidential
requirements within the Domestic Violence Rule, to adequately accommodate the
needs of immigrant women who experience domestic violence so that women who
have taken this brave step of leaving the abusive relationship are not deported by the
UK government to face further violence and even death.

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Priya Chopra, Waheeda Farouk, Qamar Haq and Saliya Khan for their
help in collecting the data on which this paper is based, and to Amrit Wilson for her critical
comments and support through various stages of this research.
 200 S. Anitha
Notes
1. Women’s refuges maintain themselves on the rentals paid through the benefit system for
residents. Although the support costs for women are covered under Supporting People,
rents are not, and refuges also have to find living expenses for women with NRPF who are
housed with them, hence can rarely afford to accommodate women with NRPF. In an
interface of immigration, community care and human rights legislation, Local Authority
(LA) duty to support a woman with NRPF who is experiencing domestic violence can arise
where the woman is ‘destitute plus’, that is, whose needs arise not ‘merely’ because of a lack
of accommodation and subsistence, but are made more acute by circumstances such as ill
health, disability, etc. (Southall Black Sisters and Women’s Resource Centre 2006). In
reality, very few LAs are willing to accommodate women with NRPF unless these
additional circumstances include physical disability or clinically diagnosed severe mental
health problems (Amnesty International 2008; Imkaan 2008).
2. The Primary Purpose Rule which stipulated that the primary purpose of the marriage
should not be to obtain residency in the UK, was interpreted in a racist manner and the
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focus of immigration control was on countries from the Indian subcontinent, with all
marriages between their citizens and UK residents being viewed as suspect (Sachdeva 1993).
Following a long campaign by BME women’s groups such as Southall Black Sisters
through the 1980s and 1990s, the Primary Purpose Rule was abolished in 1997.
3. The provisions of this Rule are available at: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/
policyandlaw/immigrationlaw/immigrationrules/part8/ (accessed 28 September 2008).

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