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Violence against Women and Children

My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, on raising yet again this vitally important issue—an issue which affects the whole of society and not just the immediate victims and perpetrators. In order to justify that claim, I would like to concentrate my remarks on the effects of domestic violence on the 750,000 children in our country who experience it every year. The Home Office definition of domestic violence does not take account of the effect on children, although we know that 30 to 60 per cent of men who are violent to their female partners also hit the children. The Welsh Assembly has a much more inclusive definition. Does the Minister have any plans to change the definition for England? The main difference between a woman and a child is pretty obvious: the former is an adult and fully developed, the latter is not fully developed. That is the crucial point that I would like to make. I am afraid that I will get a little technical in order to explain the consequences of this. It is a clear case of cause and effect. We now know a lot about the development of a child's brain, particularly in the first three years of life. The structure of the developing infant brain is a crucial factor in the creation, or not, of violent tendencies, because early patterns are established, not only psychologically but at the physiological level of brain formation. Indeed, we also know from a research paper by Cummings et al in 1989 that male aggressive behaviour is highly stable as early as the age of two. At birth, the infant brain is not fully developed. We now know that development is completed in the first three years of life. The human infant brain is uniquely plastic. That has enormous survival value for the human species, since it allows the human child to adapt to its environment. But there are dangers in that if the environment in which he finds himself causes his brain to develop in certain undesirable ways. The child has about 100 billion brain cells or neurones at birth; indeed, I believe that they start to die off as soon as we are born. But what has not yet developed fully is the amazing network of connections, synapses and pathways that connect those neurones together in a veritable cat’s cradle. We need these pathways in order to think, feel and make choices. At birth there are about 50 trillion of these connections, but at age two months, new synapses start to form at a tremendous rate, so that by the age of three years this number has increased twenty-fold to 1,000 trillion. In 1997, a researcher called Shore concluded that since this is too large a number to be specified by genes alone, they must be formed by experience, and that is now accepted by medical science. That is why the experiences of children have such a major effect on their lives. Because a human baby is so vulnerable, his potential is defined by the quality of the support received in the very early formative years. Synapses are strengthened and reinforced by experience and our early-life experiences determine which of these pathways through the brain live on and which fall into disuse. The scientists call it pruning. Some of the pathways become hard-wired by repeated use. It is a bit like when you first go to the home of a new friend, you need a map. After one or two visits you hardly look at the map, and then you do not need it at all. If you go frequently, you get to the stage where you could probably find your way blindfolded. But if you do not visit for some years, you may need the map again. Such reinforcement makes the things that we learn when we are young very resistant to change. I find it very hard to leave food on my plate because my mother always told me to eat it all up because the poor children in China and Africa did not have any and I was very lucky. I am sure that your Lordships can think of similar examples. The way that child becomes attached to its mother or main carer is explained by this and by other, even earlier factors, since the child sees the face and hears the voice of that person most frequently and associates those things with being nurtured and his various needs being met. The downside of all this adaptiveness is that the human brain is very vulnerable to trauma. That is why the slogan ““Not in front of the children”” is a good one. The way it works is as follows. The development of brain cells is affected by the chemicals that surround them. If the early experience is predominantly fear and stress, the stress hormone cortisol washes over the brain like acid and affects its development by reducing the number of connections made. By using CAT scans, scientists have found that in abused or neglected children the brain is smaller than normal and the parts governing emotion are 20 per cent to 30 per cent smaller and tend to have fewer connections. The part responsible for memory is also smaller. Bremner et al, in papers written in 1995 and 2003, stated that that is because of the toxic effects of cortisol. It is obvious, therefore, that a child whose brain develops like this will have less emotional maturity and his learning will be affected. On top of that, in 2002, Eisler and Levine found that the normal hair-trigger effect is enhanced when the brain develops in a high-cortisol environment. You might expect this to happen in a child who is under frequent threat of violence, because it is a protective mechanism; but it means that, for such a child, the slightest stress unleashes a surge of stress hormones causing anxiety, hyperactivity and impulsive behaviour. He cannot help himself. Trauma also scrambles the signals that tell the growing neurones where to go, so children who are subjected to unpredictable stress, such as alcoholic parents who are kind one day and lash out the next, have a lower IQ and find it harder to learn. There is a whole lot more to say about infant brain development, but I think that that is enough. A large research project in the USA called ACE has identified the specific effects on the child's health and behaviour and on society of early childhood trauma, such as violence and sexual abuse or witnessing violence. In the case of the child, it causes: violent personality and anti-social behaviour; poor mental health; lower intelligence and impaired ability to learn; low emotional intelligence; poor physical health, such as an increased chance of heart attack and liver malfunction; career failure; and reduced happiness. The effects on society are: violence and anti-social behaviour; school underperformance, so that greater resources are needed to deal with it; economic underperformance and a lower tax take; poor personal relationships, leading to more broken families; high health expenditure on physical and mental health; and reduced societal happiness, leading to all kinds of effects, including more crime. So society suffers as well as the child by having to spend more on social welfare, health, education, and all elements of criminal justice. Therefore it is not just to ensure that the child receives his human right not to be subjected to violence that we need to identify and deal with domestic violence as quickly and effectively as we can, it is for the whole of society. The WAVE Trust, to which I am grateful for much of this information, has analysed the factors that contribute to a violent event. There has to be both a propensity and a trigger. Short-term measures can reduce the triggers, such as drug and alcohol treatment, addressing unemployment, economic inequality and family breakdown. However, we also need long-term measures to address the propensity to violence. That is where prevention comes in, and that is why the whole of this situation is a vicious circle unless it is addressed. A child subjected to violence cannot help but grow up with a propensity to violence, and so it goes on. We therefore need to initiate measures to put a ““full stop”” to all that. I use that phrase deliberately, because we have all had an excellent briefing from the NSPCC, with a number of proposals which chime well with the recommendations of the WAVE Trust. Both propose that we need to identify where domestic violence is taking place by training professionals to recognise the signs, and by that I mean teachers and nursery workers as well as social workers and health professionals. We also need education for children about what to do and who to tell. When they are brave enough to tell someone, we must be sure that there is someone there to help them. We also need to reassure them that it does not necessarily mean family break-up if the perpetrator can be helped to change his behaviour. Then, we need adequate support services for the families affected. Those services also need to be culturally sensitive and appropriate. The NSPCC produced a very interesting report about domestic violence among South Asian communities. It stresses that there is no evidence that there is more of this abuse in that community than in any other, but it points out that the reaction of both women and children to such abuse is different. Because of the cultural context, because they often do not trust the authorities and because of the shame of family break-up, the matter is often swept under the carpet and hidden. Both women and children are reluctant to tell anyone and that matter must be addressed. We need a much more rigorous approach based on a risk-assessment model with prevention at its heart. This is a public health problem with widespread consequences and it needs effective monitoring and intervention by health, education and social welfare professionals, not just the criminal justice system. Only if that is done will we break the cycle of violence. In doing so, we will improve the happiness level of the whole of society.