Protecting women and girls in Dorset from violence
In this newsletter, as part of my focus on the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-based Violence, Superintendent Emma Sweetzer from Dorset Police, will tell us what her role as VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls) lead involves, and how the force is dealing with these offences and working with victims to ensure their voices are heard.
As the Police and Crime Commissioner, I know a whole system approach is needed towards tackling these deeply harmful crimes. Bringing together partners from across the board is the only way to create the societal changes needed to protect women and girls from violence.
Dorset Police’s strategy for tackling this violence is a crucial part of this approach and details the force’s commitment to making Dorset a safe place for all women and girls, while relentlessly pursuing the perpetrators of violence against them. Over to Superintendent Sweetzer to explain the work taking place.
“My role as VAWG lead oversees all the VAWG work within the force; from the response and action that we take against VAWG offences to identifying where we have areas of weakness and how we address them.
Dorset Police are tackling VAWG offences through three main pillars of work – Public Confidence and Trust, Relentless Pursuit of Perpetrators, and Safer Spaces. Each of these pillars has a lead officer and we have identified key areas of work we wish to progress going forward. The work formulates an action plan or order that we can track progress. The actions come from national priorities, others from within Dorset and some from reality testing victims’ journeys to ensure we have a strong voice representing them and their experiences.
In addition to the pillar work, we also have a firm focus on the three main VAWG crimes which affect our communities in Dorset – these are RASSO (Rape and Serious Sexual Offences), Domestic Abuse and Stalking. These are a priority in recognition of the harm they present to women and girls in Dorset today. We must ensure victims voices are heard and ensure we as the police are providing that vital service to our communities and are focused on these significant crime types.
My role involves challenging stereotypes and changing a culture from within the force out to the wider public. Police officers are important figures in our society, so we must ensure they have the best training, the best support, enabling them to give the best advice to our victims. The force action plan has enabled us to identify our areas of vulnerability ensuring they’re dealt with. This involves a lot of training – we’ve looked across the whole force and asked ourselves what we need to provide to our staff under each heading.
For example, the Domestic Abuse Matters training, rolled out a few years ago, has been refreshed repeated in 2020-21 to ensure all our officers are victim focused. We’ve also undertaken a whole raft of training in relation to our RASSO offences, ensuring the language we are using is correct and we’re not victim-blaming in any way. Another example of how we’re implementing change from within, is our commitment to the SSAIDP (Serious Sexual Assault Investigators Development Programme). Nationally out of the 2,000 officers required to have this training, Dorset’s quota was 23 - as a sign of how seriously we take these offences and our response to them, we’ve now had 154 of our people go through that training.
As part of a National Operation - Operation Soteria Bluestone, which aims to improve the response of the police service to victims of rape & sexual offences and improve their experience of the criminal justice process, we have identified a need to improve training to our first responders. We must make sure we’re doing the right things from the very start. Of course, our specialist officers have expertise, but it’s about cascading that training to everyone, from control room staff to frontline officers, because when victims call us in their hour of need and we attend, we need to ensure they are supported and spoken to in the right way. It's about making sure that we do everything we can at that first point to keep victims engaged, ensuring we are listening to them and what they want us to do because sometimes a criminal justice outcome isn't always what they want. There may be other things can we put in place.
In addition to this we have put in place scrutiny panels where we actively look at how good an investigation has been and look at the victim’s journey. From the very beginning to the end, we’re examining to see if there are learning points. It’s about continuous development of our officers - if we feel that something hasn’t met the standard we expect, then feedback will be given and if necessary, further training provided.
We've also looked at ourselves as a force, from within, because we need to ensure our own staff have the confidence to come forward and the right mechanisms to report issues to our Professional Standards Department. This team has done a lot of work around producing a pledge in order that victims know what will be provided to them so that they feel fully supported. We want our staff to know what they can expect as part of the transparency we want to give all victims.
As for prevention, we’re looking at how do we stop our victims from becoming victims in the first place. This includes ensuring we can identify high harm perpetrators. There's been a lot of work ongoing using the Cambridge High Harm Index and work around identifying the offenders and then putting the necessary mechanisms and processes in place to manage them and divert their behaviour. We’re working with different agencies around cognitive behaviour therapy to change perpetrators offending behaviour as one aspect.
Regarding the Safer Spaces pillar, there's a lot of work going on with regards to the night-time economy. We’re all aware that sometimes there is a link between alcohol and people going out in the evening and then becoming a victim. We’re looking at the ways we make our night-time economy safe for people and stop that lone female, who might be vulnerable through drink, from being preyed on by an offender. We’re working with licensing and licensed premises on accreditation around responding to vulnerability, and in Weymouth we also have the Pineapple Project working on safe spaces, as well as the Ask Ani campaign the force is promoting to support victims of domestic abuse. The recent funding secured under the government’s Safer Street Scheme, focuses on the night-time economy, with schemes across Dorset set to benefit.
Going forward, our aims are to raise our investigation standards even further, increase our service to victims and ensure we understand what they’re saying to us. I want victims to know we are here, and we will listen.”
Thanks to Superintendent Sweetzer for her coherent explanation of how Dorset Police is tackling violence against women and girls. To be clear, I recognise that one organisation alone cannot solve this issue. Our recent successful bid for almost £1million of Safer Streets Funding will be a key part of our fight to tackle these offences. The funding from Safer Streets will go towards projects across Dorset including a Women’s Night Safety Charter, where businesses will nominate a champion within their organisation to actively promote women’s night safety, as well as new CCTV cameras in some areas and the integration of cameras from rural areas into the Dorset Council main CCTV control room. There will also be a community guardianship intervention project to help students get back to their residence safely as well as other important projects.
It is only by working together, can we make progress towards the changes that are needed to ensure women and girls are free from fear from violence in Dorset.
David Sidwick
Dorset Police and Crime Commissioner