Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): The witness who is providing evidence to the Committee is Carey Baxter, chairperson of Men's Alliance Northern Ireland. Carey, you are very welcome to the meeting. I invite you to make an opening statement. Take your time. There is no rush. You will have five minutes.

The Committee Clerk: It is up to 10 minutes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Sorry. I was cutting your time there. You have 10 minutes. I ask Committee members to be as concise as they possibly can with their questions. Carey, if you could also be as concise as possible with your answers, that would be very helpful.

Mr Carey Baxter (Men’s Alliance Northern Ireland): Thanks very much. Chairperson and Committee members, thank you for inviting Men's Alliance to give evidence on the Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill and for considering the issues and recommendations in our written response.

Men's Alliance supports over 2,200 male victims and survivors of domestic abuse in Northern Ireland through possibly the most difficult period of their life, with 900 of them interacting with us daily. We also support around 300 women who, in turn, are supporting men in their lives who are facing abuse or who have lost men to suicide or domestic homicide. We also advocate public policy that addresses the barriers that men face when seeking safety, support and justice, and we do it because, uniquely, we have all been there too. I am happy to expand on any part of our written response during questions.

In my opening remarks, I will focus on the scale of male victimisation, on the barriers that men encounter in the justice system and on three practical changes that, we believe, the Bill should deliver. Page 3 of our written response sets out the prevalence and impact of domestic abuse experienced by men in Northern Ireland. One third — up to 35% — of individual victims encountered by the PSNI are male. That figure in itself is striking, but it must be viewed alongside the evidence that men are much less likely to report abuse. Research that the Commissioner Designate for Victims of Crime, Geraldine Hanna, commissioned in 2024 indicated that more than half of male victims do not disclose that abuse to anyone. Men described stigma, fear that they would not be believed and concern that they would be viewed as the perpetrator rather than the victim as being reasons for that.

It is also a public health issue. In the same research, over 80% of men were identified as being affected by depression and anxiety, with 71% of them reporting suicidal ideation. We know that men consistently account for around 75% to 80% of suicides in Northern Ireland. Domestic abuse can sit alongside loss of contact with children, child maintenance pressures and the epidemic of false allegations made to the police, social services and the courts, as I am sure you are all aware of from your work in your constituency offices. Together, those pressures can place a man at serious risk.

We also recognise the severity of the violence involved. Approximately 38% of victims of domestic homicide in Northern Ireland are male, and that is a revised, up-to-date figure from that in our initial submission. Male victims are not a marginal group, and their experiences cannot remain marginal in justice policy.

Pages 5 to 10 of our submission describe the barriers at each stage of the pathway to justice, from the initial police response through to investigation, prosecution, court and sentencing. Those experiences help explain why so many men remain silent. PSNI data shows that only 19% of domestic abuse crimes against men result in a sanction, compared with 31% of such crimes against women. Conviction data shows that 91% of convicted domestic abuse offenders are male. That appears difficult to reconcile with the known level of female perpetration of around 28%, a combination of 45% towards men and 20% towards other women, and thus requires proper examination. When abusive women are prosecuted, male victims also report a perception that sentences are more likely to be lighter and of a non-custodial nature, reinforcing the belief that violence and abuse against men by abusive females is treated less seriously.

That is an important point for us to note today. This is about recognising men as victims and recognising what they have been through in the system. It is not necessarily about having longer sentences for women. It is purely about getting recognition for the men and of what they have been through, which they do not get themselves. Statistics on convictions support that. In 2021, just over 25% of male perpetrators were imprisoned, compared with 7·79% of females. That is 70% lower. Based on the most recent figures, the percentage for males has increased to 38% and that for females to 22·78%. For women, it is still 45% lower.

Page 8 of our submission considers evidence of systemic bias arising from policy, action and inaction across the Executive Office, the Department for Communities, the Department of Health and, of particular relevance here, the Department of Justice. Female victims also face serious barriers to justice. We support action on the institutional and investigative failures that the Katie Simpson review exposed. That review showed the devastating consequences that arise when warning signs are missed, coercive control is not understood and one person's account is accepted without significant challenge. Although the circumstances and identified biases were specific to Katie's case, many male victims describe comparable failures to recognise coercive control, to test competing accounts and to identify correctly the victim and the perpetrator. The justice system must apply those lessons consistently, regardless of the victim's sex.

That brings on me to the Bill and the three changes that we ask the Committee to consider. First, clause 1 establishes the principles that sentencing should be "proportionate", "fair" and "transparent". Confidence will depend on what those principles produce in practice. A law may be written in gender-neutral terms yet still produce unequal outcomes. By way of an example, we discussed with the Minister of Justice, when we met, the gender-neutral Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021 and the issue of biased training leading to biased implementation, as a number of PSNI officers undertaking the training themselves highlighted to us. We therefore ask for there to be a requirement for mandatory training for sentencers and prosecutors on the experiences of male domestic abuse victims. That training should challenge persistent stereotypes about male victims. It should also cover legal abuse in family proceedings, including the use of child contact or residence arrangements as a means of continuing control.

Secondly, transparency must be measurable. The Department of Justice should be able to show whether comparable offences against male and female victims lead to proportionate and fair sentencing outcomes. Through freedom of information requests, we have failed to get the full statistics on arrest through to conviction. Our recommendation on clause 2 is that there should be effective equality monitoring, in line with section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998. Court datasets do not record the sex of the victim, thus preventing meaningful scrutiny. If the Bill is to promise transparency, that gap must be addressed. We ask the Committee to require sentencing data, particularly in domestic abuse cases, to be broken down by defendant sex and victim sex. The Department should then publish an annual review of the data, assess whether disparities exist, examine their causes and report on what action it will take.

Thirdly, sentencing guidance should state clearly that domestic abuse aggravation and victim harm must be assessed on the evidence, without assumptions based solely on sex. Sex is a protected characteristic. A fair sentencing framework must recognise harm consistently, regardless of whether the victim is a woman or a man. That is the most important point for the men whom we support: that their abuse be recognised as equal to that of any female victim, not less, simply because they are a man being abused by an abusive woman.

Our proposals are practical. They would turn the Bill's principles into safeguards that can be observed and tested. The evidence is clear. The UK crime survey for England and Wales found that 51% of people living in abusive relationships were male. In Northern Ireland, around one in two male victims does not disclose abuse, in part because they fear disbelief or bias. Despite that, one in three victims encountered by the PSNI is male. When men do come forward, the available data shows marked differences in access to support for them and in criminal justice outcomes.

We ask the Committee to strengthen the Bill through having mandatory training, sex-disaggregated data, clear guidance against sex-based assumptions and an annual review of outcomes. Those steps would help build a sentencing system that is proportionate, fair and transparent for every victim.

The Men's Alliance is structured with professionals, researchers, advisers and data analysts behind the scenes, who are way more intelligent than me. Many of them do not wish to be publicly recognisable because of concerns about child contact, false allegations — past, present or future — ongoing court cases, shame or stigma or fear of association. That is why I am here today, and why I get to make presentations such as this. I give a voice to men who cannot speak out for themselves. That being the case, I may not have full answers for you today, but I will have them with you in writing within 48 hours. Thank you for considering those important matters. I now welcome your questions.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Thank you very much for that, Carey, and for keeping your presentation concise. I appreciate that. I will now bring in Committee members.

Ms Sheerin: Thank you for your presentation.

Mr Baxter: Thank you.

Ms Sheerin: I have a question about the data. You have given us some recommendations that you would like to see implemented. You talked about male victims of violence. Is there data available on the gender of the abuser in all those contexts?

Mr Baxter: We get data from the PSNI. Some of it comes from the Department of Justice and the courts system. We tend to have to ask for it. Sometimes, it is missing. The initial data on domestic abuse statistics talks about the victims, not necessarily the perpetrators. We therefore have to clarify those details through freedom of information requests. Sometimes, we cannot get that information, so it is important that all that information be available. Until we have a way in which to identify the number of victims, the number of perpetrators and the relationship between the two individuals, we will not be able to see the full picture of what is going on. The data is not freely available.

Ms Sheerin: OK. A number of times in your presentation, you referred to men who suffer abuse from women. Is it accurate to say that we do not have the full picture of whether those victims are victims of females?

Mr Baxter: We know that they are not. As I say, 50% of men do not report. I have PSNI statistics here with me that give the breakdown of relationships. What I can say on that is that we are asked regularly about the 2,200 men whom we support. We estimate that 97% of them have come from heterosexual relationships. They are therefore predominantly victims of abusive women.

When considering how that data filters through the system, we have to keep in mind the shame and embarrassment of the men who do not report to the police. They feel that the whole system is biased against them, so they find it difficult to go and make a report. They fear false allegations and interference with child contact. There are a lot things that stop men from coming forward. As the commissioner designate identified, over 50% of those men have never told anybody that they have been victims of abuse. We were heavily involved in that research with the men from our group. There are a number of reasons that men do not come forward to the PSNI. The PSNI statistics are what we go by daily, but we strongly believe that they do not fully represent the men who come forward and the breakdown by sex of the perpetrators of the abuse towards them, especially with many men believing that, because they have been abused by a woman, they will not be believed. That is the bottom line.

As I said, the men in our group are predominantly men who have come out of heterosexual relationships. I can give you a breakdown of what we have from the PSNI, if that is of interest to you.

Ms Sheerin: Go ahead.

Mr Baxter: The total number of domestic abuse cases that we hear about amounts to approximately 30,000 reported incidents a year and 20,000 crimes a year. The breakdown of abuse against men is that 55% of it is carried out by male perpetrators and 45% by female perpetrators. The breakdown of abuse against women is that 80% is carried out by male perpetrators and 20% by female perpetrators. Those figures obviously pertain to domestic abuse within the family unit as a whole, so within the household.

If we look at the figures for intimate partner violence (IPV), we will see that, for IPV against men in relationships, 37% is carried out by male perpetrators and 63% by female perpetrators. For IPV against women in relationships, 90% is carried out by male perpetrators and 10% by female perpetrators. Those figures provide us with a number of indicators of what is going on in those relationships. As I say, we have no research to prove this, but, going by what our group feels, men are potentially more likely to admit freely that a man has been the perpetrator of abuse against them than they are to admit that they have been abused by a female partner.

Ms Sheerin: Thank you.

Mr Bradley: Thanks very much for your presentation. The figures that you gave are pretty stark. What amendments would you like to see made to the Bill to remedy what you have told us today and to demonstrate that change is on the way?

Mr Baxter: For men themselves, we would like the Bill to be gender-neutral on how sentencing is applied in court settings. Gender-bias training could be introduced for sentencers to educate them on the issues that male victims face in the system so that their perpetrators are identified.

There are a number of issues that could be addressed, and in a number of ways. Our key recommendations are mandatory bias training for sentencers, which includes targeted judicial training; myth-busting guidelines on men as victims of domestic abuse; and, in the context of clause 8, training that covers the "legal abuse" often seen in family proceedings, where contact and residence orders are potentially weaponised by perpetrators. We consider those areas to be exceptionally important so that sentencing is made equal across the board, recognising that men are victims and have faced victimisation.

Mr Bradley: That would be a start. I find it interesting that you raised the prospect of men being held to ransom when there is a breakdown of a relationship. What you have said is food for thought. Thank you.

Ms Ferguson: Thank you for your presentation and your paper, Carey. Can you tell us more about your proposed myth-busting guidelines? What are the existing harmful stereotypes that impact on male victims of abuse?

Mr Baxter: The biggest stereotype I regularly hear is the belief in society that men cannot be victims of domestic abuse. We had a presentation from a women's group at the start of last year, and there were 50 or 60 women in the room. The feedback from the organisers was that a number of women had said that they were embarrassed because they had never considered that men could be the victims of domestic abuse. For many decades, we have heard about the female victim and the male perpetrator, but the statistics that we have prove that that is not the case. Men do face domestic abuse, and, in many cases, it is as violent, abusive and destructive as the abuse faced by women. There should therefore be education to debunk the number-one stereotype, which is that men cannot be abused by women. They can. My personal experience is that it happens. Among the men whom we support, I have spoken to ones who have been stabbed, attacked with claw hammers — I have seen the scars — and had their bed set on fire. They have faced all types of emotional and psychological abuse. The very fact that 71% of male victims, as identified by the commissioner designate, have considered suicide shows that something pretty serious is going on that is having a huge impact. We need to get that across.

Ms Ferguson: Thank you. It is useful to hear that. Can you perhaps shed more light on the harmful stereotypes about men? What are the existing harmful stereotypes?

Mr Baxter: We regularly hear that men are the issue. Current programmes very much blame men for domestic abuse. We see definitions of "domestic abuse" that primarily focus on its being abuse of women. It is the abuse of a person. It is not necessarily abuse carried out by a man. The main stereotype is that men are perpetrators, and that is not always true.

Ms Ferguson: I definitely get that, because I have worked with and have experience of men who have been abused.

I have a final question, which is about the data. Have you liaised with the NISRA and Departments to try to get more pertinent and aggregated data that gives a true picture of male victims of domestic abuse?

Mr Baxter: No, we have not spoken to those contacts. Our freedom of information requests were sent to the Courts Service and the PSNI. We have breakdowns of the statistics that are there for various years for different areas, but those are not freely available.

We have found that we have applied for statistics for specific years and got the information. We have then gone back to apply for statistics for different years — the same information — and our request has been declined. Trying to get a clear picture is very frustrating. Our data analysts tell us that, in England, from arrest through to conviction, the data is there, and as much of it as one can possibly want. In Northern Ireland, however, the data to show the link between the different Departments and what has gone on up the judicial chain does not seem to be there. The full picture is therefore not available.

Ms Ferguson: That is useful to highlight. Is that the case across the board?

Mr Baxter: It is.

Ms Ferguson: Perhaps something that we can draw attention to is how important data is and how it needs to be aggregated to ensure that it is drastically improved as our Departments move forward with new IT systems. It is vital information that is required to build the evidence base so that key actions can be directed at addressing the core need. That is important, so thank you, Carey.

Ms Egan: Absolutely everybody in society deserves to be protected from violence and abuse. I am really interested in your statistics, particularly those around suicide, because it is clear that more men die by suicide than women. If you will indulge me, Chair, for background context, I have done some work recently on the links between domestic abuse and suicide. I met the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) about it recently. I am very concerned that the data is not being captured accurately by the police. When a death is registered as a suicide, sometimes there is not even an investigation. No cases come to mind in which manslaughter charges have been brought in the event of a suicide. That is something that should be easier to investigate. I am interested in hearing how your research on linking suicide among men to domestic abuse has gone. I would also be interested to hear your findings.

Mr Baxter: There is no specific research available for Northern Ireland. We have had to go further afield for it. The University of Manchester, for example, gives a figure of 7% for middle-aged men, which is quite a broad age bracket, in abusive relationships who take their own lives as a consequence of that relationship. It would be great to see more research on that area done for Northern Ireland. We believe that figure of 7% to be higher here. Abuse has such a wide impact, with 50% of men here never telling anybody about it. I know of one mother who did not find out about her son's abuse, which led to his suicide, until after he had taken his own life. She found out about that abuse — I am afraid that I may break down speaking about this — upon reading text messages from his ex-partner. He was 17 years old.

There is therefore not enough research being done. We need to do more on those areas in order to get a clearer understanding of what is going on. Importantly for us, there should be charges brought if somebody has pushed them to suicide. I have spoken to men who have been told by ex-partners to go and kill themselves. They are being encouraged to take their own life. I have spoken to mothers who have told me that their son, who had taken his own life, was told to do so and pushed into it by an ex-partner. It is a huge issue, and one of which there needs to be more investigation.

Ms Egan: I agree. It is something that should be looked at and changes made in law. No one should be in that scenario. Nobody should be told that. Even if they are not being specifically told that, the impact that the abuse has on their mental health needs to be recognised, if they later die by suicide.

On registered suicide deaths, your submission states:

I am particularly interested in hearing about men's experiences with child maintenance payments —

Those things can be very stressful. Will you expand on them, if you do not mind.

Mr Baxter: On child maintenance in particular, it is where errors are made. The men will see payments increase based on a report from an ex-partner. The men constantly put forward evidence to the contrary, however.

On men who make a report to the police, I will generalise, bringing in a number of stories, but this is the type of story that we hear from multiple men. I do not want to give one individual's story. A man reports to the PSNI as the victim of domestic abuse, The police turn up at the house, where a number of allegations are made about him, and he is then removed from the house. His business is based at the house. A couple of days later, he gets a non-molestation order. He is not allowed to go back to the house, and his business closes. His payments to Child Maintenance Service (CMS) are based on his previous year's income, but his business is no longer there to support that income and make those payments. He has lost his business, as it has closed.

That is an issue, and there are a number of other issues, on which men are not believed by CMS, and that puts them under huge financial pressure. That is one of the false allegations that men report. Recently, we did a survey that received 1,300 responses from across the UK, including, I believe, 306 from Northern Ireland. Forgive me, but I do not have the exact figures. The information is quite fresh, having been carried out recently. I can certainly send the Committee more detail on the outcome of the survey. One figure that does stick with me about where men face false allegations is that only 16% of those men end up in court with a conviction. A very large proportion of those men said that there was no evidence against them, that there was fabricated evidence or that they had evidence to defend the allegation but that it was not considered.

There are false allegations made against a huge majority of men to whom I speak. Every week, I speak to eight to 10 men who are at various stages of going through abuse. They may be thinking about leaving, they may have just left or they may have left a considerable time ago. The huge majority of them are facing false allegations, and my personal feeling is that one of the biggest areas of post-relationship abuse is that of false allegations. It happens especially when a court case is coming up for child contact. The week before that, a false allegation is made. Where a man has a court order to take a child on holiday in two weeks' time, a false allegation is then made. When a man gets a new job, is in a new relationship or has a new child, a false allegation is made. False allegations are used throughout the system. They could be made to the police, to social services or to multiple departments. They are not always made to the police, but, predominantly, they are. The consequences for a man are that he has his character destroyed, which follows him around for perhaps a year or two years before everything is sorted out. There is no reset switch at the end of that where he gets back the £20,000 that he may have spent on legal fees. He does not get back his house, his children or his job that he may have been suspended from or lost. His life has been destroyed.

Ms Egan: I appreciate that. This is my last point, Chair, if you do not mind. The issue of child maintenance is not one for the Justice Committee, but I appreciate what you are saying. Specific examples are helpful, because, although there may be flaws in the system, I do not think that we should be saying, broadly, that the issue is child maintenance payments. In principle, a structure through which parents provide for their children post-separation regardless is a positive one.

Mr Baxter: Yes, 100%.

Ms Egan: Specific examples are helpful, because you would not want people to think from reading your reference to child maintenance payments that you are putting out a message about them in principle.

Mr Baxter: It is not at all about the overall system.

Mr Kingston: Thank you for your attendance and for your paper, Carey. It is important to say that we should treat every incident on its merits. The Executive and the Assembly have recognised the particular problem in Northern Ireland of violence against women and girls, particularly given our shocking levels of femicide, and we have made ending it a priority. You are right to say that the public perception of individual incidents is different. We see that even in the media. A woman attacking a man is almost seen as being comical or as punishing a man. If it were the other way around, it would not be seen as comical. Men do face extra difficulty, both in speaking up and in being taken seriously and receiving the right response.

The Bill seems to me to be gender-neutral in its wording.

I want to ask you about the issue of vulnerability, which is one of the things that you raised. We have had representation on the current aggravators, particularly to do with how women are seen as being vulnerable to men, given that men are generally physically stronger, and on whether that should be captured possibly not as "hostility" but as "vulnerability". Clause 36(7)(b) refers to:

You have suggested that it should:

Will you say a bit more about that?

Mr Baxter: From our surveys and polls, we know that 80% or 90% of the men whom we deal with suffer due to their mental health. That could come about from numerous areas, but, in particular, it comes from coercive control and what is commonly known as "gaslighting" — trying to change somebody's reality. That affects how they react to stuff and their confidence with which they may go to services or stay away from services.

There are a number of beliefs among a large proportion of the men whom we support. One is that domestic abuse does not happen to other men, and the other one is that, if they come forward, they will not be believed or supported through the system. That is detrimental to a man's mental health and deters a lot of men from coming forward in the first place. It is about the man's frame of mind. I always ask the men who phone us, "How are you in your own head?" That is an important question. What we are trying to get at is whether they are not sleeping or whether their mind is constantly racing. I know from personal experience the effect that that can have. It means that you cannot focus on an individual task. I describe it as being like having 20 TVs in your head, all of which are on 24/7, racing at you. It is very difficult to make reasonable decisions, interact with the system in a proper way and come across in the right way. Men breaking down in interviews — I regularly encounter men breaking down on the phone. They cannot talk, because the emotion is so high, due to the psychological impact of what they have been through. On a lot of occasions, it may be relief that they have got out of it.

The Bill can affect that in a number of ways. Our response to the call for evidence recommends that we:

That is also an important point. Men do not come forward. As was mentioned, men are laughed at. It is seen as a comical thing, but it is not. A study by the Mankind Initiative in England comes to mind. They put a man against a railing being beaten by a woman. Members of the general public walked past, literally laughing at him, standing back and watched what was going on. When the roles were reversed, multiple people stepped in to help. Why? It was still a victim and a perpetrator. Regardless of their physical size or sex, it was still one person being abused by another.

Mr Kingston: Our issue is how we capture things in the wording of the Bill. It is about turning real issues into something that is worded. We will look at that.

In my experience, within families, access to children can be an issue not only for the man but for the grandparents. It often becomes a battlefield when relationships have broken down. That is not dealt with directly by the Bill. In relation to the Bill's wording, will you explain this point:

Mr Baxter: The summary says:

That links to what we are saying here. It is about recognising that it can, and does, happen. How it is addressed, I genuinely do not know. We could discuss further with our group about how they would see that being addressed.

Mr Kingston: The breach of a court order involving access to children is, presumably, a change in the court order, rather than a —.

Mr Baxter: You can go to a court and ask for enforcement of that order. A lot of times, however, it is —.

Mr Kingston: An offence, I suppose. It is more to get better — change the arrangements.

Mr Baxter: And to make sure that those orders are actually followed when they are put in place. A lot of the men have court orders to see their children, but, for a multitude of reasons, they do not. That should go back to a court for enforcement, but when they go to court for enforcement, the same thing happens again. With a lot of these things, along with false allegations, it is because there are no consequences. Yes, it would be good to see consequences specified, such as, "If this happens, this is what the consequence will be for the perpetrator". It would be good to see that, because then it would literally be in black and white.

Mr Kingston: Thank you.

Ms Finnegan: Thanks for coming in to brief us. I appreciate your sharing of your own experiences — I know that it is not easy to do that — and the work that you do with the 2,000 men. In your submission, you say that suspended sentences are overused for female perpetrators. Is that based on the perception of your service users, or is it based on any evidence?

Mr Baxter: The evidence is there on the convictions. I have the figures here somewhere. We were talking about false allegations. We have looked online to try to find some data on that. I think that it was the PPS that we applied to around false allegations, and we could not get anything on that. The perception of the men is that suspended sentences are dished out more readily for female perpetrators than for male perpetrators. We looked at the false allegations that we could find online in particular. We found 14 instances, over the past 10 years, of people being prosecuted for making false allegations. Of those, 13 were against men and one was against a woman. Five males and nine females made those allegations. Four of the five males ended up in prison, and none of the females did, with most being on suspended sentences. Some of those cases involve a female twice making allegations of rape against an ex-partner and who got a suspended sentence on both occasions, yet men who make false allegations of gay rape against other men go to prison immediately. There is one case in particular in which there was technological abuse, with somebody setting up a social media account, sending themselves messages and claiming that it was harassment. Basically, two people, a man and a woman, did exactly the same thing against a man and a woman. In that case, the man ended up in prison, and the woman ended up with a suspended sentence.

While the guys do talk about this, it is also proven in statistics and stuff that we look at. Last year, we were talking about 91% of domestic abuse convictions being of men, but we know that 28% of identified crimes are perpetrated by abusive women. How is that 28% of perpetrated crimes reduced to 9% of convictions? We do not fully know the answers to those questions, because we do not have the data.

Ms Finnegan: OK, I appreciate that. You talked about coercive control, litigation abuse, allegations in courts and instances where court orders are in place, a visitation is going to happen or a holiday is booked when, suddenly, there is a false allegation. I have seen that from both ends, sadly. The devastating impact that it has on a person's life is overwhelming. Many times, it involves financial abuse as well. I would say that the coercive control part comes from —. Say, for instance, a non-molestation order. I have spoken very openly before about seeing constituents who have been given a non-molestation order on a Monday, say, who could then be sitting in a family court on a Wednesday, because it is not recognised in the family courts because everybody has to be cross-examined and so on and so forth. My fear is that we do not take a gender-neutral position when we are in the courtroom. I feel that there needs to be education around recognising those behaviours regardless of the perpetrator. Therefore, if we are going to be very specific, we need to recognise that domestic violence can happen between women and men.

Mr Baxter: Absolutely. It is a people problem.

Ms Finnegan: I think that we need greater education around coercive control, litigation abuse, allegations and all those things. Do you agree with that? Will you elaborate more on that?

Mr Baxter: I totally agree. On our social media platforms, we regularly say that people abuse people. When it comes to perpetrating these crimes, it is not about male or female. Anybody is a potential perpetrator and anybody is a potential victim, regardless of their sex. A lot of what we are talking about here is not just the fact that it happens to men; it is the bias that men feel is in the system at all stages where they are not treated equally. That is why we talk about education and training for the sentencers around the myths and the bias that men face to try and eliminate them from the system. People in the system who come to us feel that the training provided is then biased. These are issues that need to be addressed so that everybody can be treated equally. There is no reason why male perpetrators should be treated differently from female perpetrators as they progress through the system at every stage, right through to conviction. However, in men's eyes, there is a huge bias at every single step of the process.

Ms Finnegan: Lastly, have you had any engagement on these issues with the Department or the judiciary, either in the development of the Bill or in relation to existing sentencing guidance?

Mr Baxter: I have not.

Mr Beattie: I am just looking at an old post of mine. I attended the Nexus conference on domestic and sexual violence and unmasking sexual abuse, and I found that talking about abuse of men was not up there. I even found myself not doing it, and I had to go and apologise afterwards. You can see that we are being driven away from talking about sexual abuse and domestic violence against men. It is not deliberate, but it is happening. How much do you think that that is because of —. We quite rightly have a framework and a strategy for ending violence against women and girls, and we need it, because men are the main perpetrators in Northern Ireland, but is that driving men away to say, "People are not really interested in us. Look at this particular strategy"?

Mr Baxter: You talked about sexual abuse; as you know, I was at that conference. Men will talk about going to the police to report their rape, as they see it, and men have come back to us and said that they were literally laughed at and told that men cannot be raped. In law, women cannot rape; men cannot be raped by women. It is referred to in law as "forced to penetrate". That is the crime that women perpetrate on men. In law, it is classified as a sexual assault rather than a rape when a woman forces a man into sex, and that is leading to a misconception in society. When reports in newspaper articles talk about a female perpetrator sexually assaulting a male, potentially, that is what we would commonly know in society as a rape.

Those sorts of things put men off, because they do not hear about other men being raped by women. It does happen, and I have sent multiple men to report their rape, as we will refer to it, to the police. However, the perception, across the board, from the police to the courts, is that men will not be seen equally, that they will not be recognised as victims and that their abuse will not be believed by the system.

Mr Beattie: In many ways, we absolutely cannot detract from ending violence against women and girls, because it is at an epidemic level, but we need to do something that takes men into account. You are absolutely right that it is assault by penetration. It is only classed as rape if it is a penis, so women cannot commit it. That is a fact.

Mr Baxter: We talk about violence against women and girls, but men will say that there is so much violence against men. Some 75% of murder victims each year in Northern Ireland are men. If the figures for suicides are combined with those for domestic homicides, men represent 38% of victims in domestic homicides. Taking the 7% figure from the University of Manchester that I mentioned earlier with reference to suicide victims, it works out that 58% of deaths relating to domestic abuse are men, because the suicide figure is so huge. Men lose their lives because of domestic abuse and are murdered on the streets, but we do not hear about it. We are 100% behind ending violence against women and girls, but please let us recognise that this happens to men, too. Please let us also recognise that men are not solely liable in this. According to PSNI figures, 20% of domestic abuse is done by abusive women to women. That is not talked about or addressed.

Mr Beattie: It has been put on the record many times, Carey, that the majority of perpetrators across the spectrum are men. It is important that we register that, but you are absolutely right about things being gender-neutral. I have been calling for a long time for training for our judiciary on bias and unconscious bias, not just on this issue but on many issues that our judiciary need compulsory personal development training on, so that they understand the very issues that you are talking about. It is a changing landscape, and they need to understand that landscape. As an Assembly, we have talked about that and supported mandatory training for our judiciary. This falls into the bias and unconscious bias training that they need.

Mr Baxter: You mentioned that the majority of perpetrators are men. We hear that comment quite regularly when we talk about men as victims. I have been at round-table meetings at which I have talked about male victims of domestic abuse, and I have been told, "We must remember that the majority of perpetrators are men". That is statistically correct, but does it mean that we are a perpetrator-focused society rather than a victim-focused society? We should focus on the men who are victims of domestic abuse. They are victims of suicide and murder for a multitude of reasons, but, because a very small percentage of men in society are perpetrators of domestic abuse towards women, which we accept and see, men feel that they are being ignored and brought into this one category of male abuser. They are not. They are victims in their own right, but they fear that they are not being seen.

Mr Beattie: That is why I raised the point at the start about whether some of our strategies are forcing men into the shadows because of that.

Mr Baxter: Yes, absolutely.

Mr Beattie: That is the point that I am making. However, your point is well made. Victims are victims, regardless of their gender. Thank you.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Ciara wants to come in on a small point, but before I bring her in, I will say that the bias training might be useful for all law enforcement agencies, especially in a domestic abuse setting where, even with the best will in the world, there is claim and counterclaim. In those cases, the men could be at a disadvantage because of that claim and counterclaim, no matter who claimed first. There is a bias issue there that we need to cover. There is also an issue of parent alienation and who is victimised through that more than other people. There is something there that we should look at.

Ms Ferguson: We have met many victims. We have met mostly women, to be honest, but I have some experience of supporting men on their journey. Are there any good stories, given that a lot of it is through personal experience that you have where men share their stories with you? Are there any positive stories of where assistance and support have been good, right through to the judiciary? Is there a variance in the level of support that is available depending on where you live?

Mr Baxter: I do not know whether there would be a variance, but there certainly are good stories. What we predominantly hear is the negative side. That makes up the majority of men's experiences, unfortunately, but we do hear the good stories. We hear about the men who have not seen their children in two years. They keep calm and work through the system. They go to supervised contact. Although they were the predominant parent before, with primary care of their children, all of a sudden, when the relationship breaks down, they have to be supervised to see their own kids. They work through the system, and eventually have contact at the end of that.

The biggest reaction that we get in our online support groups is when a man shares a positive experience. The response to that is phenomenal, and they are there. We do hear of men going to the police and being believed, and the system reacting in a positive way and in good time, so there are the good stories. Unfortunately, it is predominantly the downside of it. As a charity, we have been supporting men for eight years. Our legal support said to me recently, "I don't know whether you are aware, but the men who have been engaging with us for a number of years, who follow the advice and support and work their way through the system, they are all now starting to come out the other end and having relationships with their children". That is one of the primary issues that those men faced. That is fantastic to see, and we are able to be there for their entire journey and to support them through that. When things do get good at the end, which they do for some of them, we are with them through that as well.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I have a couple questions on specific aspects of the Bill. I am very aware that you are not learned in the law. Why would you be? Nor am I, for that matter, and we have presenters who scrutinise these things inside out, line by line and clause by clause.

With regard to clause 36 and vulnerability extensions, you talk about:

I do not see how the way that you phrased that fits in, but I do think that you are on to something. Let me explain. Clause 36(6) states:

That talks about being attacked because of your vulnerabilities. It says there "vulnerable person", and the definition is:

Forget about "any other reason", because that is too vague. It strikes me that a person whose ability to protect himself or herself from:

is "significantly impaired" —. The list that it gives is:

Those are things that a victim cannot help. They are an illness or a disability. There is also "old age", and we cannot help old age. However, there is a place there for psychological harm, because psychological harm wears you down.

Mr Baxter: It does, yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): It nearly disables you, so I think that we are on to something here. However, just inserting "psychological harm" will not cut it, because there will probably have to be a definition of "psychological harm". Even with a definition, however, which would be in another clause somewhere, you could do something that specifies "coercive control", which would tie in more of your phrase, and then people who are victimised due to the concurrent breach of orders.

Mr Baxter: It is not only the impact that the relationship has had on a person. For example, ADHD or autism. All those things change the personality of the victim and can be taken advantage of. That was reported by a number of guys whom we support.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): That was in my head, and I wanted to speak to you about it, because I think that we are on to something, but I do not know how we do it yet.

The other thing is that you talk about schedule 3:

Schedule 3 is really only about mandatory life sentences:

There is a bit in this where it talks about:

"Personally connected" goes to the definitions listed in section 5 of the Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021, which are all listed in that Act: a family member, a civil partner, people who are living together and people who have otherwise been in an intimate relationship, members of the same family. So it may be that something like this is covered in schedule 3 already. What I do not know is how we:

You mentioned schedule 3, but I am not sure whether that is the place for that. I get your point about biased training, however, and about codification or the recognition of male victims and female victims and male perpetrators and female perpetrators. It is about how that can be recorded somewhere. I get that.

The other point that I wanted to raise was about benchmarking disparities:

What do you mean by up-to-date data on "male victim sanction rates"? What is the "sanction rate" piece? Is that where the perpetrator gets sanctioned?

Mr Baxter: Yes.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Right. OK.

Mr Baxter: We learned that, when a case came to court and we asked what the sex of the victim was, that was not on record.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): So there is no data on the sex of the victim.

Mr Baxter: Not that we are aware of. We asked for the sex of the victims. We could get data on the sex of the perpetrator and on the sentence, but —.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Did they give you any explanation?

Mr Baxter: There was no explanation.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): One thing alarms me, then, given your evidence. In clause 1(4), there is a new concept:

Given why you are here to give evidence, I do not know that any judge in the land would look at clause 1(4)(b):

and not treat sex as a circumstance. A judge might look at that and say, "I now have to take into consideration the character of the offender, and she's a female. I then have to take into account the circumstances of that female, and there might be dependants". I think that 1(4)(b) is problematic. Have you given that any consideration?

Mr Baxter: I am now, absolutely: 100%. Many times, men report to us that the perpetrator did not get a custodial sentence because of children and childcare duties. They would argue, "But I was there; I am their dad". Nothing is preventing a custodial sentence, but that is used as a reason for that not going ahead. I see what you are saying, Chair, 100%, and it would be something —.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): If you have time, and if you have thoughts on clause 1(4)(b) in particular, by all means send them to us, and, if we have time, we will look at it again.

There was talk at the Committee's meeting last week about an offence of femicide. What are your views on that?

Mr Baxter: Are women murdered because they are women, and should that be an offence? We have had that discussion. That leads to the question as to whether domestic abuse is a gender crime. Are women abused because they are women? Our thoughts are that it is more likely — I am trying to be careful about what I say —

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): Of course. I have just sprung that on you. I am mindful that it is not part of your evidence. If you do not have a thought on it, you do not have a thought on it.

Mr Baxter: I do have a thought on it, but it is an exceptionally controversial area. Are women attacked or abused because they are women, or is it because their perpetrator is abusive? I will give you an example that was outlined to me recently. A bisexual man is in a relationship with a woman whom he abuses. If he is, then, in a relationship with a man, is he going to abuse that male as well? Therefore, is the woman abused because she is a woman, or is it because he is abusive? That sums it up in a very short statement. It is a difficult area because it is so controversial.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): I understand. Thank you for that.

Mr McGlone: There are a couple of things that I want to talk about very briefly. Thank you for giving your evidence. If I picked you up right, you mentioned that 50% of victims do not report. If they do not report, how can you quantify that?

Mr Baxter: That figure came out of the research that was done by the Victims' Commissioner and Queen's University. We put forward many men from our support group, and those men reported that they had never disclosed —

Mr McGlone: It was just a group of people from whom they lifted evidence?

Mr Baxter: It was from the men we support; there are over 2,000 of them. We encouraged a lot of them to go forward and, from what I understand, over 100 of them put themselves forward for the research. Of the men who were interviewed, 51% said that they had never disclosed their abuse to anyone.

Mr McGlone: All right.

Mr Baxter: In a way, that was quite pleasing for us, because it showed that the men in our group were getting something out of it. A lot of men join our group, and they draw support from reading other men's stories and seeing the reality of what is going on. They feel that they are not alone any more. It is not necessarily that they are talking to us about it or going to the police or social services to report their abuse.

Mr McGlone: Thank you for that. I want to move on to the improved victim impact mechanisms and article 8 enforcement. In your submission to the Committee, you refer to mirroring models in Australia and New Zealand. Can you expand a wee bit more on what those models are?

Mr Baxter: I will have to get back to you on that.

Mr McGlone: That is grand; that is OK. Thank you. That is all that I wanted to ask.

The Chairperson (Mr Frew): That is all the members who indicated that they wanted to ask questions. We have all asked questions, to be fair. Carey, thank you very much for your attendance today. It was very worthwhile hearing from you.

Mr Baxter: Thank you for the invitation.