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All the latest from HER-itage and our affiliates

Survivors of abuse no longer have to pay to ensure their abusers cannot track them – MoJ

From next month, survivors of violence and domestic abuse will no longer have to pay over £300 to ensure their abuser cannot track them down via public records.

  • Person at Risk of Violence (PARV) Order fees will be scrapped, saving victims hundreds of pounds
  • Changes will remove costs as a barrier to safety and protect survivors facing debt and financial hardship
  • Move part of Government’s Plan for Change to stand up for victims and halve violence against women and girls

Ministers have today confirmed plans to scrap the Person at Risk of Violence Order fee. The move means from November, vulnerable people involved in debt proceedings will no longer have to pay £318 to have their personal details – including name and address – removed from the Insolvency Register and the official public record, the Gazette.

For women fleeing domestic abuse, having the peace of mind that their abuser can’t search public records to find their new address is invaluable – yet the steep cost is a barrier to many. Today’s announcement will mean this cost will no longer be an obstacle to their safety.

The abolition of this unnecessary fee is the latest measure in the Government’s mission to halve violence against women and girls within a decade – and a key part of the Plan for Change to protect victims and restore faith in the justice system.

The move builds on the actions the government has already taken to meet its commitment to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in a decade.

These include a National Centre for VAWG and Public Protection; Raneem’s Law which embeds domestic abuse specialists in 999 control rooms in the first five police forces to improve the police response to domestic abuse; and the rollout of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders – the strongest order of its kind yet to protect victims from perpetrators.

Sam Smethers, CEO of Surviving Economic Abuse said:

We welcome the government’s decision to abolish the fee for Persons at Risk of Violence Orders when applying for insolvency solutions.

Until now, survivors have been forced to pay extra just to stay safe and avoid having their names and addresses published on a public insolvency database. This blocked many from accessing vital insolvency options because the perpetrator’s economic abuse left them unable to afford the fee. Removing this cost is an important step towards ensuring survivors can seek protection without taking on yet more financial burden when trying to resolve coerced debts.

We commend Money Wellness for their work in securing this vital change but it does not stop here. SEA will continue to advocate for systemic changes that tackle economic abuse at the root and ensure victim-survivors are better protected.

Further information

  • When someone applies for an insolvency debt solution, such as bankruptcy, a debt relief order, or an individual voluntary arrangement, their name and address are published on the Insolvency Register as a statutory requirement.
  • A PARV Order is the only legal route to prevent personal details from being published.
  • Individuals must demonstrate that disclosure of their address would reasonably expect to lead to violence. Currently, to apply for a PARV Order, individuals must complete an application form which is accompanied by a witness statement, attend court, and paying the applicable court fee.
  • They do not have to prove that they have experienced violence, only that they reasonably believe they may.
  • On its mission to halve VAWG in a decade, the government has also actioned:
    • Nearly £20 million in funding for specialist VAWG services which support victims of abuse including a range of vital helplines.
    • A new criminal offence for spiking and new spiking training for thousands of pub, club and bar staff to ensure they have the skills to support victims and prevent incidents.
    • New measures to tackle stalking, including giving police guidance on a victim’s right to know the identity of online stalkers for the first time and widening the use of Stalking Protection Orders.
    • The roll out of The Drive Project across England and Wales which, backed by £53 million, will target high-harm, high-risk domestic abuse perpetrators – taking the responsibility for the abuse away from the victim and putting it firmly on the perpetrator where it belongs.
    • Criminalising pornography that depicts acts of strangulation through the Crime and Policing Bill.

Part of a longer press release at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/better-protection-for-victims-at-risk-of-violence-as-fee-scrapped

October 27, 2025

Independent review of stalking laws launched – Home Office

Richard Wright KC will lead independent review as part of government mission to halve violence against women and girls in a decade.

To help ensure stalking victims get the protection they need and more offenders are brought to justice, a major independent review of stalking laws was launched on 22 October 2025.

For far too long, victims have been subject to debilitating and vicious abuse at the hands of stalkers who use any means necessary to monitor and control their victims’ lives. Statistics show that 1.4 million people over 16 experienced stalking last year, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

There is also evidence of police forces routinely failing to recognise stalking, and mishandling cases when they do, according to a stalking super-complaint published by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust on behalf of the National Stalking Consortium.

It also highlighted potential gaps in current legislation – flaws that may be hampering the criminal justice system’s ability to tackle stalking effectively and provide victims with the protection they deserve.

That is why the Home Office is acting swiftly on its commitment to review the law following calls from campaigners and survivors who say the system is not doing enough to protect them.

The review will examine whether current laws are strong enough to protect victims and ensure perpetrators are punished. It will also look at how stalking and harassment laws work together – and whether the system needs to be clearer and more joined-up to tackle these dangerous and harrowing crimes.

It will determine whether the law should change so that the police can better spot, investigate and prosecute stalking cases going forward. Crucially, it will also test whether the law can keep up with insidious, emerging forms of stalking, including those carried out online or using new technology.

Leading criminal barrister Richard Wright KC has been appointed to lead the review. He is one of the UK’s most experienced criminal lawyers with extensive experience working on stalking cases, including representing the prosecution in the case of Alice Ruggles who was tragically murdered by her stalker.

The government has published the terms of reference for the review, which will be completed by March 2026. It forms part of the wider Plan for Change to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.

Last year the government unveiled 6 new measures to tackle stalking – including legislating in the Crime and Policing Bill to issue new ‘Right to Know’ statutory guidance to empower the police to release the identity of stalkers at the earliest opportunity.

Further measures include victims being given more protection from offenders by making Stalking Protection Orders more widely available, defining stalking in statutory guidance and setting out a framework to help support services including the police, education and health services to work together and share intelligence on cases.

National standards on stalking perpetrator programmes will also be published to ensure that interventions properly address an offender’s stalking behaviour in a consistent and evidence-based way across England and Wales. New data on stalking offences has also been published by the Home Office to help inform policy and policing decisions on this crime.

Part of a longer press release at https://www.gov.uk/government/news/expert-kc-to-lead-urgent-independent-review-of-stalking-laws

 

October 27, 2025

Accountability after domestic abuse-related suicides and unexplained deaths – Advocacy After Fatal Abuse (AAFDA)

Justice denied? Accountability after domestic abuse-related suicides and unexplained deaths.

AAFDA calls for a new law which captures the culpability of perpetrators of domestic abuse as regards these deaths and which enables juries to see more clearly the causation of suicide from domestic abuse.

Without a new law to clarify this culpability, AAFDA fears that many perpetrators will evade appropriate criminal accountability and that victims’ families will have to continue to live with the pain of justice not being done. AAFDA therefore calls for:

  1. A new law crafted to assist juries to recognise the causative relationship between domestic abuse and suicide and which would attract a similar sentence to the offence of manslaughter.
  2. Coercive control to be brought under the remit of Extended Determinate Sentences.

Launched at the AAFDA national Conference “Tip of the Iceberg” on 25 September 2025.

https://aafda.org.uk/news/accountability-after-domestic-abuse-related-suicides-and-unexplained-deaths

 

October 21, 2025

Study reveals brain connectivity changes in women with post-traumatic stress disorder after sexual assault – Clínic-IDIBAPS

A team from Hospital Clínic-IDIBAPS has identified changes in brain connectivity in women who have recently experienced sexual assault and developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The study, presented at the ECNP 2025 Congress in Amsterdam, shows that communication between two key brain regions —the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex— is significantly reduced, which may be related to the emotional dysregulation commonly seen in PTSD following sexual assault.

The first author of the study is Dr Lydia Fortea, researcher at the IDIBAPS group Imaging of Mood and Anxiety-Related Disorders (IMARD). The study is part of a collaborative project between the Programme for the prevention and treatment of psychological consequences in women victims of sexual assault at Hospital Clínic and the IMARD group. The project is co-led by Dr Adriana Fortea, psychiatrist in the programme and IDIBAPS researcher, and Dr Olga Puig, clinical psychologist, programme coordinator and IDIBAPS researcher. The project is supported by the Alicia Koplowitz Foundation and the Pons-Bartran research grant from Hospital Clínic.

The brain impact of emotional trauma

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health condition that can develop after experiencing a traumatic event. In cases of sexual assault, it is estimated that up to 70% of women develop PTSD, which is characterised by symptoms such as intense fear, anxiety, intrusive memories and nightmares, mood disturbances and hypervigilance.

PTSD following sexual assault tends to be especially severe and may be accompanied by depression, suicidal thoughts and other emotional disorders. Although sexual violence is one of the most common forms of trauma affecting women, most PTSD research has focused on other types of traumatic events, such as war or natural disasters.

When the brain stops communicating

The study analysed brain images from an initial sample of 40 patients —adolescent and adult women— with PTSD following a sexual assault in the past year, compared with a group of women without PTSD or a history of sexual violence, matched by age. Using resting-state functional MRI, the researchers observed that in more than half of the women with PTSD (22 out of 40), communication between the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex —two key regions for managing fear and emotions— was almost completely lost, dropping to near-zero levels.

“The amygdala is responsible for processing emotions such as fear, while the prefrontal cortex helps regulate those emotions. When this connection weakens, the brain may struggle to control fear responses or manage emotional states, which could explain some of the more intense symptoms of PTSD,” explains Lydia Fortea.

Although this brain alteration was not directly linked to the severity of clinical symptoms at this stage, the researchers believe this may be due to the sample size. They expect to find this association in the full study sample, or alternatively, that it may be a core feature of the disorder, beyond its clinical expression.

Towards better understanding and treatment of PTSD

This finding reinforces the idea that PTSD following sexual assault is linked to dysfunctions in brain circuits that regulate fear and emotions, and that these changes appear early after the trauma. The research team suggests that these alterations could help identify patients at higher risk of poor outcomes and guide personalised therapeutic strategies in the future.

https://www.clinicbarcelona.org/en/news/clinic-idibaps-study-reveals-brain-connectivity-changes-in-women-with-post-traumatic-stress-disorder-after-sexual-assault

 

October 21, 2025

Study shows how domestic abusers build ‘trauma bonds’ with victims before violence begins – University of Cambridge

New research outlines a tactical playbook used by male abusers to “weaponise love” based on in-depth interviews with victims.

Before going on to commit violence, domestic abusers use a mix of intense affection and emotional cruelty, combined with tales of their own childhood trauma, to generate a deep psychological hold that can feel like an “addiction” according to some victims.

A new study by a University of Cambridge criminologist outlines a tactical playbook deployed by male abusers to engineer a “trauma bond”: an attachment based in cycles of threat and relief that leaves victims desperate for approval.

While this bond is typically viewed as a response to violent trauma, researcher Mags Lesiak argues it is, in fact, intentionally manufactured by perpetrators using strategic systems of control long before they leave visible marks.

As such, Lesiak says that recovery strategies relying on theories of codependency “shift blame onto victims” while ignoring the “deliberate brainwashing” by abusers.

For a study published in the journal Violence Against Women, Lesiak conducted extended interviews with eighteen women who had suffered repeated domestic violence during a relationship.

To investigate the roots of attachment beyond “captivity” – the active threat of harm, or control via shared housing, children or finances – women recruited for the study were economically independent and often lived away from abusers during the relationship.

Importantly, the women’s relationships had all safely ended. Yet most held a seemingly inexplicable desire – even to themselves – to return to the abuser. Participants included doctors, a dentist, a science teacher and a chef.

“Patterns of manipulation, grooming and coercion were so consistent it was as if all these women were talking about the same man,” said Lesiak, who is conducting a PhD at Cambridge’s Institute of Criminology.

“This is a distinct perpetrator profile. Specific techniques are used to construct and then weaponise love to produce a form of psychological captivity. As with the victims in this study, it can tether women to abusers even without physical or financial coercion.”

“Victim attachment to an abuser is not a passive trauma response, but the result of deliberate brainwashing by a perpetrator,” Lesiak said.

“The abuser’s psychological tactics can get obscured by ideas of codependency, which suggest that a victim is partly culpable due to something broken or masochistic within.”

“Domestic abuse isn’t about victim pathology but perpetrator strategy”

Continues at https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/domestic-abuse-trauma-bonds

October 21, 2025