Category Archives: Report Publication

Strangulation During Sex in the UK – Institute for Addressing Strangulation (IFAS)

This report lays out the findings of the UK’s first in-depth survey of 4,175 individuals aged 16-34, exploring the experiences and perceptions of strangulation during sex.

Overall, over half of all respondents (55%) have either been strangled or strangled someone during sex.

18-20 years old is the most common age respondents reported first starting to strangle others and be strangled.

The youngest age group surveyed was 16-17-year-olds. 43% of 16–17-year-olds who had prior sexual experience (16% of all 16-17-year-olds surveyed) reported having been strangled during sex.

32% of 16-17-year-olds who had prior sexual experiences (12% of all 16-17-year-olds surveyed) reported having strangled others during sex.

https://ifas.org.uk/strangulation-during-sex-in-the-uk/

 

January 19, 2026

Women in acute mental distress are continuing to be imprisoned as prisons treated as default psychiatric wards – Independent Monitoring Board (IMB)

Despite the Independent Monitoring Board’s (IMB) 2023 thematic report warning that women in acute mental distress were being imprisoned due to a chronic shortage of secure psychiatric hospital beds, two years later the IMB’s 2024–25 annual report for HMP/YOI Bronzefield (published 10 December 2025) highlights that these serious concerns remain largely unresolved.

Overstretched in-prison healthcare facilities, ill-equipped to provide specialist treatment and care to very vulnerable and mentally unwell women, are being used as makeshift mental health wards, leaving them without the specialist care they need.

IMB members, appointed by ministers to carry out independent monitoring of prisons, are trained volunteers with unrestricted access to the prison to which they are appointed. They report on fairness and humanity of treatment, shining a light on what happens behind closed doors.

HMP/YOI Bronzefield in Surrey is the only purpose-built private prison solely for women in the UK, and is the largest female prison in Europe. This maximum security prison is operated by Sodexo Justice Services with a current capacity of 527, holding a complex mix of prisoners: remand, sentenced and high profile ‘restricted status’ (Category A) offenders.

The 2024–2025 IMB annual report for HMP/YOI Bronzefield paints a stark picture:

  • 22 women were sent to Bronzefield prison as a ‘place of safety’ under the Mental Health Act, up from 19 the previous year. The 18-bed in-patient healthcare unit is consistently at full capacity accommodating women experiencing severe mental illness and displaying complex behaviour.
  • A shortage of secure psychiatric hospital beds, along with disputes among NHS health trusts, is delaying the transfer of women from HMP/YOI Bronzefield to hospital. Staff are under mounting pressure but continue to provide compassionate care under extremely challenging conditions. The delays affect the wider prison population, with some women reporting feeling unsafe or vulnerable when others experience mental health crises.
  • Only 45% of transfers to hospital met the statutory 28-day target, with some women waiting over 100 days; the longest wait recorded was 157 days.

“These are not isolated incidents. This is an ongoing national issue,” said Ben Moseley, IMB HMP/YOI Bronzefield Chair. “Prison is not treatment. These women need care, not custody.”

The IMB remains concerned that efforts to resolve this problem show little discernible effect.

“Without urgent reform vulnerable women will continue to suffer. The crisis in care puts their dignity, health, and safety at risk” said Moseley.

Prison staff continue to show extraordinary commitment and dedication under extremely challenging conditions. Yet HMP/YOI Bronzefield is not equipped and was never intended to provide the specialist mental healthcare to the extent that these women need. The Board is deeply concerned that the prison continues to be used as a last resort for acutely mentally unwell women, a setting that can worsen their conditions and put their dignity, health, and safety at risk.

https://imb.org.uk/news/mental-health-crisis-behind-bars/

December 12, 2025

Angiolini Inquiry Chair Highlights Critical Gaps In Prevention And Calls For Urgent National Action To Stop Predators From Committing Sexually Motivated Crimes Against Women

Second Report reveals critical need for a relentless focus on the perpetrators of these crimes, and a lack of coordination and grip for prevention activity

The Angiolini Inquiry’s second Report, calls for a fundamental shift in the focus of activity to prevent sexually motivated crimes against women in public spaces. Chair Lady Elish Angiolini KC makes a clear statement: measures targeted at making spaces safer (such as better street lighting) and advising women on how to protect themselves (for instance, providing information on safe routes home) are important – but not enough.

Instead, the prevention focus must be squarely on identifying and targeting the predatory men who commit these crimes. Work to identify and intervene early when someone is showing predatory behaviour, and to investigate effectively and swiftly when an offence has taken place, needs to be combined and coordinated in a way it currently is not. Every opportunity must be taken to improve what we know about the patterns of behaviour of these perpetrators, and what will disrupt and change that behaviour. This is currently lacking.

Lady Elish expresses great concern that basic questions about the prevalence of these crimes cannot be answered and outlined key gaps in knowledge about how many women nationally report being the victim of sexually motivated crimes in public spaces. For example, strangers in public spaces in England and Wales last year?’. There is also limited data on sexual assault and indecent exposure. Lady Elish warns that, without this data being gathered and recorded consistently across forces, it cannot be analysed to spot patterns of offending, which amounts to a critical failure.

Lady Elish therefore calls for urgent, coordinated action to shift public attitudes, disrupt harm and create a culture that enables women to feel safer in public spaces.

The Report highlights a troubling lack of momentum, funding and ambition for prevention work in this area, as well as a lack of progress on previously accepted recommendations from Lady Elish’s Part 1 Report. Although Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) was categorised as a ‘national threat’ in 2023 (requiring police forces to coordinate their response and resources to tackle such crimes in line with other national threats), 26% of police forces have yet to implement basic policies for investigating sexual offences, including indecent exposure. Furthermore, the Part 1 Report recommended that those with convictions and/or cautions for sexual offences should be barred from policing. This has not yet been implemented. The Home Office has informed the Inquiry that it does intend to address this recommendation, but this will not be implemented until 2026.

Despite this, the Inquiry heard about many impressive and creative campaigns, programmes and other measures aimed at preventing sexually-motivated crimes against women in public. These come from across sectors, Government departments, charities and academia. This is encouraging; but there must be decisive action by Government to coordinate and boost these patches of positive prevention activity.

As a starting point, the Inquiry recommends immediate focus on and sustainable funding for two policing programmes aimed at preventing predators offending, and offenders reoffending, respectively: Project Vigilant and Operation Soteria. These measures are available now, and have proven success. Funding them properly is one way for Government and policing to show it is taking the safety of women in public spaces seriously.

Extracts from a longer press release at https://iipcv-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/tRMD0TBy-251201_Angiolini-Inquiry-Press-Notice-for-website.pdf

The full Report is at www.angiolini.inquiry@independent-inquiry.uk.

December 12, 2025

Built to Harm: how women’s prisons take lives – Inquest

Women who died in prison could still be alive today if the government had listened to calls from campaigners and years of evidence to end the imprisonment of women.

Instead, Built to Harm: how women’s prisons take lives shows how the government prioritised tweaks to women’s prisons that have failed to prevent deaths and harm.

Between 2018 and 2024, 59 people died in women’s prisons in England and Wales, more than a third (39%) of these deaths were self-inflicted. In the next four years, self-inflicted deaths across all prisons in England and Wales are expected to rise by 21%.

By analysing seven of these deaths, including that of a baby, and official statistics of deaths and self-harm, the report uncovers recurring systemic issues:

  • repeated failures to believe women in distress,
  • malfunctioning prison processes,
  • and the routine use of imprisonment as the response to social inequality and trauma.

To prevent further deaths, the report calls on the government to:

  • dismantle the women’s prison estate and halt all prison expansion,
  • reconsider its plans to extend the punishment of women in the community,
  • invest in community-based support services such as housing, mental health and domestic abuse services that would prevent women coming into contact with the criminal justice system.

Download:

https://www.inquest.org.uk/built-to-harm-report

See also:

Self-inflicted deaths in women’s prisons reach record high – Inside Times
https://insidetime.org/newsround/self-inflicted-deaths-in-womens-prisons-reach-record-high/

 

December 12, 2025

Domestic Abusers’ Pet Hate – National Centre for Domestic Violence (NCDV)

Almost one in 15 witness statements in support of a domestic abuse injunction in England and Wales reveal threatened or actual cruelty to animals. 

That is the top conclusion of a huge new data study of victim and survivor evidence conducted by NCDV, the community interest company which helped secure around 30% of all protective Non-Molestation and Occupation Orders issued in 2024.

The organisation analysed 64,046 witness statements, believed to constitute the single biggest sample of victim/survivor voices anywhere, covering the last seven years (2018-2025) showing a 6.51% link between human and animal abuse.

Charlotte Woodward, Head of NCDV’s Training and Development said:

“If anything, the rate of correlation we see between pet and human abuse is understated due to the peculiarities of sampling, legal definitions and methods of legal data collection. Other survivor studies, notably conducted by Dogs Trust, show higher rates.

“Pets – cats, dogs, rabbits and horses – are not just animals to many of us, they are much loved family members. And, very sadly, abusers know they can play on their victims’ strong feelings, or fears, for their pets to maximise the coercive control they exert and the physical or mental torment they inflict.

One witness said: “When Housing said ‘no pets’, I went back home. I chose my dog because she’d always chosen me.”

Woodward says the anonymised statements also reveal a dismal catalogue of threatened or actual animal abuse. Some victims and survivors told of dogs and puppies collapsing or suffering seizures from being shouted at, of a dog thrown from a vehicle, of donkeys and pigs released onto public roads and pets’ graves being desecrated.

Others mentioned menaces, often backed up by photos, to kill or torture pets. One abuser threatened to drown the family cats in a bath, another posed for a photograph of him holding a shotgun against a horse, while others threatened to kill kittens with a hammer and throw them into a lake, or to place a dog in a tumble dryer and switch it on.

Saddest perhaps of all, the testimony recorded severe and fatal violence with dogs kicked to death, puppies strangled, dogs repeatedly punched or chained and beaten, kittens suffocated and other animals bludgeoned to death.

Charlotte Woodward continued: “We have long believed that protecting people cannot be separated from protecting the animals they love. We must now act on the evidence which this study provides.

“NCDV’s analysis shows that animal cruelty, threats, or risk to pets is a recurring feature of domestic abuse, with serious implications for both survivor safety and animal welfare. Pet abuse is a strong barrier to leaving abusers – one of NCDV’s priorities in helping victims secure Court Orders – and a marker of heightened risk to families and children.

“We believe it is high time that pet questions should be added to risk assessments, safety plans, and staff training. Pet risk should also be specifically incorporated in multi-agency risk assessment conferences/child protection processes. Housing provision should now offer pet-inclusive options for refuge and fostering.

“We also believe that vets are now firmly in the front line against domestic abuse for spotting these indicators and organising safe signposting.

“In the policy arena we endorse Ruby’s Law [campaign named after a dog for explicit protection for pets in civil protection orders] to ensure that pets – along with children – are included in DAPO+ evaluation/design.” Charlotte Woodward concluded: “By promoting the Ruby’s Law campaign and building partnerships with organisations such as the Dogs Trust Freedom Initiative, Refuge4Pets, Cats’ Protection (Lifeline project) and Nature Watch (Protect People, Protect Pets) NCDV will raise awareness, develop training for veterinary teams, create professional toolkits and campaigns, and promote pet-friendly refuge and fostering options for survivors.

“But only by combining our efforts across various services, housing providers, veterinary practices, animal welfare charities, policymakers, and safeguarding forums, can we ensure that no one has to choose between personal or family safety and their pets.”

Notes:

  • NCDV is a not-for-profit Community Interest Company with over 20 years’ experience helping victim-survivors obtain civil protection orders through the courts.
  • We’ve helped secure around 30% of all Non-Molestation and Occupation Orders in England and Wales in recent years. We provide one of the biggest pro bono teams in the country, helping those who can’t access a solicitor.
  • Our service is free, fast, efficient, and designed to work alongside safeguarding efforts, and we offer a signposting service to those who engage with us.
  • We also deliver training on civil orders and domestic-abuse programmes. Last year, we trained almost 15,000 police, professionals, and employers.

Full press release at https://www.ncdv.org.uk/pets-and-domestic-abuse/

December 12, 2025