For Rachel Williams, it started with a single incident. Her partner, Darren, put his hands around her neck during an argument and lifted her off the ground. He showed remorse and she stayed with him. But he did it again. And again. And, as she tells Hannah Moore, the violence escalated right up to the shocking day that changed everything.
Rachel’s story is by no means an outlier, says the Observer’s Yvonne Roberts. Thousands of women each year are subject to non-fatal strangulation in England and Wales. A woman is killed by strangulation every two weeks.
Yesterday, as part of the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, non-fatal strangulation (NFS) and suffocation became a freestanding offence, punishable by up to five years in prison in England and Wales. Campaigners including the Centre for Women’s Justice (CWJ) and We Can’t Consent to This – who challenged the defence of “rough sex gone wrong” – have long argued that NFS, if prosecuted at all, was frequently charged as common assault, receiving a sentence of a few months.
But there are concerns that a new law, while necessary, is not enough. Without specialist training on how to spot tell-tale signs of NFS for police and healthcare workers, perpetrators will continue to get away with their abuse and women will continue to die at their hands.
Photograph: Steve Atkins Photography/Alamy
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