Last week an Islington woman died at the hands of her abusive partner. Two more women in the UK will die this week according to statistics, and with police nationwide receiving a call every minute begging for protection from partners, Jessica Salter investigates the dark world of domestic violence.
AT first it was nothing, just the odd rude comment. Then one day Amy's
boyfriend smashed her head into a shop window. But she did not think
she was a victim of domestic violence – he was just upset. Only after
a year of abuse of what was becoming a routine trip to A&E when a
nurse explained what was happening did Amy find the courage to leave.
Fiona has a similar story. Her husband raped her, and twice when she
fell pregnant his beatings were so severe that she miscarried. She hid
her bruises for five years until she ended up in her local hospital's
severe head injuries unit.
But Amy and Fiona are the lucky ones – they escaped. Last week an
Islington woman died at the hands of her abusive partner – two more
women in the UK will die this week according to statistics. Nationally
police receive one call a minute begging for help from domestic
violence, but this woman had never come to police attention.
Helen Williams, Inspector of community safety unit in Islington, says:
"By the time we come to hear about it, it can often be too late. We
estimate that victims experience about 35 incidents of abuse before
they report it to the police. So when they do finally report you know
there's been a build up."
Islington police received 3,365 complaints of domestic violence in
2004-5, mainly from women. In Britain women suffer 12.9 million acts
of abuse and men are the victims of 2.5 million incidents annually,
according to the British Crime Survey. The government estimate
domestic violence costs the UK £23 billion annually and Islington
alone almost £11 million in services.
Monica Tuohy from Islington's Women's Aid, which has operated in the
borough for 25 years, is part of Islington's domestic violence
awareness week. She says: "It's incredibly important that we tell
women that they're not alone."
Although Inspector Williams and Ms Tuohy both deal with cases of
domestic violence in Islington every day, amazingly they have never
before routinely shared information about the victims they help.
Now, for the first time, all Islington agencies involved in domestic
violence cases, including local services like education, housing and
social services, will share information so they can build up a borough
wide picture of the problem.
In two weeks time, Inspector Williams will chair the first
Multi-Agency Risk Assessment Conference (MARAC) on April 4. She says:
"For the first time we will have a clear picture of lifestyles and
violence that is happening but that each individual agencies might not
know.
"Part of the tragic circumstances surrounding the Victoria Climbie
case [when social services, doctors and police in Haringey were blamed
for missing persistent child abuse] was a lack of sharing information.
We've been determined to learn from that."
MARAC will meet fortnightly to decide action plans on the ten most
high-risk victims in the borough.
"The cases will keep coming back to conference until either the
partner is no more, the victim is in safe accommodation or we deem
that the victim's risk has been severely reduced," Inspector Williams
says.
Ms Tuohy has worked with domestic violence forums in different
boroughs. "Lots of these forums are very ineffective – they're just a
talking shop. Here in Islington we've taken a huge step forward, we're
not just talking, we're actually doing."
National initiative on domestic violence measure success by criminal
prosecutions, but domestic violence is notoriously underreported and
conviction rates are low. Last year Highbury Corner Magistrates Court
heard 151 cases of domestic violence, despite the police receiving
over 3,000 complaints, and only found 52 per cent of offenders guilty
- in part due to lack of evidence.
Inspector Williams said she hoped that the new system would mean
police could gather enough evidence to make more prosecutions. "We
hope that through MARAC we will be able to take more offenders to
court but for us, the real success is going to be if the victims take
back control of their lives."
Among the programme of events to raise awareness about domestic
violence is a performance of the Vagina Monologues, an art exhibition
and a workshop for women in the Somali community and on Monday, the
launch of the police's initiative third party reporting, where
neighbours and friends can step in and call the police on the victims
behalf.
Inspector Williams is confident that Islington's domestic violence
victims will benefit from these new initiatives. She says: "We're only
here to empower and support the survivors."
Tuesday, 27 March 2007
Sharing stories of abuse
Thursday, 22 March 2007
Driven into the darker places
By Rosie Stewart and Alice Wright
In a run down café in Camden, where the food is stale and the waitress serves with a sneer, sits Tracey, a local sex worker, preparing herself for a night’s work. She’s accompanied by Allison and Claire, two outreach workers based in the area.
Tracey is here to discuss the installation of a CCTV camera on Market Road in Islington. Funded by the Council, the camera is in place to drive out anti-social behavior and sex workers in an effort to “spruce up the area”. It will come into action at the end of March.
The Council claims the road is a hive of social activity, but the reality is a deserted drive-through between York Way and the Caledonian Road. A poorly lit park runs along the northern side and tennis courts occupy the south side. People seldom go there. Even the bus only passes once every half hour.
Sergeant Franc Francioni, head of the Holloway Safer Neighbourhood Team, says the camera is not there to target the women working in the area, but rather the punters who use them. “This is not about criminalizing the women, it’s about disrupting the trade.”
Sitting under harsh strip lighting, with a Lucky Strike in one hand and a can of Fanta in the other, Tracey, who has worked in the area for the past ten years, has other ideas: “From our side of the fence it's more like this: yes, sometimes it does make us feel safer, except for when they use it to hunt us with.”
When that is the case, she says, they are forced to take more risks. Punters don’t want their registration caught on camera so Tracey and her friends have to take them to places where they can’t be identified. Darker places where there are less people, where it isn’t safe. As Tracey puts it: “The kind of place an attacker would like.”
From talking to experts and the girls on the street, it is obvious that problems with CCTV systems arise when they are used to penalise sex-workers rather than protect them.
Geraldine Flanagan, National Information and participation officer at the UK Network of Sex Projects, says: “The CCTV camera is not the problem in itself, the concern is the attitudes behind the camera. If it is part of a heavy police enforcement programme then the worry is that it will disperse sex workers and force them to work in unsafe areas, making them more vulnerable.”
Tracey, sporting a baker-boy cap and pigtails, doesn’t disguise her fear. “I’m scared. I’m scared for me, I’m scared for my girls as well. We're family, we're a unit. When one of us gets murdered it hurts. This camera is in the wrong place - don't put them where things work, put them where they don't work. Put them by the canals. Even better, why don't we just make it cost effective all round and legalise it [prostitution].”
A few moments later, Tracey is joined by Linda. Suffering from deep vein thrombosis and painfully thin, she draws up a chair by the table. Linda explains that in her efforts to escape CCTV she ended up in Hendon last night. “The cameras make it uncomfortable for us, you don’t go where it’s safe, you don’t know the haunts. But I have to because I’m known around here.”
The CCTV cameras also come between the outreach project and the sex workers. New Horizons Youth Centre has been sending staff like Allison and Claire on to the streets since 1968. They target women working on the street, providing condoms, safety advice and access to a drop-in centre at their premises on Chalton Street. They claim CCTV has made their job harder as it is more difficult to find the women who need their help. Claire says: “It’s frustrating, because they’re still working, but we can’t find them. I don’t think the cameras are going to work. If something happens the police are not going to get there immediately, are they? It’s more of an observation thing.”
Despite assurances from the authorities that the cameras are there to catch kerb-crawlers, Tracey and Linda agree that it is they, rather than their clients, who are targeted. Tracey recalls many incidents with violent punters in which police have “put words into [the punter’s] mouth to help them walk away” - despite her obvious distress and bloodied face.
In between a sandwich and a cigarette Linda chips in with a story about a mutual friend: “Rachel got caught on camera and got an £80 fine on the spot. If she doesn’t pay that within a certain amount of time she’ll end up in jail. And the community police were giggling away telling me about it, saying ‘we had to come in today and watch Rachel for 25 minutes taking it up the bum’. And afterwards she peed on the street and she got an extra £20 for that.”
Allison asks what penalty the punter was given. “Nothing. How are they going to find him? They know her face. They just watch the film and then they hand her the fine.” And what does Linda think about this? “Don’t do nothing under the camera, don’t take the risk.”
There are no quick fix solutions to the issues surrounding the safety of sex workers. Throughout the interview Tracey talks movingly of a family she is determined to protect. As for the CCTV cameras, Tracey says: “You can always tell where you’re going when you look back and see what’s changed. Nothing. Nothing’s changed since my friends were found chopped up in bin bags and in dustbins and in canals in suitcases. These things touch our lives. They’re real. They happen to real people. And we’re not just statistics. This is how we manage.”
The names of the sex workers have been changed to protect their identities.
Tuesday, 20 March 2007
Online frontline
By Dave Green
Simon Kelner, editor of the Independent, reckons “no one listens to podcasts.”
The five men and women sitting silently behind their computer screens, cocooned by headphones, think differently.
Their faces twitch with the efforts of concentration as they race against the clock to finish their own podcasts by lunchtime.
The three medical professionals and two AIDS charity workers from Ghana are coming to the end of a two-day course in citizen journalism hosted by Islington-based On Road Media (ORM).
Founded in 2005 by Nathalie McDermott, a former producer for Radio Five Live, the social enterprise trains marginalised groups and charities to create podcasts and audio diaries, as well as websites upon which to host them.
Today it’s the turn of Owusu Kwasi-Poku, a representative of charity Theatre for a Change, which uses workshops and performance to investigate issues around HIV/AIDS and young people’s rights. Owusu has come all the way from Ghana to
drum up support for the charity and learn some new skills in the process.
He smiles as he puts the finishing touches to a sound graph he’s been tinkering with.
“We do projects with young people that try to promote awareness of health issues in Ghana and this is a great way to get the message across to a larger community. It’s been fun and should be very useful for our jobs”
In many ways ORM is at the forefront of the citizen journalism revolution that has forced so many changes in the way the so-called “old media” operates.
In America, hyper-local newspapers such as Chicago’s Chi Town Daily News, which relies on reporters based in the communities they write about, eschewing professional journalists in the process, are raking in readers as conventional newspapers lose sales.
This is what Nathalie sees as citizen journalism taken to its logical conclusion. “We’re supporting people with sustainable skills so they can do it themselves. And citizen journalism is that,” she says.
“It’s about people talking for themselves, not through the conduit of an impartial third-party journalist.”
Although the hyper-local news revolution is yet to hit Britain with any real gusto, projects like ORM are planting the seeds of the coming change by giving people the tools they need to report on the local issues that concern them.
Earlier this month, homeless charity Ten Feet Away, which runs out of the Union Chapel on Compton Street, launched a website created as a result of ORM’s training. [http://tenfeetaway.wordpress.com]
Billy Rippe, the project’s coordinator and formerly homeless on the streets of Islington, explains the idea behind the project. “We wanted to deliver an international website and thought it would be nice to add the voices of people all over the world. So we contacted ORM and arranged two days training in citizen journalism.”
Now, just a week after the launch, the website already has posts from similar groups in Japan and Argentina, with a forthcoming visit to Russia likely to add voices from another country to the stable.
The content is highly varied and of a high quality; so high in fact that in a few months the best pieces of art (audio and visual) posted on the website will feature in a Guardian Arts Unlimited online exhibition. Vodcasts supplement blogs, pictures supplement podcasts and the result is that reflections on homelessness, prison stints and art are all conveyed through multimedia in a way unthinkable a few years ago.
“We wanted to create a network of homeless charities so we can have a look at what’s going on in other countries and compare, say, homelessness in Islington and Buenos Aires,” says Billy.
The training is all conducted on open source software that is free to download, which enables the trainees to take the skills they have learned back to their communities and workplaces. Billy has taken this a step further and extended the reach of the training beyond the UK.
“Our international partners can blog anytime they want. We created a training package that we have on our website to support the international people so they can do podcasts as well.”
Ten Feet Away is exactly the kind of project that innovative radio slots like Radio Five Live’s Pods and Blogs are interested in. The show, hosted by Chris Valance, has been running since April 2005 and features content from citizen journalists, interviews with bloggers and reports on developments in new media at home and abroad.
Chris is anxious to see more citizen journalism on the show to supplement the hard hitting podcasts it has already broadcast on topics like the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 7/7 attacks on London and the reaction to the recent spate of shootings in Peckham, created by Radiopeckham.org.
Chris says “I do think that the media could do more to raise awareness of how empowering the new technology can be. Of course it's time consuming, costs money, and there are elements that are technically challenging, which is where groups like ORM can help people on the wrong side of the digital divide gain a voice. That kind of work is hugely valuable as is the content it creates.”
Chris is reluctant to say the show has broken any stories as most are featured on blogs before they reach him, yet his show has been the conduit through which some major stories have reached a wider audience.
“The story about the US army using white phosphorus for more than just illumination was first broken by a blogger called Insomnia, but he tipped us off to the story and we passed that on to colleagues covering the military.”
It’s unlikely that many of the groups trained by ORM, Index on Censorship and British Friends of the Hebrew University among them, are going to break a major international story, but this is not the point. Citizen journalism is changing the way the media operates across the globe. If Islington’s homeless are already on the web reporting, blogging, vlogging and podcasting, that change will surely know no bounds.
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
Second hand clothing is the green way forward
YOUNG women are addicted to bargain-hunting. Fashion fads are changing ever more quickly. Credit cards are bending and wardrobes are bulging. Primark, Asda and Topshop have never had it so good.
But how does our desire for this month’s fashion must-have weigh up against growing concerns for the environmental impact of the clothing industry? With more than 26.5 million people employed by the textile industry worldwide, fashionistas are beginning to ask questions: can they have this season’s dress and help to save the planet at the same time?
According to a new study published by the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Manufacturing, this is not an impossible task. Ethically minded shoppers simply need to sort out where and how they find their fashion fix.
The report, which assesses the carbon footprint of an ordinary t-shirt from cotton plant to high street, highlights the environmental and social impacts of bagging the cheapest bargain only to throw it away after a few outings.
The greatest harm comes from the burning of fossil fuels to provide electricity for washing and laundering clothes. Other problems arise from the toxins used in cotton production and the high water consumption of the textile industry.
With the average Briton spending £780 on clothing and sending over 30kg of clothing to landfill sites each year, the report suggests a change in consumer behaviour is one of the best ways to reduce the impact of the industry on the climate.
Among recommendations for ‘ideal consumer behaviour’ is the idea that shoppers should turn to second-hand stores for their ‘price tag fix’, or consider renting clothing that would otherwise only be worn once or twice.
Only 30 per cent of old clothing is currently given to charity shops or recycled, and 19 per cent of clothes and shoes were bought in low cost supermarkets in 2005, highlighting the growing trend for cheap-chic clothes.
Citing the rise of ‘fast fashion’ in the past five years as a catalyst for environmentally harmful practices, the report outlines the need to reduce the flow of clothes through the UK market. It suggests shoppers could repair clothes that have minor damage rather than replacing them, and spend more on better quality clothing that lasts longer.
Stefano Ubaldini, manager of second-hand clothing shop Traid on Holloway Road, believes second-hand clothing is a great option for green shoppers.
He says: “We try to be creative with the clothing we sell. We aim it at a specifically at young people as they are more willing to make their own style, but even professionals can wear second hand clothing in their free time.”
Ubaldini says second-hand clothing could feasibly grow in popularity in the future.
“The best thing is that you can make your own style and make your contribution to this colourful neighbourhood,” he adds.
Figures from Oxfam, the largest UK charity retailer, suggest this feeling may not be far from the truth. Profit from Oxfam’s 750 stores has been growing for the past four years, with last year seeing a 20 per cent profit increase from £17.8 million to £20.8 million. Clothing remains the most profitable sector in this surge.
However, whether fashion-conscious shoppers are prepared to tear themselves away from the bargain trends available in high street stores remains to be seen.
Ruth Rosselson, spokesperson for The Ethical Consumer, believes the report’s recommendations are realistic and necessary.
“Buying second-hand clothing diverts money away from companies that are exploiting workers abroad," she says. "We must start trying to implement this when we can.
“Fashion has to wake up to the impact it is having and we must move away from fast fashion, as it is simply not sustainable.”
Wednesday, 7 February 2007
High points, low points
By Rosie Stewart
Diana Shelly, 63, is chairman of the Cally Rail Group, a pressure group campaigning against the negative impact of the King's Cross development in the Caledonian area of Islington. She lives in north London with her partner Phil. Here she describes the death of her mother Isobel.
IT WAS as if I was a spider on the end of a thread, dangling over a void.
I realised there was something wrong with Mum at the end of March 1995, when she was staying in Somerset with her friend Rene. She suddenly had a black out and fell down. She started to go to the Royal Free in London for tests.
Isobel was fiercely independent and she didn’t want me to come with her. She was curious, alive, and she always wanted to know things. She was also stroppy as hell and very determined.
Then the care team called: “We’re really worried because she’s called us out twice running because she’s fallen over, we think she should go into hospital.”
I went tearing up to her house in Hampstead, dropping everything from my desk at UNISON where I worked as a communications officer. I was on automatic. I went to the hospital in the ambulance. I sat in casualty for four hours waiting. Then the doctors said: “We can’t work out what’s wrong with her. We’re sending her home.”
They suggested that she go home in a taxi but there were steps and she could have fallen and hurt herself. I had to fight to get her home in an ambulance. By this time she had periods of incontinence and was blacking out again.
After 24 hours I stamped my tiny middle class feet and threw my weight around. I spoke to a doctor who said, “Can’t you look after her?” They talk as if you can suddenly leave your job.
I had this completely sleepless night and then called the care team and cried down the phone to them. They gave me the strength to go back to the doctor. That was at the end of April and we had about a month in which they were doing tests.
The consultant asked if she drank and I said she did drink a little more than I was comfortable with. Immediately they think there’s a big black cross against her, she’s an alcoholic that’s why she’s falling over. Then they asked: “Is she always this muddled?”
This was a woman who did the Guardian crossword - and I don’t mean the quick crossword - over her breakfast before she’d finished her coffee. We’re not talking about someone who is muddled; we are talking about someone who is ill.
They would do one test and then we would wait. Then they’d do another and that would take another week.
The horror is that you think, “Do I get what I want by throwing my weight around or do I then become one of those really difficult people who go to the back of the queue?” It’s a really fine balance.
Isobel never left. We went through four or five weeks of this achingly slow diagnosis and eventually they worked out it was cancer. She had a brain tumour.
After a certain point I realised that she’s not going to remember who I am. My first inkling of that was when she woke up one day and said, “Hello, Gillian.” I think I was prepared for that. I just knew there was a point when she wouldn’t realise who I was at all. But it was very intermittent: I’d get a very rational conversation and then it would go away again.
I knew that she was really scared of getting Alzheimer’s or something like that but by the time I knew it was a brain tumour I couldn’t talk to her about it. I didn’t know whether she’d understand and I felt it was too much of a burden for her. We discussed with the doctor the possibility of radiotherapy but we knew we would just be prolonging it.
Then her wonderful friend Rene said: “You know your mother always said that she just wanted to slip away.”
If all you’re doing is prolonging someone’s life in the most painful way then there’s just no point.
We made her as comfortable as possible and it got to the point when I sat there saying, “It’s all right, you can go now if you want to.” She died at the beginning of July.
Grieving takes a long time. It’s step by step. Immediately it’s more about the practicalities: the funeral, the council tax, bank accounts, all that sort of stuff.
It was such a roller coaster, but there is a point when you want normality and you want something you know how to do. I needed a structure. I needed a routine and I needed to realise again what it was I could do well.
There’s also a certain point at which you don’t wake up every morning and think, “My mother’s dead.” You come out of a tunnel. You can see the light for a long time and eventually you reach it.
I’m an only child and I realised that I didn’t have a clue about anything to do with my family apart from my parents. So I started to research my family history and it’s become very important to me. I feel I know where I come from. I have a security now; I call it a backstitch.
When you’re backstitching you’re going back, underneath and forward. That’s what I see myself doing because I’m trying to stitch myself back into history.
Wednesday, 22 November 2006
REVIEW - Pasha’s birthday bash-a
By Anh Nguyen
Pasha
301 Upper Street
020 7226 1454
***
A RESTAURANT in Angel celebrated its 35th birthday on Monday by offering a special menu at prices from the seventies. For one day only, Pasha made authentic Turkish dishes available at kebab shop prices.
For those who have never tried Turkish food, this was not an opportunity to miss. A full reservations book proved the point.
Inside, large Turkish paintings told fairy tales from the walls, and exotic, bronze light fittings might have stored gold, frankincense or myrrh.
Unfortunately, there was not a single pair of flares in sight. The only sign of nostalgia was the seventies soundtrack pumping classics such as the original Lady Marmalade.
Waiters dressed all in black bustled around seating and serving men and women in business attire. Despite their uniform, diners could not have failed to appreciate the distinctive-looking waiters.
A jolly, Pedro Almodovar look-a-like, the Spanish film director recognisable by his large build and mop of curly hair, provided a speedy service, with a charisma that “Manuel” of Fawlty Towers would envy. (“Beautiful place, beautiful food, beautiful company.”) Incidentally, there was also a “Manuel” look-a-like, who was less able to disperse the “Mediterranean” charm and enthusiasm.
The “Sultans Meze”, a plate of four dips including tomato couscous and hummous (£1.50) was plenty as a starter for two, and baskets of pitta bread were small change at 20p each.
The most expensive dishes on the menu were main courses at £3.20 each. Tender lamb or chicken shish came with a perfect mound of aubergine rice, but was let down slightly by a plain, watery salad.
Things perked up for dessert, however, and the single scoop of vanilla ice cream, dusted with dark chocolate (50p), melted in the mouth with the extremely rich baklava (75p), which was enough to forgive any weeping salad.
Wednesday, 18 October 2006
Islington's next modern Tory
By Rosie Lavan
IT’S not easy being a Tory in Islington. The party hasn’t had a councillor here since the early 90s, hasn’t controlled a council since the late 60s, and this is, of course, the borough where New Labour was born.
Islington’s Tories are known mainly for their conspicuous absence. The response of a community worker in north Islington is representative – a shrug, a smile, and “well, they’re non-existent”.
A core of activists is trying to raise the profile of the Conservatives here – and this, they admit, is the first obstacle. The party has long lacked the support it needs to get its message across at a grassroots level. In an effort to bolster dwindling membership Islington Conservative Association (ICA) was formed recently, merging the local parties from the two constituencies in the borough.
Despite a 200 per cent gain in the share of the vote at the local elections this year, neither of the Islington constituencies are in line for David Cameron’s A-List treatment at the next general election: they are just not considered to be ‘winnable seats’.
A local activist and regular in the Conservative “blogosphere”, Paul Newman is quick to identify their problem – “the sheer indiscipline of the Conservative Party”, and their enemy – be it Ken Livingstone or that “fat fraud” John Prescott. Newman is seeking his party’s nomination as a Conservative candidate for the next Mayor of London.
In Islington, he says, “there is a natural Labour constituency that just sits there and is never going to go away”. Under a Liberal Democrat council and amidst solid Labour sympathy, the Conservatives are campaigning on issues they hope will give them a foothold in the electorate – championing leaseholders, for example.
For Deputy Chairman of the ICA, Duncan Webster, his own generation of recent graduates – feeling for the first time the full force of council tax, living costs and the congestion charge – are a key demographic.
Webster, 26, chairs Islington Conservative Futures (ICF) which organises social events for young members.
He admits they are battling with an image problem – he looks uneasy at his own vision of Young Conservatives on a night out in nightclub Fabric – but says ICF is “a good way of unpoliticised young people in an unpoliticised way”.
Boundaries between political parties may be becoming increasingly blurred, and Newman and Webster might be convinced that their party has changed – “we’re modern Conservatives”, Newman affirms – but it’s Islington they have to convince.