Met Police officers are getting training from JWA to also help Jewish women experiencing sexual violence at the hands of their partner
August 3, 2023 11:25
Police officers are to receive “cultural sensitivity” training to help them support Jewish women experiencing domestic and sexual violence.
Jewish Women’s Aid will educate the Metropolitan Police on how Jewish culture and practice “can be used as a further tool to perpetrate abuse”, said the charity’s outreach lead, Ziona Handler.
Officers will learn how the laws surrounding family purity, kashrut and Shabbat could be used to abuse a woman in a relationship. They will also learn how withholding a get can be abuse.
An inaugural training session for 300 trainee officers has already been held at Hendon Police College and JWA will be rolling out the sessions for all new Met cohorts, said Handler.
She said: “The laws of family purity are there to ensure that a woman has a safe space, but a perpetrator could abuse them by forcing a woman to have a physical relationship when she is not permitted to [according to Jewish Law].”
An abuser may also force a woman to have a physical relationship after she has visited the mikveh, “but going to the mikveh doesn’t mean consent”.
Domestic abuse may include making a woman eat something that isn’t kosher or “forcing stricter rules surrounding Shabbat than had been agreed upon before the marriage”, she said.
Trainee police officers will be educated on “the pressures during Shabbat and festivals and that a woman may not always be able to answer a phone-call at these times”.
The New Scotland Yard sign at Metropolitan Police headquarters (Photo: Handout)
