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
The New Scotland Yard sign at Metropolitan Police headquarters (Photo: Handout)
The training encompasses “using sensitive language” and the preference for sending a female police officer to support a woman experiencing abuse.
One in four women experience domestic abuse in their lifetime. A Jewish woman in an abusive relationship takes around nine and a half years to seek support, said Handler, double the average time a non-Jewish woman takes.
Handler said barriers included “wanting to keep a Shalom Bayit (Peace in the Home), fear of approaching non-Jewish services, fear that the children will be moved into non-Jewish foster care and the stigma and shame attached to seeking help for domestic abuse.”
For women in an abusive relationship who may be hesitant about using the phone to seek help on Shabbat, Handler said that the concept of “Pikuach Nefesh” (saving a life) was central to the charity’s work.
“If women are concerned about using the phone on Shabbat, we have JWA-trained rabbis who can advise them on this issue.”
The charity will also be training current Met forces in areas with large Jewish communities, starting with Barnet and Hackney and is also in talks with Greater Manchester Police.
Commenting on JWA’s new training programme, Handler said: “We now feel that we can reassure our clients when supporting them to call the police if they feel threatened and [that] it is safe to do so [...]The Met Police have had cultural sensitivity training and [they] will be able to answer their calls with appropriate compassion.”
A Met spokesperson said: “We want to make sure officers are aware of and understand the different communities they serve when policing London. We are very grateful to Jewish Women’s Aid for delivering a fantastic presentation, which received great feedback from students.”
