Coronavirus (COVID-19): domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women and girls - 30/3/20-22/05/20

1. Introduction

The following paper outlines emerging trends that have been identified from qualitative research on the experience of individuals and families experiencing domestic abuse.

The research took place over the initial 8 weeks of the COVID-19 'lockdown', with week 1 being considered to commence on 30/03/20 and week 8 commencing 18/05/20.

Evidence for this report has been gleaned from three sources:

• Semi-structured telephone interviews with Scottish statutory and third sector organisations involved in supporting people experiencing or perpetrating domestic abuse or other forms of VAWG;^[1]
• Documentary evidence provided by organisations involved in supporting people experiencing or perpetrating domestic abuse or other forms of VAWG; and
• Written qualitative empirical examples provided by members of Police Scotland's Domestic Abuse Champions' network.

The services/organisations involved in the research have been anonymised. The majority of organisations that participated primarily supported female victims of domestic abuse and the majority of incidents referred to involved a female victim and male perpetrator.^[2] Where possible, the terminology of "victim" and "perpetrator" has been used throughout the paper in order to maintain the anonymity of the small number of organisations that support all genders of victim.