Serenity Rose is heading a London-based survivor-led campaign, together with The Public Interest Law Centre, aimed at receiving justice, social change and acknowledgement of the harms done to women previously denied access to safety when applying for housing assistance after fleeing abuse and violence against women & girls.

After the landmark amendment to the Domestic Abuse Bill, women now have a legislative right to help but historical systemic failures to safeguard often hold lifelong repercussions, impacting survivors in ways which have largely been unseen and unheard. Serenity joins FiLiA’s Sadia Hameed to discuss her experiences as a survivor, the problems in our systems of misogyny and repeated discrimination against women and girls. Serenity hopes this campaign will create: a collective voice of survivors who have previously been silenced, systemically, who basically say the truth of “this is what has been happening to us for all these years. She argues: There needs to be a shift socially, and a recognition of that… we need to stand together and very very strongly state: “this was wrong and we want something done about it.”

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If you feel you have been wrongly treated by London councils when you most needed help with accessing safe housing please get in touch with Serenity or Helen and Isabella from the Public Interest Law Centre who will provide you with an emphatic ear, guidance and a community of women working towards transcendence of what was wrongly done to us at our most vulnerable; one voice alone is often ignored, many voices together speak truth into change!

Transcript

SH -  Could you tell us a little bit about yourself please?

SR – I refer to myself in some sense as a campaigner and in another sense I would also refer to myself as a domestic abuse and trafficking survivor. I have many hats. In this context I would say, a campaigner because that’s the purpose of this podcast which is to announce the current campaign I am launching and the awareness of that.

SH – What is the campaign?

SR – It’s a housing campaign around women survivors of domestic abuse and that comes under the banner of any kind of abuse, a broad umbrella. Sometimes when you say domestic violence, people think of a very black and white perspective of what that constitutes, which is why I thought it quite important to mention that.

The campaign is basically to bring together a coalition and collective of survivors to voice their grievances and what has happened in their housing places because across the board there has been so many failings that have taken place when it comes to survivors, women who have fled domestic violence, applying for help with housing with local authorities.

Also we recently had the DA Bill go through which is amazing and there was an amendment put through on the DA Bill that was pushed by the APPG Homelessness group to include a priority status for survivors. They managed to successfully make that amendment.

The DA Bill, which is amazing, such fantastic news, a much needed shift in legislation and culture as a whole.

But now what needs to happen to cement that legislation is a social shift of awareness, whereby survivors as a collective have their voice heard of what has happened to us historically up until the point of the legislation change.

SH – So what is the story of what’s been happening to survivors?

SR – On a personal level, my personal experience, centred around homeless and housing issues, where there was a complete and utter lack of safeguarding, almost a disdain of my experience of domestic abuse and trafficking and just basically a failure to recognise that as a visible issue on one side and also a failure to recognise that as a reason enough to give me any access to any kind of help.

SH – How often do you see the same story replicated?

SR – I have personally spoken to other survivors who echo sentiments of my own experience. In a personal capacity and also in a media capacity and statistics and studies where you see this mirroring of experience happen time and time again because the methods of obstruction and gate keeping that the councils have used and the failures in safeguards are just repeated across the board, over and over again.

SH – So what are the most common things that you would see in cases of domestic violence or trafficking or cases like yours where survivors have experienced both. What are the common issues that crop up in relation to housing with those survivors?

SR – I see it as there are 2 sides to the failings. One where the councils’ term legally as gate keeping, basically ignoring the guidelines around domestic abuse and trafficking.

So they do things like: ask the applicant to provide them with endless amount of evidence to prove the abuse or just unreasonable requests that are either intrusive or puts the survivor at risk of further harm – I think it was in the media, she had approached the council for housing and they had asked her to provide a letter from her perpetrator. That’s an example which is a ridiculous thing. It doesn’t even fathom thinking about that somebody who is sitting behind a desk dealing with vulnerable people day in and day out, to think it was appropriate to ask a domestic abuse victim, they’re still in that cycle, to go and get their abuser to write them a letter for permission/of admission.

SH – Presumably, correct me if I’m wrong, either the police or social care are involved if it’s reached a stage of a survivor going to get housing support. Would that be right?

SR – Not in every case are social care involved because often, the applicant may not have children. So there are cases where women are applying as a single applicant, or even if she does have children, it might not meet the threshold for social work to be involved because they do have a specific threshold to reach before they deem that child as a child in need.

Off the top of my head I’m not sure of the exact criteria, it’s if they believe there is a risk to the child. It’s basically opinion based so it’s down to that particular social worker to deem – is there a high enough risk that this child might be at risk of neglect or harm.

SH – Who is responsible for these failures?

SR – I feel like it’s a systemic issue and that this is not something that’s an individual issue where one member of staff of one particular organisation or council is singlehandedly responsible for what’s happening,

Eg. The essay I recently wrote details the history behind my case where I’ve come in contact with various organisations such as the police, mental health services and housing departments in various councils, where I’ve been treated with pretty much a discriminatory way in each and every instance. It had a cumulative effect on me. These things, they start off in childhood, in childhood you’re almost perceived as a victim because you don’t fit that perfect stereotype of what a victim should be, especially as I’m a working class person, I could never fit into that very simplistic box and so I just missed the mark as a child. I wasn’t given the help I needed from multiple sources.

As I grew up and became an adult, that perfect victimhood goal became further and further away because of course when you’re repeatedly failed by the system, especially as a teenager and a young adult, you become incredibly bitter and angry and you become very difficult to engage and so the issue becomes even more engrained and I think this is what’s happening with so many women.

SH – You’re right, you see that quite often with women who have been failed by organisation after organisation, when they are then quite hostile to organisations, those organisations think – this person has always been like that – they don’t factor in the picture that they have been failed repeatedly and now they are quite pissed off and rightly so, you can’t keep overlooking somebody’s needs and then expect them to be all singing and dancing and chirpy and okay with the fact that you haven’t been doing your job for them.

SR – Also what needs to recognised, across the board, is that, in this instance we’re focusing on housing and homelessness applications, what needs to be recognised, and thankfully is now recognised in legislation but needs to happen on a social level, is that the onus and the burden of proof should never be solely at the feet of the victim. It should be 100% down to the person who is being paid to interview and investigate in a fair manner, that particular circumstance. It should be down to them to use their intuition, empathy and initiative to look into something in an individualistic manner instead of just sitting there, doing their figures and saying, right we’ve only got a certain amount of housing stock so therefore what demographic can we strike off, which is what it feels like. It feels like they’ve sat there in a meeting with managers from various councils and said – who can we not deal with? I know, we’ll not deal with domestic abuse survivors because the refuges will pick up the pieces and the refuges will do the work.

This comes down to the fact that there are just constant themes of discrimination against women time and time again when it comes to violence against women and girls. They talk about this as if it’s a historical context, when you talk about issues like grooming gangs, which I’m a survivor of, they talk about this as if it’s a past issue and has been dealt with. It’s still going on today. It’s still happening today. There’s still that culture of misogyny within councils, the police and the entirety of our systems.

SH – Your campaign is about housing; can we unpack it a little bit more. You said the housing officers and social workers you would be interacting with and would be responsible for housing a survivor and they think the refuges are going to pick up that slack.

Are they picking up that slack? Who are the survivors that fall through the gaps?

There’s a certain risk threshold that survivors need to be at, so which survivors are falling through the gaps?

SR – I think a very large proportion are falling through the gap because my experience and many other survivors I’ve spoken to is that, you’re put in a position when you apply for housing where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

If you’re living with your perpetrator, it’s often used as an excuse to say, that’s something you chose of your own volition, we’re not going to help you until you leave or go into a refuge. On the other end of the spectrum, if you have left and your perpetrator is still abusing you because that’s what they do, you’re then told, which is what happened to me, the abuse isn’t immediate, it isn’t current, it isn’t occurring now because they fail to recognise the cumulative effects of domestic abuse and they fail to recognise the circular effect of it where it doesn’t just happen in one incident, it’s a pattern of behaviours. They just don’t see that, they just haven’t updated their training or whatever it is.

SH – It does sound like there was a lack of training but there also needs to be a willingness on their part to engage with any training that’s put on. Training days are great if they’re listening and taking on board what you’re saying, that’s not always the case.

I’m interested in what you said about, you have to leave in order to get housing.

Have you seen instances where women have left and not got housing?

SR – Yes, that’s what happened to me.

My situation was, it took a monumental amount of effort on my part. It was probably one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, to leave my trafficker and then gather enough strength within me to approach the council, despite being failed as a child and as a teenager by previous councils for housing and basically lay everything bare and say I need your help.

That took an incredible amount of strength to do that. Upon doing that, they completely ignored the element of domestic abuse. They didn’t even recognise it and they just looked at my mental health and they looked at that aspect and they subjected me to the vulnerability test at that stage. You’re set up to fail from the outset with that test.

SH – What is the vulnerability test? What are they looking for?

SR – I think they’ve scrapped it now because they’ve changed the legislation so I would hope women don’t have to do it anymore.

They would compare the applicant to a ‘normal’ homeless person and they would then decide whether or not the applicant would be more vulnerable than a ‘normal’ homeless person. It was wide open to exploitation because it was opinion based and no criteria to define what is a ’normal’ homeless person or what is vulnerable.

SH – Presumably it’s dependent on that worker’s knowledge and understanding of domestic abuse. If they don’t understand domestic abuse, then they wouldn’t know if they’re more at risk as a homeless person.

 SR – Completely, because they haven’t had enough training or knowledge and there’s no accountability either when it comes to reviewing their progress because they’re all about keeping the numbers down. The focus is on keeping the numbers down, we don’t want any more applicants.

Failings are happening at all angles.

There’s not a multi-agency approach with most councils. They don’t engage the police; they don’t really communicate with domestic abuse advocacy services. They leave all of that up to the victim and say – right, if you want to do it, you can do it but we’re not going to make it a multi-agency thing.

SH –  Is that part of what you’re going to do with your campaign, raise the awareness within housing organisations and councils to feed into multi agency meetings and set up with what already exists in the domestic abuse sphere?

SR – I think that would be an element that would be a great achievement to have had done as a result of this campaign.

What I’m wanting to achieve is a collective voice of survivors who have previously been silenced, systemically. To say this is the truth, this is what’s been happening to us for all these years and it’s not just a case of a one-off. Women’s lives have been wrecked and destroyed as a result of these failings.

It’s been 12 years of my life that I was subjected to repeated homelessness intertwined with trafficking and abuse because no-one recognised me as vulnerable enough for help. All that did was to serve to re-victimise me and create a victim of the system.

SH – What is the message of your campaign? What would you like to tell people?

SR – I would like to personally extend my hand to other women and other survivors that this has happened to. If you recognise any of these treatments by the council. If the council have placed you in accommodation with 200 men in a hostel and you’re the only woman there whose fled domestic violence. If they have failed to listen to you or hear when you’ve said that you are at risk and they’ve put you in danger zones near to your perpetrator and blamed you for your own homelessness and said you made yourself intentionally homeless, if they have done that to you, they were wrong.

There needs to be a shift socially and a recognition of that. I feel that we need to stand together and strongly state that this is what happened to us, it was wrong, we want something done about it.

SH – How can women get involved?

SR – To get involved, you can contact me on Twitter, handle Serenity Rose. I’m working with Youmysister. I’ve just constructed a recovery course for women who have just come out of sexual exploitation. So can contact me that way or the Law centre https://www.pilc.org.uk/

Although I’ve been coming across as quite strong in this talk, I don’t want people to think this is purely a rage filled conquest, although that is an aspect of it.

I feel it’s important to voice a victory in overcoming those obstacles. I am in a place now where I have overcome those obstacles and I want to extend that to other women and other survivors who may still be going through that cycle and still may be suffering and that there is a light at the end of it and you can come out of this so much stronger. There’s so much more positivity that’s going to come out of this.