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VISION researchers present at the European Conference on Domestic Violence

Fourteen researchers from across the UKPRP VISION research consortium attended the September 2025 European Conference on Domestic Violence (ECDV) in Barcelona, Spain. The team presented key findings from their VISION research and several also convened a symposium. It was a successful turnout from the team and a fantastic networking opportunity.

The ECDV conference aims to support and reflect the aims of the Council of Europe’s Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. It was developed to enhance the visibility and connection of individuals working to address domestic violence in Europe, while also benefitting from the contribution of colleagues from outside Europe.

  • Anastasia Fadeeva convened the symposium Health perspectives on addressing domestic violence and abuse
  • Ladan Hashemi, Anastasia Fadeeva and Sally McManus presented Gender Asymmetry in Physical Health Associations with Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)
  • Anastasia Fadeeva and Niels Blom presented Injuries and Seeking Healthcare following Violence: Inequalities by Victim-Perpetrator Relationship
  • Vanessa Gash presented Hounded Out? Measuring the Effect of Workplace Violence on Women and Men’s Employment Transitions
  • Natalia Lewis and Lizzie Cook participated in the workshop, Community of practice for evidence syntheses on gender-based violence: learning together to enable methodological developments and improve evidence for policy and practice.
  • Lizzie Cook presented Analysing sex/gender-related motives and indicators in England and Wales
  • Sally McManus presented Commercial Determinants of Health: Opportunities for domestic violence prevention from a public health framework analysis which was written with VISION colleagues Olumide Adisa and Mark Bellis.
  • Ruth Weir convened the symposium Violence and abuse in young people’s intimate relationships
  • Polina Obolenskaya and Annie Bunce presented Too soon, too late: experience of and professional responses to abuse in teenage relationships
  • Ruth Weir presented ADA and its consequences: a rapid systematic review
  • Annie Bunce convened the symposium, Exploring multiple vulnerabilities using specialist services’ administrative data: Challenges, opportunities and lessons for the future
  • Maddy Janickyj and Leonie Tanczer presented Understanding Technology-Facilitated Abuse: Exploring real-life experiences through Support Services’ data
  • Annie Bunce presented The role of vulnerability in the inequity of health outcomes for DVA survivors
  • Hannah Manzur presented Disclosure to Formal Agencies and Specialised Support Services among Victims of Intimate Partner Domestic Abuse: Comparing Inequality Patterns, Victim Profiles, and Harms by Disclosure, written with VISION colleagues Annie and Ravi
  • Ladan Hashemi and Hannah Manzur presented Ethnic Disparities in outcomes from contact with DVA support services
  • Gene Feder convened the symposium Adding to the evidence base that community-based perpetrator programmes work to reduce abuse: Positive findings from REPROVIDE, a UK randomised controlled trial

Photographs:

  1. Top, left to right: Annie Bunce (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Ruth Weir (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Nicola Farrelly (University of Lancashire), Polina Obolenskaya (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Christine Barter (University of Lancashire), Aisling Barker (Islington City Council and City St George’s University of London), and Katrina Hadjimatheou (University of Essex)
  2. Middle, left to right: Hannah Manzur (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Ladan Hashemi (VISION, City St George’s University of London), Maddy Janickyj (VISION, University College London), and Annie Bunce (VISION, City St George’s University of London)
  3. Second from bottom: Vanessa Gash (VISION, City St George’s University of London)
  4. Bottom, left to right: Angel Deng (Kings College London), and Ladan Hashemi, Anastasia Fadeeva and Sally McManus (VISION, City St George’s University of London)

What is tech abuse and how can we tackle it?

Drs Leonie Tanczer and Madeleine Janickyj of the University College London (UCL) Gender and Tech Research Lab and the VISION research consortium, developed a policy briefing, What is tech abuse and how can we tackle it?, with their colleagues at the Gender and Tech Research Lab and the UCL Policy Impact Unit.

Technology-facilitated abuse (tech abuse) refers to the deliberate (mis)use or repurposing of digital systems to coerce, harass, or abuse others. While it is most commonly associated with domestic abuse and stalking, it also occurs in professional and institutional contexts, as well as from strangers.

It is a widespread problem: in the UK, 1.4 million women experienced domestic abuse in 2023-24. In abusive intimate relationships, tech abuse can extend and intensify existing patterns of coercive control, leading to greater levels of harm. Abusers may, for example, send persistent, obscene, or threatening digital communications or track a partner’s movements via GPS or app surveillance. They may also restrict access to accounts, services, or finances.

Despite a shared understanding of tech abuse across sectors and stakeholders, a consensus remains lacking on its precise definition and scope. This definitional ambiguity hinders efforts to measure its prevalence and impact, ultimately limiting how effective prevention and intervention strategies can be.

Recommendations

Tackling tech abuse requires a whole systems approach and better measurement. Other recommendations include:

  • Enforce safety-by-design principles and mandatory abusability testing for technology products to proactively address potential misuse
  • Deepen understanding of perpetrator behaviour and motivations to inform prevention and intervention strategies
  • Leverage innovative methods, such as machine learning, to better understand and respond to tech abuse
  • Improve coordinated responses from police, frontline domestic abuse services, tech companies, and government/international bodies, backed by sufficient and sustainable funding
  • Future-proof policies and regulations, clarify responsibility, and determine accountability across different stakeholders
  • Stop the normalisation of Tech Abuse to support more victims/survivors to seek help, including through honest conversations around digital consent

To download: What is Tech Abuse and how can we tackle it?

To cite: Janickyj, M., Koukopoulos, N., Polamarasetty, A., Reed, J., & Tanczer, L. M. (2025). Policy Brief: What is Tech Abuse and how can we tackle it? Gender and Tech Research Lab, University College London.

For further information, please contact Maddy at m.janickyj@ucl.ac.uk

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Insecure migration status increases risk of multiple forms of violence

Insecure migration status is defined as any person who does not have a long term secure immigration status and might fear removal from the country if they fail to comply with their visa restrictions, even if the failure to comply is unknown to them, if forced due to fear for their physical safety, or is coerced.

Research produced by Drs Alexandria Innes and Hannah Manzur of the VISION consortium and PhD student Jana Kriechbaum, Violence and Society Centre at City St George’s University of London, found that people in insecure migration status face or fear violence where violence prevention efforts and violence protection are either not extended to them, or are not made accessible to them.

Findings from their VISION Policy Briefing

The prevalence of violence against people in insecure migration status is a cause for concern. Prevalence of violence is not meaningfully different for people based on type of insecure status, such as those with undocumented status, asylum seekers and refugees, or employer-dependent visas.

Women on spousal visas connect experiences of domestic violence to insecurities associated with their immigration status. The power imbalance embedded in relationships that involve one citizen and one foreigner is exacerbated by attaching the relationship to dependent visa restrictions. Women on spousal visas associated their inability or unwillingness to leave a violent homelife with a fear of immigration removal, therefore prolonging their exposure to violence.

Recommendations

  1. Decouple immigration enforcement from violence prosecution and victim support
  2. Expand protections for survivors of domestic violence
  3. Strengthen protections for victims of work-related exploitation and improve employer regulations
  4. Address state violence in detention and border contexts
  5. Align immigration policies with public health frameworks

To download the VISION Policy Briefing: Insecure Migration

To cite: Innes, Alexandria; Manzur, Hannah; Kriechbaum, Jana (2025). VISION Policy Briefing: Insecure Migration. City, University of London. Report. https://doi.org/10.25383/city.29860142.v1

For further information, please contact Andri at Alexandria.Innes@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Measuring the effectiveness of UK support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse

Developing effective responses to domestic and sexual violence and abuse (DVSA) is critical. In the UK there are many support interventions and services, primarily provided by the third sector. Previous systematic reviews of the global evidence have found benefits of such interventions on a range of outcomes.

Despite this, there is limited understanding of which exact outcomes and outcome measures are currently being used both within and across DSVA support services and interventions in the UK specifically. Further, existing systematic reviews only focus on a single type of intervention or service, prohibiting comparisons across service types. Many also have only included evidence published in academic journals, potentially limiting and biasing findings.

For their VISION Policy Briefing, Drs Annie Bunce and Sophie Carlisle, carried out two evidence syntheses:

  1. A scoping review to identify, group and explore outcome measures that have been used to assess the effectiveness of UK-based DSVA support interventions or services.
  2. A systematic review to assess the effectiveness of these interventions or services in terms of the most commonly reported outcomes identified in the scoping review.

Findings include:

  1. Outcome measures assessing the effectiveness of support interventions and services are varied and inconsistent.
  2. Where consistent measures have been used, meta-analyses demonstrate potential benefits of UK-based advocacy and outreach services, psychological support interventions, and perpetrator programmes.
  3. Studies and evaluations assessing the effectiveness of support interventions and services are often methodologically flawed.
  4. Conflicting demands and lack of sufficient funding make robust testing and evaluation difficult in the third sector, reflecting a circular challenge.
  5. There was a lack of evidence for certain types of services and interventions (e.g. specialist sexual violence services/Independent Sexual Violence Advisers [ISVAs] and by-and-for services).

Recommendations

Further high-quality research into the effectiveness of DVSA interventions of perpetrator programmes are required, including randomised controlled studies where appropriate and ethical, to improve certainty regarding the effect estimates generated from evidence syntheses. Published protocols, adherence to reporting guidelines such as CONSORT, STROBE and SQUIRE 2.0, and considering and accounting for confounding factors where randomisation is not feasible, will strengthen the research.

Developing a core outcome set via co-production with survivors and service users, practitioners and service providers, commissioners, policy makers and researchers will increase consistency in reported outcomes and create the cohesion.

To download the VISION Policy Briefing: Measuring the effectiveness of support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse in the UK

To cite: Bunce, Annie; Carlisle, Sophie (2025). VISION Policy Briefing: Measuring the effectiveness of support services and interventions for domestic and sexual violence and abuse in the UK. City, University of London. Report. https://doi.org/10.25383/city.29852984.v1

For further information, please contact Annie at annie.bunce@citystgeorges.ac.uk

Impact of verbal abuse as a child just as harmful as physical abuse

Globally, one in six children are estimated to suffer physical abuse within domestic and family relationships. As well as immediate health risks associated with the physical trauma of abuse, physical abuse can have lifelong impacts on mental and physical health and well-being. Thus, even as adults, individuals who have been physically abused as children show higher levels of anxiety and depression as well as more problematic alcohol and drug use.

As a source of toxic stress, verbal abuse, like physical abuse, may affect the neurobiological development of children, leading to immediate and long-term impacts on health and well-being. Like physical abuse, verbal abuse has also been linked with poor mental and physical health outcomes during childhood and across the life course. Increasingly, empirical evidence supports verbal abuse causing damage to child development.

For the study, Comparative relationships between physical and verbal abuse of children, life course mental well-being and trends in exposure: a multi-study secondary analysis of cross-sectional surveys in England and Wales, VISION researcher Professor Mark Bellis and his team, combined data from multiple studies measuring child abuse across England and Wales. They tested the associations with poorer mental well-being across the life course with experiencing physical abuse or verbal abuse as a child individually as well as the impact associated with combined exposure to both abuse types.

Their research showed that exposure to childhood physical or verbal abuse has similar associations with lower mental wellbeing during adulthood. In fact, results identified around a 50% increase in likelihood of low mental wellbeing related to exposure to either form of abuse. With regard to verbal abuse, children who experienced ridicule, threats or humiliation from a parent / guardian have a 64% higher chance of poor mental health as an adult. The researchers also discovered that whilst physical abuse reduces over time, verbal abuse increases.

Verbal abuse may not immediately manifest in ways that catch the attention of bystanders, clinicians, or others in supporting services with a responsibility for safeguarding children. However, as suggested here, some impacts may be no less harmful or protracted. The potential impact of verbal abuse should be better considered in policy, and parenting and child protection interventions. The potential role of childhood verbal abuse in escalating levels of poor mental health among younger age groups needs greater consideration.

Recommendation

Interventions to reduce child abuse, including physical chastisement, should consider both physical and verbal abuse and their individual and combined consequences to life course health.

To download: Comparative relationships between physical and verbal abuse of children, life course mental well-being and trends in exposure: a multi-study secondary analysis of cross-sectional surveys in England and Wales

To cite: Bellis MA, Hughes K, Ford K, et al. Comparative relationships between physical and verbal abuse of children, life course mental well-being and trends in exposure: a multi-study secondary analysis of cross-sectional surveys in England and Wales. BMJ Open 2025;15:e098412. http://doi:10.1136/bmjopen-2024-098412

For further information, please contact Mark at m.a.bellis@ljmu.ac.uk

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Violence in later life: Life course and physical and mental health trajectories

Research has demonstrated that violence is associated with worse health in older age. Most of the evidence, however, comes from cross-sectional studies. Research showing how health changes over time in people who have experienced lifetime violence is very scarce.

To address this gap, VISION researchers, led by Dr Anastasia Fadeeva with colleagues Dr Polina Obolenskaya, Dr Estela Capelas Barbosa, Professor Gene Feder and Professor Sally McManus, used seven waves of data from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) collected between 2006 and 2019 (waves 3 to 9), to examine the associations between parental physical abuse in childhood and any physical or sexual violence across the life course, with the subsequent changes in depressive symptoms, the likelihood of probable depression, and long-standing limiting illness.

The team used a sample of 6171 participants aged 50 and over who answered all questions about violence exposure in wave 3 of ELSA, while information about their health was collected from wave 3 to 9.

The VISION study provides new evidence that health consequences are sustained throughout later life. Results showed that violence of different kinds predicts poorer physical and mental health in older age. Furthermore, the health disparities between victims and non-victims did not reduce over time. This was evident in both men and women.

The findings highlight the value of implementing violence prevention measures throughout the life course, not only to mitigate immediate consequences of violence and abuse but also to reduce the burden of ill health in older age. The results also underscore the need to identify modifiable risk factors such as violence in order to inform polices aiming to promote healthy ageing. More longitudinal data, including from administrative sources, are needed to further demonstrate the associations between different types of violence and health outcomes as people age.

Recommendation

Healthy aging could be improved by preventing violence across the life course. Reducing and addressing experiences of violence at a younger age could reduce the burden of – and inequalities in – poor health in later life.

To download: Violence across the life course and physical and mental health trajectories in later life: a 13-year population-based cohort study in England

To cite: Anastasia Fadeeva, Polina Obolenskaya, Estela Capelas Barbosa, Gene Feder, Sally McManus, Violence across the life course and physical and mental health trajectories in later life: a 13-year population-based cohort study in England, The Lancet Healthy Longevity, Volume 6, Issue 7, July 2025, 100738 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf064

For further information, please contact Anastasia at anastasia.fadeeva@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Online and offline stalking victimisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales

Stalking is a global phenomenon described as a pattern of repeated, intrusive behaviours that cause fear, alarm, and distress in the victim/survivor. Over the past two decades, offline stalking, a repeated pattern of behaviours such as physically following a person, which causes fear and distress, has been complemented through online and digital means also known as cyberstalking. Cyberstalking includes the use of the internet, email, and/or systems such as geo-location trackers to further the perpetrators’ reach and amplify the feelings of harassment experienced by a victim/survivor. 

Technology-facilitated harassment is increasingly common, but there is a lack of longitudinal analysis quantifying cyberstalking and its impact on victim/survivors. To address this empirical evidence-based gap, VISION researchers Drs Madeleine Janickyj and Leonie Tanczer at University College of London and Dr Niels Blom at University of Manchester, examined Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) data from the years 2012 to 2020 to provide the first nationally representative look at cyberstalking over the last decade. Their paper, Online and Offline Stalking Victimisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Its Predictors and Victim/Survivors’ Views on Criminalisation, assesses which demographic groups are most likely to experience it across two countries of the United Kingdom (UK; for example, England and Wales) and also explores how these experiences affect the perception of the victim/survivors.

The analysis, involving weighted and multinomial logistic regression, revealed considerable differences between online and offline stalking behaviours. Cyberstalking is not as widespread, but is increasing in prevalence faster than its offline counterpart.

The researchers also assessed the relationship between perpetrators and victim/survivors and found that less than 50 per cent of cyberstalking victim/survivors had an existing relationship with their stalker. Moreover, various demographic groups, such as females, the LGB community, and younger participants, are more likely to be stalked via both online and offline means. While females are more likely to view what happened to them as a crime, the latter two (LGB and younger participants) more often perceive these experiences as wrong but not necessarily a crime. Although these experiences increasingly affect participants, they do not alter their perception of the event in the same way, exposing that these online experiences are thought of differently from those offline.

Recommendation

To further the analyses of cyber-enabled and cyberstalking, some adjustments could be made to the existing stalking experiences that participants are asked about. One current question merges receiving cards, letters, or text messages, combining online and offline experiences. Separating this item into two questions would give more accurate data regarding cyberstalking.

To download: Online and Offline Stalking Victimisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Its Predictors and Victim/Survivors’ Views on Criminalisation

To cite: Madeleine Janickyj, Niels Blom, Leonie Maria Tanczer, Online and Offline Stalking Victimisation in the Crime Survey for England and Wales: Its Predictors and Victim/Survivors’ Views on Criminalisation, The British Journal of Criminology, 2025;, azaf064, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaf064

For further information, please contact Maddy at m.janickyj@ucl.ac.uk

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Carers’ increased risk of domestic violence and poor health outcomes

The poor health of unpaid carers is well-established, and evidence also shows they experience high levels of domestic violence. However, the links between domestic violence and carers’ poor health remains overlooked. The study, Health morbidities in carers with experience of domestic violence and abuse, led by Drs Juliana Onwumere and Emilie Wildman of King’s College London along with research team member Professor Sally McManus, VISION co-Deputy Director, and others, examined this relationship using the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (APMS), a representative sample of the adult population of England.

The results show that carers are more likely to be female, older, economically inactive, and in debt than non-carers, and that carers tend to have worse mental and physical health. One in three carers reported having had experience of domestic violence. With adjustment for confounders, carers were more likely than non-carers to be victims of physical, emotional and sexual forms of violence and abuse. People with experience of both caring responsibilities and domestic violence had particularly poor mental and physical health outcomes (compared to carers and non-carers without experience of domestic violence, as well as non-carers experiencing domestic violence).  

NICE guidelines state that carers should be offered training to help them to provide care safely, including support around managing challenging behaviour from the person being cared for. However, professionals can struggle to identify and respond to carers’ experiences of domestic violence. Facilitating routine enquiry in carers is essential, particularly given that carers often delay seeking support for their own needs carers and may not readily and independently disclose their experiences of violence to professionals.

Recommendations

Efforts to incorporate inquiry into experiences of domestic violence into carers’ needs assessments, which unpaid carers are entitled to, may help facilitate identification and referral to appropriate support services.

Carers high risk of domestic violence goes largely unrecognised in UK policy and practice. This is a sensitive and hidden topic; these findings suggest that addressing carers’ poor health requires also identifying – and addressing – their experiences of domestic violence.

To download: Health morbidities in carers with experience of domestic violence and abuse

To cite: Wildman, E.K., Dickson, H., MacManus, D. McManus, S., Kuipers, E., Onwumere, J. Health morbidities in carers with experience of domestic violence and abuse. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol (2025). Https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-025-02959-4

For further information, please contact Juliana at juliana.1.onwumere@kcl.ac.uk

For further information about APMS, contact Sally at sally.mcmanus@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Schools play important role in prevention and early identification of adolescent toxic relationships

VISION researchers, Dr Polina Obolenskaya, Dr Annie Bunce and Dr Ruth Weir, recently published a blog for the London School of Economics (LSE). Breaking the cycle of harm in adolescent relationships looks at the Netflix series, Adolescence, and the portrayal of the reality of teenage violence, and the complex causes behind it.

The researchers draw on their research into adolescent toxic relationships to highlight the sources of such behaviour, and argue that schools can play an important role in prevention and early identification of harmful relationships between peers.

To read or download the blog: Breaking the cycle of harm in adolescent relationships

For further information, please contact Polina at polina.obolenskaya@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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Examining the differing trends of violence between Wales and England

Violence is a public health problem, with significant individual, economic, health and social care costs. Monitoring violence trends and distribution is a key step of a public health approach to violence prevention.

Health service data in England and Wales are used to monitor temporal change in violence prevalence. However, administrative data relies on service contact and recording practices, while nationally representative surveys, such as the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), record information on violence even when services were not sought. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) uses CSEW to estimate prevalence of violent crime and changes over time, publishing these for England and Wales combined. Therefore, there is a need to examine whether trends in violence in Wales differ from trends in England, which is the aim of this report.

Dr Polina Obolenskaya led the study, Temporal trends in prevalence of violence in Wales: analysis of a national victimisation survey, with VISION colleagues Dr Anastasia Fadeeva, Emma Barton, Dr Alex Walker, Lara Snowdon and Professor Sally McManus. Using CSEW data, for years 2002–2020, they compared trends in prevalence of violence victimisation between Wales and England, for all adults and by gender.

Country-disaggregated data shows that the prevalence of violence was generally lower in Wales than in England for the first decade of the century. Analyses by gender shows further disparities between countries. Males in Wales and England and females in England experienced a decline in violence victimisation between 2002 and 2015 but there was no decline in violence for females in Wales until after 2016. This decline in violence for females in Wales differed for females in England who experienced an upturn in prevalence of violence from 2015.

Different patterns of violence in England and Wales indicate that relying on combined estimates of violence for England and Wales in strategy development and planning in Wales should be avoided. Further work is required to understand why trends differ between England and Wales, including analyses accounting for socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of each population, as well as thorough considerations of potential policy drivers.

Recommendation

Given differences in prevalence and trends in violence between Wales and England, relying on estimates based on the countries combined to inform strategic planning in Wales is problematic. Using Wales-specific estimates and trends in violence is therefore recommended.

To download: Temporal trends in prevalence of violence in Wales: analysis of a national victimisation survey

To cite: P. Obolenskaya, A. Fadeeva, E.R. Barton, A. Walker, L.C. Snowdon, S. McManus, Temporal trends in prevalence of violence in Wales: analysis of a national victimisation survey,
Public Health, Volume 245, 2025,105775, ISSN 0033-3506, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2025.105775.

For further information, please contact Polina at polina.obolenskaya@citystgeorges.ac.uk

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