Mother urges MSPs to make non-fatal strangulation a stand-alone offence

Creating a new offence of non-fatal strangulation could help educate people about the crime and also deter offenders, the mother of a student who took her life after being subjected to such abuse has told MSPs.

Fion Drouet is campaigning to change the law following the death of her daughter Emily in 2016.

A law student, she had been subjected to abuse and violence by her boyfriend, and took her life just after he visited her at her room in halls of residence.

Ms Drouet read text messages her daughter had sent to friends to MSPs on Holyrood’s Criminal Justice Committee, with the student saying about the abuse: “I was so scared, I thought I was going to die.”

She also messaged to say: “I am so scared that I think I want to die.”

While police and prosecutors raised concerns about possible “unintended consequences” of changing the law to make non-fatal strangulation a specific offence, Ms Drouet told MSPs failing to act on this could be seen as “minimising” the abuse suffered by victims.

She said: “We are looking at an exceptionally serious crime that merits a law in itself, to be recognised as exceptionally high risk.

“It is very different to other forms of abuse.”

Ms Drouet, who set up the Emily Test campaign in memory of her daughter, continued: “If we have a stand-alone crime saying that was non fatal strangulation, I think potentially it acts as a strong deterrent, a stronger message.

“I’m worried any other approach minimises the severity and risk of the crime and doesn’t give victims, survivors the justice that they absolutely deserve.”

Adding that there is “little public awareness” of the issue, she insisted: “A stand-alone crime can help. It can start to educate the public and educate victims and survivors and hopefully deter perpetrators.”

She described non-fatal strangulation as being “like a near-death experience” adding that when a person has the oxygen supply to their brain restricted “they are going to have an automatic response of fighting literally fighting for their life, something that is hugely traumatic”.

She went on to say it was an “ultimate act of control” by an abuser, telling MSPs: “Whether you live or die is down to that perpetrator, his decision in that moment, he’s going to decide if he lets go or not.”

Non-fatal strangulation has already been made a stand-alone offence in the other nations of the UK, with Detective Superintendent Lindsay Fisher of the  Police Service of Northern Ireland speaking about the impact there when new laws came in in June 2023.

She told MSPs: “The improvements that having a stand-alone offence have been immense.”

The police officer added: “Within three days of the legislation going live we had not only used the new stand-alone offence, but we had somebody appearing in court having been charged for it.”

Dr Emma Forbes, national lead for domestic abuse in the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) said they were “worried” by anecdotal evidence about the “increased prevalence” of non-fatal strangulation “particularly amongst young people”.

She went on to tell the committee almost two-fifths (38%) of the 136 cases COPFS received from Police Scotland in March  which are being prosecuted under the Domestic Abuse Scotland Act involved non-fatal strangulation.

With this legislation allowing abusers to be taken to court for a course of conduct rather than specific individual offences, Dr Forbes said: “As prosecutors we are keen to be able to tell the court the whole story of what has happened to an individual victim.”

She insisted Scotland has “effective legislation at the moment” as she told the committee they were trying to “move away from incident-focused policing”.

Dr Forbes accepted there “are compelling reasons to create a specific offence of non-fatal strangulation” saying that this would raise public awareness “which urgently needs to be done” and would also provide improved data on the number of such crimes.

But she added: “We have a very strong foundation in our law in Scotland and I would worry about the unintended consequences of a specific offence, not least because it would be more difficult evidentially to prove.”

Similarly Detective Superintendent Adam Brown of Police Scotland said that the force’s concerns about a stand-alone offence “come from the practical implementation of that and the potential unintended consequences in terms of our overall response to domestic abuse”.

He stated,: “We would have concerns that a stand-alone offence would remove non-fatal strangulation from inclusion in investigation in Domestic Abuse Scotland Act offences and make those investigations and the charges that come as a consequence of that less robust.”