Latest news with #DASA
The Herald Scotland
19-05-2025
- The Herald Scotland
Crown Office fears over new non-fatal strangulation law
The committee is currently considering a petition from Fiona Drouet, whose daughter Emily took her own life after being slapped and choked by her partner, Angus Milligan. They are due to hear from Ms Drouet, as well as prosecutors and police and independent experts on Wednesday. Scotland is the only part of the UK without specific legislation. Westminster recently amended the Domestic Abuse Act to introduce a standalone offence of strangulation or suffocation in England and Wales. In her petition to the Scottish Parliament, Ms Drouet told MSPs that non-fatal strangulation was 'a significant predictor of homicide in abusive relationships, with victims being eight times more likely to be killed'. READ MORE: Dr Emma Forbes, National Lead for Domestic Abuse at COPFS, told the committee: 'Scots law currently criminalises non-fatal strangulation and there is not a gap in the law that was present in the other identified jurisdictions to necessitate a standalone offence of non-fatal strangulation. 'Scotland does not need to replicate other jurisdictions in creating a standalone offence to 'keep pace'; rather, it should reflect the fact that other jurisdictions are catching up with the Scottish approach. 'This is not a rationale to stand still, and there remains significant work to ensure an effective and robust criminal justice response to non-fatal strangulation.' Dr Forbes warned that introducing a standalone offence could mean such incidents would not be included as part of the pattern of abuse under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act (DASA), making it harder to build a comprehensive case and secure convictions. She said the current law in Scotland already provides 'unlimited sentencing power where the offence is prosecuted as a common law offence and a maximum sentence of 14 years when prosecuted as part of a DASA charge'. 'There is no requirement to prove any injury or harm as a result of the strangulation provided it is intentional,' she said. Police Scotland expressed similar concerns. While acknowledging the severity of non-fatal strangulation, officers warned that creating a new offence could 'minimise opportunities to build a DASA case'. Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson told the committee: 'From an investigative perspective, all evidential opportunities would be considered at every incident of non-fatal strangulation — such as a forensic medical examination to document injuries, along with scenes of crime officers seizing evidential samples and photographing injuries. 'The severity of the incident would be supported by a statement from a medical professional, which would influence the charge libelled.' However, he warned that treating non-fatal strangulation in isolation or presenting it to the court as a single incident 'could minimise opportunities to build a DASA case — to truly reflect the abuse experienced by a victim or survivor and the risk presented by a perpetrator'. The ACC stressed that non-fatal strangulation is already captured by existing offences, but said more must be done to improve public awareness. 'There is a need for a greater societal awareness on the use of non-fatal strangulation by perpetrators — not just in the context of offending, but including the psychological harm that it can cause, and its use as a tool by perpetrators in wider patterns of abuse.' The committee is also due to hear from Professor Cath White, Medical Director of the Institute for Addressing Strangulation, who supports creating a standalone offence due to the extreme psychological and physical harm involved. She cited research showing that more than half of women killed by a partner had previously been strangled. 'It is well recognised that non-fatal strangulation can quickly have devastating consequences — including stroke, carotid artery dissection, nerve damage, with minimal force. In addition to any neurological or vascular damage leading to possible cognitive and behavioural changes, there is also the potential for significant psychological trauma.' She added: 'There is increasing recognition of the increase in suicide by those subjected to domestic abuse, including non-fatal strangulation. 'My belief is that by making non-fatal strangulation a stand-alone offence, it raises awareness of the crime amongst professionals — health as well as criminal justice — and the public, making it more likely that it will be treated with the seriousness that is required.' READ MORE: Ms Drouet's daughter Emily met Milligan at Aberdeen University's Hillhead halls of residence. Within weeks, she was being regularly physically and verbally abused. Her family, unaware of the violence, only saw a photograph of her injuries after she died by suicide in March 2016. At Aberdeen Sheriff Court, Milligan admitted choking the 18-year-old, pushing her against a desk and slapping her eight days before her death. He was seen on CCTV leaving her room minutes before she was found dead. Sheriff Malcolm Garden branded Milligan 'controlling and ultimately violent', but said he was powerless to jail him. Milligan was sentenced to 12 months' supervision and ordered to carry out 180 hours of unpaid work as part of a community payback order — later reduced to 120 hours.
The National
11-05-2025
- The National
How has Scotland's ‘gold standard' law supported victims?
Dr Marsha Scott, CEO of Scottish Women's Aid, sums up the feelings of leading victims' advocates on how the criminal court system is working for domestic abuse survivors, six years after the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018 (DASA) came into force. The legislation, lauded by campaigners as the 'gold standard', created a new criminal offence of coercive control, defined as 'engaging in a course of behaviour which is abusive of a partner or ex-partner'. READ MORE: Charities blame cost-cutting for lack of specialist domestic abuse courts Despite progress, Scott feels the criminal justice system continues to demonstrate long-standing misconceptions. 'It is difficult to overcome this notion of domestic abuse as physical violence, and of physical violence being more serious than coercive and controlling behaviours – which is not what women and children have said for decades.' While the concept of 'coercive control' is now broadly understood, Scott says the problem lies with a perception that this is somehow distinct from 'domestic abuse', whereas 'pretty much every domestic abuse case includes coercion'. 'Another myth in the system' which Scott says has persisted is that if a father 'wasn't physically abusive to the children, then he must be a safe enough father'. This, she argues, is why child aggravators on domestic abuse convictions remain underused. This is despite the fact that one of the achievements of DASA was that harsher sentences can be applied where a 'reasonable person' would consider that the behaviour would cause a child to suffer harm, even where the child is not the focus of the abuse. In the face of gaps in both understanding and resources, experts in victims' experiences paint a picture of a system which has yet to catch up with the legislation at its disposal. Gemma Gall of domestic abuse charity SafeLives points to the statistics which underline this issue: 'If you look at the number of charges there were last year that were domestic abuse in nature, there were more than 30,000 charges and less than 2000 of those were DASA charges. 'That leads me to question: are there other cases where that could have been applied? We're still falling back into laws that would have been used before 2018 – assaults, sexual violence, threatening and abusive behaviour – but we're not tying it all together as well.' Gall was a Domestic Abuse Court Advocacy (DACA) worker before and after the introduction of the legislation, supporting victims to navigate the criminal court process. Now, she's leading on a programme of standards and accreditation for DACA workers, with a view to ensuring everyone who needs this kind of support is able to access it. Currently, 13 of Scotland's 32 local authorities don't have an established DACA service. Without someone to advise and advocate for them, Gall says survivors can find the process 'disempowering, like you're being treated as a piece of evidence or as a witness in a case that's very personal to you'. Positively, Gall stresses that, since the introduction of DASA, there has been a recognition from the Scottish Government that court advocacy is needed, backed by funding to 'look at ways to really centre victims', like SafeLives's work. That being said, she notes that much of the funding for advocacy services is part of the time-limited Victim Centred Approach Fund and Equally Safe Fund, so questions remain about 'what's beyond that'. According to Cynthia Gimenez, team leader of the Edinburgh Domestic Abuse Court Service (EDDACS), run by Edinburgh Women's Aid, the need for advocacy services is accentuated by the fact that 'the majority of women that go through court for domestic abuse find it re-traumatising'. READ MORE: Wildfire 'bigger than five football pitches' near Scottish town This is the result of a variety of factors. For one, while there are special measures that can be provided by courts to keep vulnerable witnesses safe during the process – such as the ability to provide evidence from a remote location or from a separate room – Gimenez says these are 'not always available' because of a 'lack of resources'. One of EDDACS's roles is to ensure victims are informed of the outcomes of hearings, however, Gimenez says the court doesn't always provide that information on the same day, resulting in situations where the victim 'might not feel safe to leave the house'. 'You don't know if the bail conditions have changed. You don't know if someone was in custody and has been released that day. You don't know if the case hasn't been taken forward because of a lack of evidence. If you are going to be trauma-informed, you would think that's essential,' she says. Ultimately, the fact that cases can take years to be prosecuted only exacerbates these issues. 'The delays are what increases that feeling of, what's the point? Why did I go through all of this – this horrific process where I was feeling unsafe and which might have potentially caused the situation to escalate – if I wasn't going to get anything out of it, if I wasn't going to feel safer at the end of it?' she says. Fiona McMullen, operations manager at Assist, a domestic abuse court advocacy service which serves 13 local authorities, echoes these concerns, while stressing that she 'would always encourage victims to report'. She adds: 'We have to acknowledge how far we've come.' One of the key achievements of DASA, McMullen says, was that it is now mandatory for sheriffs to consider non-harassment orders (NHOs) in domestic abuse cases. 'That was huge to us,' she recalls. However, sheriffs do not grant NHOs after every conviction, even where this has been requested by the victim. 'This is the biggest letdown for our clients. They've been through that journey, they've often had to give evidence – because perpetrators of domestic abuse will often not plead guilty – then they don't get a non-harassment order,' McMullen says. Another positive development which McMullen highlights is the introduction of case management pilots which are rolling out across Scotland in summary (non-jury) cases. This effectively means that the defence and prosecution can see the evidence 'earlier in the process and can better inform the plea being made', she explains. 'It reduces the need for the victim and witnesses to give evidence in court,' McMullen says, and the aim is to 'bring about early resolutions'. While this is 'very helpful', McMullen warns of a need to ensure that sheriffs 'are still sentencing robustly', which is not always the case. 'We need to make sure we're not just saying, well, they pled guilty early, so we'll admonish them, or it's a fine – and fines are inappropriate in domestic abuse cases, because you're putting a financial cost on someone's abuse,' she says. In McMullen's experience, what domestic abuse victims are looking for from the criminal justice system is 'protection' and 'something to stop the abuse'. She adds: 'If a sheriff isn't putting in a sentence that does any of that, that's when victims might begin to lose faith in the system.' Still, each of these advocates for survivors believe a better system is in reach. Gall emphasises that 'there are so many motivated people within these systems trying to make that change'. One example she highlights is that the Crown Office and Prosecution Service (COPFS) has accepted all recommendations of a recent inspection report on domestic abuse. Another is the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Bill, which aims to improve victims' experiences with a particular focus on sexual violence cases. Gimenez feels that an important step the courts and prosecution service could take is to ensure that training in domestic abuse for all staff is made 'mandatory and embedded into their usual practice, because it constitutes a lot of the cases that are going through court'. READ MORE: Scottish musician releases single condemning Israel's war crimes in Gaza For Scott – having contributed to the training for sheriffs in the Domestic Abuse Scotland Act and observing 'no sign of improvement in sheriffs' judgements in the context of domestic abuse' – the key to change is 'accountability'. Scott says: 'The critical thing which is missing is a system that says, in order to uphold the law in Scotland, you need to be able to do these things – and if you're not doing these things in your courtroom, or in your police call, or prosecution, then you're not doing your job competently.' A recurring theme, which McMullen articulates, is that the knowledge is already there on how to deliver a system that works for victims: 'That's court advocacy, it's police resource, it's resource within COPFS to make sure that victims are engaged, and it's robust sentencing and perpetrator programmes available across Scotland which address the offending.' In many areas, McMullen says, what's missing is the resource: 'We know what good looks like – but we need the resources to deliver it.'
Indian Express
29-04-2025
- General
- Indian Express
JEE Main 2025 Results: NIT Rourkela to host CSAB 2025 and DASA 2025
The National Institute of Technology Rourkela (NIT Rourkela) will be coordinating the Central Seat Allocation Board (CSAB 2025) for the academic year 2025-26 to facilitate admissions of Indian national students to undergraduate programmes at 31 NITs, 1 IIEST, 26 IIITs, 3 Schools of Planning and Architecture (SPAs), and 36 Other Government Funded Technical Institutes (GFTIs) under the umbrella of the 'NIT+ System.' While NIT Rourkela will lead the NIT+ System, IIT Kanpur will lead the IIT System, and both these institutes will co-host the 2025 edition of the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA). The activities of JoSAA 2025 will start in the first week of June 2025. Aspiring candidates can visit websites – and for more details. NIT Rourkela confirmed that there shall be six rounds of seat allocation in the 2025 edition of JoSAA. Like previous years, CSAB will also organise CSAB-Special rounds of seat allocation to fill the vacant seats resulting after all rounds of JoSAA 2025. This year, CSAB-Special will be of three rounds. CSAB will coordinate the Supernumerary Round of seat allocation for students from Union Territories such as Andaman & Nicobar, Lakshadweep, Daman & Diu, and Dadra & Nagar Haveli in selected NITs. In a notable development, NIT Rourkela has also been entrusted by the Ministry of Education (MoE) to coordinate the Direct Admission of Students Abroad (DASA) 2025 for the admission of Foreign Nationals to undergraduate programs in NIT+ System. NIT Rourkela has also confirmed that CSAB-NEUT rounds for candidates from North-East States and select Union Territories will begin in June 2025, under AICTE's reservation scheme for regions lacking such facilities. It is estimated that over 14.5 lakh JEE Main qualified candidates will be competing for approximately 40,000 seats across all the participating institutes, including 20 per cent seats reserved for female candidates. The entire seat allocation process, from registration and choice filling to seat allotment and document verification, will be conducted online. DASA 2025 registration and process DASA seat allotment will be based on JEE Main ranks and preferences. The process will include three rounds of seat allotment, the details of which shall be available at the DASA website – Apart from the standard government norms, the seat allocation in all the above schemes for UG admission to NIT+ System will be based on the ranks secured by the candidates in JEE Main 2025. A multi-lingual helpdesk in Assamese, Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Tamil, and Telugu languages has been established at the CSAB 2025 headquarters at NIT Rourkela to assist the candidates during the entire process of CSAB 2025. In addition, a total of 53 Help Centers (at least one in each State/ UTs) have also been established to assist the candidates. A dedicated helpdesk at NIT Rourkela will also be operational to support Divyang (PwD) aspirants. Furthermore, help documents in immersive reader format will soon be made available to enhance accessibility for PwD candidates.
