Strangulation is an underestimated form of intimate partner violence

The human rights organization Council of Europe published a report this week accusing Germany of serious deficits in combating violence against women. The assessment was based on the Istanbul Convention, an international agreement to prevent and combat violence against women, which was also ratified by Germany.

Among other things, it becomes clear that Germany is failing to protect particularly vulnerable groups, since there are hardly any offers of help tailored to these people. For example, there are no shelters for underage victims of sexual violence and there are no offers for refugee women and victims of so-called honor violence. It is particularly alarming, however, that decisions to protect women continue to fail due to prejudice among state decision-makers. Especially when the victim of violence is in a separation situation, many continue to assume that the woman is partly to blame.

In Great Britain, this perpetrator-victim reversal has been intensively debated over the last three years using a concrete example: strangulation. Choking without fatal consequences is often part of intimate partner violence. Experts compare strangulation to waterboarding as a torture method. Both leave hardly visible marks, but have lasting physical and psychological consequences.

The perpetrators demonstrate their physical superiority, the fear of death gives the victims the impression that they are completely at the mercy of the perpetrator's power. The physical consequences of strangulation can range from memory loss, impaired speech, to permanent brain damage.

Nevertheless, medical staff are often not sufficiently trained to ask the women the right questions and, for example, to initiate the necessary brain scans. Loss of control of the bladder is usually seen as a sign of fear, while the loss of urine is a sign of impending death in seconds. Since the education is insufficient, the danger for the affected women is too often underestimated. A Bangor University study with doctors from the North Wales Brain Injury Service shows that women are significantly more likely to be murdered by a violent partner if the perpetrator has previously choked the woman.

In the UK, this danger has been discussed partly because women's shelters have raised awareness of this form of physical violence, and partly because there has been an increase in the number of perpetrators who, following a homicide, state in court that it was merely an accident involving consensual sex practices. This claim is documented in more than 60 fatal cases.

The organization We Can't Consent to This made public how perpetrators not only try to cover up a murder, but also damage the victim's reputation even after death. "She wanted it that way" after the victim's death is perpetrator-victim reversal par excellence. "Deadly is not consensual" is a simple rule whose self-evident logic is nevertheless all too often undermined by misogynistic thinking in the form of "serves her right".

After a multi-year education campaign, a change in the law came into force in Great Britain in June, which classifies strangulation as serious bodily harm, even if it does not result in death. Although laws do not help to prevent crime, they are an expression of a change of heart. The Council of Europe report calls for the specifics of violence against women to be finally recorded in Germany. This not only makes it easier to combat forms of violence such as strangulation, but also illustrates the irrationality of those who blame victims for violence.

Rebecca Schönenbach is an economist, specialist in Islamism and board member of “Women for Freedom”