The Tyranny of Distance: Domestic Abuse in Remote, Rural & Island Scotland
By Dr. Anni Donaldson
It’s like the land that time forgot sometimes. There’s trees and hills and water, yeah, but where better to hide that kind of thing because a lot of people live in pretty, rural, remote places and there’s lots of wee farmhouses dotted about the place. (M2)
Scotland’s wild and rugged west coast and islands are world-famous for stunning scenery, golden sands, and get-away-from-it-all allure. What is it like living with domestic abuse in Scotland’s rural, remote and island areas? How easy is it to escape abuse in these postcard places? I investigated the challenges of living with domestic abuse and implementing domestic abuse–informed practices in these areas by interviewing 24 women victim-survivors and professionals.
In Scottish law and policy, domestic abuse is a form of violence against women, which includes physical, verbal, sexual, psychological, or financial abuse by intimate partners/ex-partners. In 2022–2023, 81% of the 61,934 incidents of domestic abuse reported to Police Scotland had a female victim and a male suspected perpetrator. In 2018, Scotland was among the first countries in the world to criminalise non-violent forms of domestic abuse.
Previous studies looked at domestic abuse in rural, remote, and island areas in North America, Australia, England, Wales, the Northern Isles, and northeast of Scotland. They suggest that while most incidents happen in urban areas, rural women’s experiences differ little from those of their urban sisters. However, my research carried out along Scotland’s west coast pinpointed particular environmental and community challenges for women and support services.
Men’s Violence and Abuse
Men’s violence and abuse during all stages of the women’s relationships, including post-separation, included physical violence, emotional, sexual, financial, and psychological abuse and coercive control. Women described being choked, punched, thrown downstairs, and threatened with knives and a gun. Women were raped and sexually assaulted, men assaulted and frightened their children, smashed homes and possessions, and abused family pets. Men also assaulted and threatened women’s extended family members. Women were doubly isolated by the abusers and by their remote locations, with limited or no access to transport, friends, or family.
The Paradox of Proximity
The women lived in towns and villages, in remote places and islands, many with school-age children. Tight-knit communities, families, marriages, and friendships were strengthened by long-standing childhood, work, leisure, sporting, and community networks.
What, that people know people? Oh yeah, absolutely, especially in these small places. They know them, they went to school with them. It’s just small island living, yeah. (M3)
Traditional patriarchal attitudes to marriage and relationships, domestic abuse, class, and male privilege remained strong in communities where family privacy was still fiercely protected. Remote living ensured there were no neighbours to hear. Although familiarity in the communities was a source of strength and protection, women living with domestic abuse felt they needed to keep up appearances in public and tell no one.
The further out you go from the bigger towns, the more rural you get, the more prevalent it actually becomes that you don’t get involved in other people’s business. (M2)
There’s work to be done in getting people in more traditional communities to recognise and accept that domestic abuse shouldn’t be hidden, people should speak up. It’s a community responsibility to support victims and to be saying to perpetrators, ‘That's not on.’ The easy thing is to pretend it’s not happening. (M6)
The community provided cover for abusive men who recruited allies and alienated their partners/ex-partners and children.
You could be in a situation in a small community…where… a lot of that community either doesn’t want to know or supports the perpetrator. If you report, then you may lose that community. Your children may lose friends and school and you might have to leave the island to find a safe place. (M1)
I think you’re probably more judged in a smaller community. (W1)
Men used friends and community networks to monitor women’s movements.
If I was to go out, he will know within minutes. Somebody would have told him. Then I get ignored and then my kids get ignored. It’s just a nightmare. It’s a total nightmare. (W11)
We were getting on the ferry and one of his friends was at the ferry terminal and saw me and got straight on his phone and was messaging somebody. I’m assuming it was my ex. So now he knows 100 percent where we are. (W11)
In remote island communities, if I was abusing you and you had fled, and even if you’d managed to hide yourself on the island, I’d know exactly where to go to find out where you are. (M1)
Women also feared being seen or having their confidentiality breached when going to services where workers lived locally.
They’re small communities, workers know everybody. They know all the heritage and background of certain families and stuff like that. As you get more rural, people know each other, you can’t go into offices without being seen. People know why you’re there. (M1)
Area-Informed Practice
Some of these challenges for women were overcome during Covid-19 lockdowns. With offices closed, staff worked from home, telephone appointments replaced face-to-face visits, and email contact increased; staff meetings and training also moved online. Women’s concerns about anonymity and the problem of travelling distances to appointments were removed. Telephone-based support and email contact proved safer and more convenient. Online resources and social media proved an unexpected boon to women seeking information and support during lockdown; they preferred the anonymity of online discussion groups and organisations from outwith their area. Many of these area-informed working practices have been retained post-pandemic.
“Failure to Protect”
Traditional social work and child protection approaches in Scotland centred on women’s “failure to protect” children from men’s violence. Women and professionals regarded these practices as outmoded and distressing, with violent fathers avoiding being the focus of agency interventions. Mothers faced “double jeopardy” by being abused and blamed for failing to protect their children from it.
Contradictory child welfare assessments and decisions made by different agencies often failed to acknowledge who was responsible for the abuse and its impact. Agencies lacked a shared understanding of the dynamics and impact of domestic abuse. The father’s views and entitlement to contact were frequently prioritised over all other considerations.
A social worker gave a full report stating that [father] should not be having contact with his child unless it’s supervised. The family court overlooked it, gave him the contact, and extended it. I’ve tried to be so fair about it all. Looking back, I feel as though my rights as a mum, her rights as a child to be protected …all of it was totally ignored over his parental rights. (W2)
Mothers and Children: Staying Safe and Together
Contrary to the “failure to protect” paradigm, mothers are often their children’s most fierce and astute protectors. They are adept at anticipating and preventing the abuse, minimising its impact, distracting the children, or getting them out of harm’s way.
I’ve always kind of protected them from it. I know when there’s a trigger. I know when to walk away or to try and get away so that anything doesn’t happen. (W1)
“Why doesn’t she just leave?” This oft-repeated phrase contradicts women’s reality: Women and children’s safety does not increase after separation. Instead, they often encounter new risks.
Post-separation, the men’s abuse and harassment became more public. Men exploited their “good guy” public image, involved the police and child protection agencies, and prolonged divorce actions with disputes over child contact, custody, money, and property. Women worked hard to minimise the impact of fathers’ abuse on their children. They encouraged regular contact and good relationships with fathers.
He’s going to court and he’s going to take the kids off me and he’s going to do this and he’s going to do that. Or he’ll just not bother with the kids. It’s like one extreme to the other. I feel if I don’t let them see their father, then my kids are going to suffer because he will cut them off and they’re the ones that suffer. I would rather take the suffering than them. (W2)
Creating safe and stable home lives was a priority.
If I didn’t have them and have to keep strong for them, I would be an absolute wreck. So I just like to keep busy and do things with them. I’ll go and make their beds and make their snack ready for when they come back from school. That always makes me happy. I just like seeing their little faces when they come home and they’ve got a really nice snack waiting for them. (W11)
Domestic Abuse–Informed Practice (DA-I)
DA-I practice centres women’s and children’s experiences of abuse, its impact, and the risks from the perpetrator. DA-I professionals were taking a strengths-based approach to their work with women and advocating for them in multi-agency meetings. These settings also created opportunities for inter-agency learning and knowledge exchange.
DA-I approaches included: the DASH (domestic abuse, “honour”-based violence, and stalking) domestic abuse risk checklist; multi-agency risk assessment conferences (MARAC); ASSIST domestic abuse court advocacy services and Independent Domestic abuse Advocates (IDAA); local VAW services, Police Scotland Domestic abuse Units, and DA-I informed community justice interventions with convicted perpetrators; Safe & Together Model™ (S&T) implementation. Together, these innovations were challenging outmoded attitudes about women’s strengths.
You’re then having to ask, “But why is she struggling?” or “But despite that, her children go to school every day and they’re absolutely spotless and they’re never hungry,” and the response is then, “Yeah, you’re right.”
Or she’s overcome alcohol and drug addiction. Yet whether it’s social work or whether it’s the court, they are all saying, “Yeah, but previously she had those issues.” Yet his criminal history of beating her, being in prison, doesn’t matter because she’s not good enough to bring up her children. It is so infuriating. (M4)
The professionals welcomed the implementation of the S&T Model. They saw a clear need for child protection professionals to directly challenge violent fathers about their behaviour and to more accurately assess the risks they posed. They appreciated S&T’s clear rationale for partnering with women, especially those who still fear social work involvement in their children’s lives.
Conclusion
My research into domestic abuse in rural, remote and island areas of Scotland shows that the nature of men’s abuse is similar in urban and rural settings. However, community factors of proximity and distance in rural areas can aggravate women’s experiences and inhibit their access to support and safety. Traditional attitudes to relationships, the family, men’s rights and entitlements and family privacy remain strong. Close, long-standing community and family ties put pressure on women to keep up appearances. This was compounded by concerns about visibility and disclosing to professionals who also lived locally.
Traditional attitudes to families and domestic abuse were also evident in child protection practices grounded in mothers’ ‘failure to protect’. Inadequate assessments of the risks from abusive fathers, and decisions which dismissed mothers’ concerns, made them fear social work involvement in their children’s lives.
However DA-I approaches were becoming established locally through domestic abuse advocacy services, specialised risk assessment tools, MARACs, S&T training and improved access to specialist services.
Remote working practices and service delivery, the expansion and higher visibility of online resources during Covid-19 restrictions proved highly effective in improving anonymity, convenience and anonymity for women in rural areas. These are now embedded in many workplace practices. Multi-agency meetings and training delivered remotely during the Covid-19 pandemic also improved attendance and are now common practice. These area- and domestic abuse-informed initiatives are thus transforming professional responses to women and children experiencing domestic abuse in rural and remote and island areas of Scotland.
References
[1] With apologies to Geoffrey Blainey (1966), How distance shaped Australia’s history.
[2] Key to quotation source: M = Service Manager; W = Woman victim-survivor
Additional Resources
Click here for more information about Safe & Together in Scotland
Watch a webinar recording about recent research projects on domestic abuse in rural, remote, and island Scotland by Dr. Anni Donaldson, Professor Sarah Pedersen, and Dr Natascha Mueller-Hirth
Download the position paper.
About the Author
Dr. Anni Donaldson is a feminist oral historian, researcher, consultant, and writer who has specialised in domestic abuse and violence against women in her research, teaching, and front-line practice for 30 years. Anni’s doctoral research was an oral history of domestic abuse in post-war Scotland.