Season 7 Episode 12: Clare’s Law Explained: What Survivors Deserve to Know About Their Partner’s Past

Systems ChangePartnering With SurvivorsPerpetrator Behavior
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About This Episode

What if the most important fact about your partner’s violence risk is sitting in a police database you can’t access? 

In this episode, David and Ruth dig into Clare’s Law, the UK’s domestic violence disclosure scheme, with researcher Dr. Katerina Hadjimatheou, and they get honest about what information sharing can do when coercive control runs on secrecy, grooming, and lies. They talk about why convictions alone rarely tell the full story, how serial perpetrators move from relationship to relationship, and why survivors often say a disclosure helps them finally see the pattern and stop blaming themselves.

Ruth, David, and Dr. Hadjimatheou also compare two very different real-world implementations: England and Wales, where the experience can be inconsistent and sometimes isolating, and South Australia, where a specialist domestic violence service wraps disclosure in a trauma-informed support process. That difference matters. Many people requesting disclosures have never contacted a domestic violence service before, so the moment of disclosure can either become a doorway to safety planning and autonomy or a terrifying information drop with nowhere to put it.

Then they name the hard part: systems can misuse a safeguarding tool. They unpack how child protection agencies can pressure mothers to seek disclosures and turn results into a “test,” and they discuss risks like mislabeling and perpetrators gaming the system. If we want disclosure schemes to improve survivor safety and perpetrator accountability, we have to design them around consent, support, and pattern-based understanding.

Additional Resources

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Season 7 Episode 11: Why Coercive Control Laws Alone Won’t Protect Women and Children with Dr. Marsha Scott