“She gave as good as she got”.
Seven words no survivor of domestic abuse wants to hear.
Two and half years ago, I stood in a British court room waiting to hear the outcome of a complex legal battle to overturn a UAE Islamic divorce court ruling, which ordered the removal of my young son Louis, from my care. This was the final battleground of a landmark legal case which has been litigated in three countries and consumed over eight years of my life.
In April 2011, I found myself destitute in Dubai with a young baby to look after. My husband had changed the locks on the home we both shared. A few months prior, I had filed a complaint of domestic violence with the Dubai police but my complaint was dismissed. The UAE law allows men to beat their wives so long as there are no marks left. The UAE spends millions on promoting its ‘western friendly’ image. Unlike its Gulf neighbours, consumption of alcohol and bikini sunbathing on public beaches is permitted. When I left Britain to settle in the UAE, it never crossed my mind to check the local laws on women’s rights, why would you?
As a British citizen, we assume that we will be protected if anything goes wrong. None of that was true in my case. I was subjected to sharia court rulings, and local laws despite my British citizenship, and there had been no prior warnings that this was even a possibility when I happily bought baby clothes and packed my suitcases. There was nothing on the official Foreign and Commonwealth Office website to suggest that I would be putting myself and my then unborn child at risk, something that has now been rectified by my campaigning.
I was seeking protection from the police and the British Embassy. The removal of my passport by the police meant that I could not access basic healthcare, housing, money, food and shelter. I was subjected to arbitrary arrests, detention, assault and abuse by the Dubai authorities.
The UAE guardianship laws are easily weaponised by men, regardless of their religious status to deny women their basic rights.
In my absence, the UAE court granted my French Catholic husband a sharia divorce and sole custody of our son, despite us being married in Britain and not having an Islamic marriage. The UAE guardianship laws are easily weaponised by men, regardless of their religious status to deny women their basic rights.
I subsequently found myself embroiled in a legal quagmire including, standing trial for kidnapping. I was only spared jail because of a high-profile media campaign mounted by my family. The British Embassy were missing in action, and it was left to the media and human rights group to shine a spotlight on my plight.
And so, I found myself forced to return to Britain, without Louis, in the early part of 2014. This was a heart breaking decision – I had exhausted all the legal remedies and was in danger of being arrested because of the media attention (public criticism of the UAE is a criminal offence). My husband had filed a defamation complaint - the first of many in both the UK and the UAE.
The prospect of not seeing Louis for another fourteen years left me bereft with grief and marked the beginning of my campaign for justice. Adjusting to life back in Britain was a daily struggle. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder – and there were days when all I wanted was to slip away in my sleep. However, I was determined to fight this injustice for me, for Louis and to prevent this happening to other women. I found strength in campaigning and took comfort from the many people who had supported my campaign.
Despite securing a landmark legal victory for women’s rights in France, which found the UAE ruling was “manifestly discriminatory”– to my horror, the British courts refused to accept the French decision.
The British judge, assisted by his own Google search of UAE personal status laws, concluded that the religious laws of the UAE were entirely compatible with our own English divorce laws - “The ground for divorce used in this case is virtually identical to our most commonly used one (unreasonable behaviour)”.
Not only is this highly problematic but also, conflicts with gender equality and international human rights law. The UN conducts regular reviews of human rights abuses in the UAE and have condemned the discriminatory treatment of women in the UAE legal system. The judge conveniently glossed over this body of evidence.
Having satisfied himself that the sharia divorce was “entirely consistent with our public policy” he turned his attention to my conduct, - “The mother was a free spirit doing exactly what she wanted, where she wanted, with whom she wanted. It is a far cry from the case of grinding depression and coercive control painted in her carefully prepared witness statements… Rather, I think that the mother gave as good as she got”.
Hearing a British judge say that I didn’t look like someone ‘disabled by depression or under the coercive control of the husband’, and effectively endorse the narrative of the ‘bad wife’ because I refused to obey my husband was another traumatic blow.
The rights of domestic violence survivors are routinely ignored –we are either punished for not being the perfect, subservient partner or we are ‘asking for it’.
There is a deep misconception amongst the (male dominated) judiciary that in order to be a genuine victim of domestic violence, women must present themselves as passive, submissive, ‘disabled by depression’ and incapable of articulating or expressing their emotions forcefully.
Our judicial system is cloaked in patriarchy. The rights of domestic violence survivors are routinely ignored –we are either punished for not being the perfect, subservient partner or we are ‘asking for it’. Such attitudes, reinforce harmful gender stereotypes and perpetuate gender inequality.
I will continue to fight for my rights, for Louis’s and for the rights of our future generations to be free from domestic violence and abuse of all kinds. I am taking my case to the Supreme Court, and hopeful that a landmark decision will be made to protect women from gender violence.
Afsana Lachaux is a survivor and campaigner for women’s access to justice. She has also been nominated for this years Emma Humphrey’s Memorial Prize.