The only thing I would add to what has been said this afternoon, not just by me but also by others, is that intimate partner violence looks so different from one situation to the other. We've talked a lot about coercive control, and that's important, because it is very under-recognized and often invisible to an outsider.
We also need to look at that whole spectrum of typologies of behaviours that constitute intimate partner violence. Judges need to understand that there's no “this is what a victim looks like” or “this is how a victim reacts, responds or behaves”—none of that. You can't tell by looking at somebody. You can't say, “she wasn't hit, so it's not as bad”, or that it was just a question of him being in charge of the money and doesn't mean that he was controlling her.
There has to be education that, as I've said, looks at that whole very broad range of typologies and tactics and understands that very often in a relationship there's a combination of tactics being used, and combined differently at different times, but generally escalating over the length of the relationship.