A TOP detective who is determined to change the lives of those suffering from domestic violence has spoken about how his dedicated team of officers tackle the issue.

John Semple, the Detective Inspector in charge of the Domestic Abuse Investigation Unit within Greater Glasgow Division, spoke yesterday of how his specialist officers deal with crimes that are classified as serious and violent domestics.

The Glasgow Times exclusively joined DI Semple and his team at their dawn briefing at Govan’s Helen Street police station as they prepared to carry out a day of action to help some of the city’s most vulnerable victims of domestic abuse.

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Here the detective gave us some inside access to how domestic violence impacts the victims and how his officers deal with it.

He said: “The violence victims encounter we wouldn’t really want to discuss. It can be very high tariff and the violence can be quite extreme at times.

“Although sometimes violence is not always there. It can be more psychological; it could be stalking, and the individual is feeling the stress.

“We would also have a look at that, the coercive control. So, there’s not always violence involved. We look at all aspects of domestic incidents – everything across the board.

“Domestic violence can be behind closed doors. We’ve got partner agencies who we work very closely with who alert us to that.

“We also have a safeguarding unit which works very closely with partners to provide safety for these victims. In addition to that, in certain circumstances, we can even get them housed in a different area to move them away from the violence.

“We’ve got other facilities that we put in place to provide as much reassurance and support to the victims and bring the perpetrators to justice. We’ve got investigatory teams that look upon each case in its own merit.

“We also look outside Greater Glasgow to see if these perpetrators have committed crimes elsewhere. We’ll link in with other divisions within Scotland, England or countries throughout Europe.

“What we do is we get all of the information for the investigation and present that to the court once we’ve arrested the individual and we try to provide as much reassurance to the victims as we possibly can.”

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When victims are helped free from abusers due to the work of police and partners, DI Semple explained that it can be life-changing for them.

He said: “We can do a lot of follow up calls. The impact that my department has is incredible in the lives of these victims. It can completely turn their life around for the better. The work the partner agencies do is invaluable. The victims cannot speak highly enough about them, and the support provided.

“We link in heavily with support agencies which include Women’s Aid, education, health, ASSIST, the list is literally endless.

“We have regular meetings with them, virtually every week. If not, two, three times a week we’ll link in with them.

“If we’ve got a particular case that causes concern, either to the partner agencies, or ourselves, we’ll have separate meetings where we’ll discuss all the concerns and take any appropriate action to provide as much reassurance to the victim as we possibly can.”

The festive period is a time of year in which domestic abuse incidents can increase, along with when there are big football games being played.

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DI Semple said: “There are spikes in incidents and that’s something that we closely monitor. We take appropriate action when these are going to occur.

“Football is one and the festive period can also be one. There’s a lot of financial stress and alcohol-related incidents that impact domestic violence.”

The Domestic Abuse Investigation Unit is taking part in an international campaign – 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, which started on November 25 and is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women – and runs until December 10, which is Human Rights Day.

Speaking on the 13th day of the campaign, DI Semple was asked how important was the work his team does. “You’d have to ask the victims who’ve had their lives changed,” he said.

“We play a really important part in the whole policing process. We try to provide the victims with the best opportunity to move on with their life and have a far better life.

“You’d have to ask victims really to see what kind of impact we have, but to be honest, with the thank you cards and letters we get from them I think they speak volumes.”

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The detective encouraged anyone who is suffering from domestic violence to speak with the police or a partner agency.

He said: “We’re always here for domestic abuse victims. We’ve got trained professionals who deal with them.

Some of the victims will feel uncomfortable coming to a police office, so we’ll meet them at a partner agency base. We do that with Rape Crisis for example. So, we can go to their premises or any other premises where the individual wants to discuss things with us.

“We’ll speak to them at any level they want to speak. We do try to accommodate them as best as we possibly can and try to make them as comfortable as possible.”