Scarman Lecture 2026: Invisible Victims: Male Experience of Domestic Abuse and the System's Response

We are delighted to announce that the next Scarman Lecture will take place on Wednesday, 23 September 2025, at 5 p.m. Head of the College of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Professor Teela Sanders will open this year's Scarman Lecture

This year's guest speaker is Richard Spencer, a survivor and advocate whose work has challenged assumptions about who can be a victim of domestic abuse. His lecture examines how domestic abuse policy and practice in England and Wales have developed largely around a gendered understanding of victimisation, shaping the ways in which police, social services and the family courts identify, respond to and support those affected. Yet a substantial and growing body of evidence shows that men who experience domestic abuse frequently go unrecognised within this framework: fewer report to the police, those who do often encounter scepticism or a "mutual conflict" framing rather than being identified as victims, and many describe family court processes as a further source of harm rather than protection. This lecture examines why male victims remain largely invisible within the systems designed to protect them, drawing on the barriers that prevent men from disclosing abuse, the institutional responses they encounter across policing, social services and family law, and the severe personal cost of this invisibility, including heightened suicide risk. It closes by considering what a more effective, evidence-led response might look like, and how approaches built on peer connection and shared purpose are already helping men recover a sense of identity and stability. In doing so, the lecture invites the audience to reconsider who counts as a victim, and what a genuinely responsive system would need to look like in practice.

Richard Spencer draws on two decades of personal experience as a survivor of spousal domestic abuse to inform his research and advocacy on male victims of domestic abuse. He works with the ManKind Initiative and The For Baby's Sake Trust to raise awareness and foster positive change, and his story received national recognition through the Channel 5/Netflix documentary “My Wife, My Abuser”, leading to multiple television appearances and media contributions aimed at raising public awareness. Richard's ambition is to help fellow survivors move from merely "surviving" to "thriving" after abuse, using his personal journey to improve societal responses to the often-overlooked issue of male victims and to highlight the impact on children who witness such violence. Informed by his lived experience, he also advocates for recognising children as victims in their own right, and for supporting parents who face abusive partners through often traumatic Family Court Child Arrangement proceedings.

This event will take place online and within the Peter Williams Lecture theatre. An e-invite will be sent shortly before the lecture takes place if you have booked a place online.

Accessible information for those attending in person:

Please contact the team for any accessibility requests. We will try our best to accommodate everyone as much as possible.

The lecture will be taking place in the Peter Williams lecture theatre which is on the lower basement level of the Fielding Johnson Building. There will be staff around to help direct everyone, there is a lift and accessible toilets.

Information on the accessibility of the space is in the below address:

https://www.accessable.co.uk/venues/fielding-johnson-building-south-wing

A University of Leicester map of campus can be found at the below address:

https://www.le.ac.uk/maps/

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