Dozens of women murdered after police rely on ‘deeply flawed’ domestic violence tool
‘Urgent’ review of Dash checklist demanded following deaths of over 50 women not deemed high-risk
Janet Eastham Senior News Reporter. Wilf Vall. Evie Selby
16 August 2025 3:35pm BST
More than 50 women have been murdered after police relied on a “deeply flawed” screening tool that failed to identify them as high-risk, The Telegraph can reveal.
For 16 years, officers and social workers have used a risk assessment called Dash – short for Domestic Abuse, Stalking and Honour-Based Violence – to decide which victims get urgent protection.
Since Dash was introduced in 2009, women reporting abuse have been asked 27 questions by police officers and social workers to gauge the likelihood of imminent harm or death at the hands of their abuser.
The checklist asks whether the perpetrator has ever used a weapon, threatened to kill, or attempted to strangle, choke, suffocate or drown the victim.
SafeLives, the charity behind Dash, says victims must answer “yes” to at least 14 questions to be classed as “high risk” and guaranteed urgent intervention.
Scores of nine to 13 mean “medium” risk, while fewer than nine is “standard” – but neither of these lower grading guarantees women specialist support.
Practitioners may use “professional judgment” to override low scores and are instructed to escalate cases after three or more police call-outs in a year. But academics and bereaved families told The Telegraph that these safeguards can fail, with fatal results.
The Telegraph’s investigation links at least 55 femicides, the intentional murder of women because of their gender, to the assessment. A data scientist behind a rival tool warned that the true toll could top 400 deaths.
On Saturday, bereaved families likened the scandal to Horizon, the Post Office IT system that destroyed lives while officials looked away.
The investigation raise questions over Labour’s announcement, now expected next month, on how it will deliver its manifesto pledge to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) within a decade.
Alicia Kearns MP, the shadow safeguarding minister, demanded ministers order an “urgent” review of Dash, warning: “We cannot gamble with the safety of women and girls. Too many have died without help as the Dash system failed to recognise the true threat they faced.”
It comes as Freedom of Information figures lay bare how deeply embedded Dash remains in the UK. Three years after the National Police Chiefs’ Council ordered forces to adopt a new tool to detect coercive control, more than half – 24 of 43 – have yet to switch.
For years police knew Dash was failing. In 2016, the College of Policing said Dash was unfit for front-line use.
Standing Together, a domestic violence charity, found that domestic homicide reviews showed victims had been killed after scoring an average of eight ticks, not the 14 needed for urgent support.
In 2019, Manchester University researchers concluded “officer risk predictions based on Dash are little better than random”. In 2022, academics from Manchester and Seville found Dash “performs poorly at identifying high-risk victims”, wrongly classifying more than 96 per cent as standard or medium risk.
But although problems with Dash were widely known among researchers in the criminal justice sector, bereaved families whose loved ones were wrongly graded “low” or “medium” – or had “high risk” status delayed – are only now discovering that it may explain why no one intervened.
Pauline Jones, 61, told The Telegraph that when she learnt her daughter Bethany Fields had been denied support prior to being killed by her former partner because she had been graded only “medium” risk using a Dash checklist, the revelation “destroys not just your heart, but your very soul”.
Pauline Jones holds up a picture of her daughter Bethany Fields Credit: Sam Tabahriti/REUTERS
On Aug 9 2019, the 21-year-old told police that Paul Crowther had threatened to kill her. She gave a statement and an officer completed a Dash form. He ticked “yes” to only nine questions, grading her at “medium” risk. A month later Crowther stabbed her to death in the street.
Ms Jones said: “When you lose your only child in such horrendous circumstances, you don’t think you could be any more devastated. But then you hear about the Dash, and you know your daughter’s death was so easily preventable. It destroys not just your heart, but your very soul.”
Bethany Fields was stabbed to death by her former partner
She asked: “If a person is articulate and coherent enough to give their own statement, why are they not involved in the Dash risk assessment process?”
Data released in response to freedom of information requests reveal that Bethany’s case is far from isolated.
Since 2019, reviews of domestic homicides in just 10 police force areas found that 55 women were killed by partners after being graded only “standard” or “medium” risk. More than half of these women, 36 in total, were assessed three or more times without ever being raised to “high risk”, while nine were killed having only ever been given the lowest risk score.
Ba Linh Le, the co-founder and chief data officer at Frontline, a Berlin firm that has developed a rival AI-powered risk tool, said the findings matched their own estimates and that the overall figure could be far higher.
She said: “The Telegraph’s data covers fewer than a quarter of police forces and Dash had been in use for a decade before 2019, so the true number of women killed after being marked ‘low’ or ‘medium’ risk using a Dash checklist could exceed 400.”
Across the 10 forces with available data on Dash scores for domestic homicides going back six years, 113 victims died after at least one assessment. Fifty-eight were classed “high risk” at some point, but some were later downgraded before being killed.
Natalie Saunders, 33, was murdered by Stephen Charlton in October 2018 after Cleveland Police repeatedly graded her as being at “medium” risk.
Her parents told The Telegraph they believe that earlier intervention could have saved her life. Barbara Saunders, 67, said: “She’s never been medium risk, in none of them. In not one assault, she’s not been medium.”
The only time officers rated her “high risk” was when she briefly escaped her abuser and called the police. In the recording, shared with The Telegraph, she said she was “covered in marks” from being “battered” and wanted to report his violence.
“I think he might do something, like, to me,” she told the handler. “I’m really worried.”
A month later, on Aug 24, police carried out another Dash. Again she was scored “medium”. On Oct 7, Charlton strangled her to death in her own home.
Prof Jane Monckton-Smith, a former police officer and one of the UK’s leading forensic criminologists specialising in domestic homicide, told The Telegraph: “It is time for the concerns around Dash to be taken seriously. There’s no rationale for the 14 ‘yes’ ticks that lead to a high-risk grading.”
It can also be revealed that, in May, the Home Office paid SafeLives an undisclosed sum to review how police and social services assess risk in domestic abuse cases.
A department spokesman said the project is about “making sure the police are supported with the right training and tools to identify offences and protect victims, and risk is correctly assessed to identify the level of risk posed to victims”.
They added that the work will “inform new government guidance on domestic abuse victims’ risk and needs, which will be published this autumn”.
Conflict of interest
When The Telegraph raised the apparent conflict of interest in funding the charity that created Dash to scrutinise it, the Home Office clarified that the tool had been deliberately excluded from the review.
However, SafeLives confirmed that they had surveyed stakeholders on their views of the tool as part of the review, saying: “Of course we want to know what professionals think about Dash. We want to know what is and isn’t working, because that is the basis of our recommendations to Government.”
Ms Kearns called it “farcical” for ministers to let SafeLives review how risk is assessed in domestic violence cases, and questioned how the Home Office could justify excluding Dash from scrutiny.
She said: “Something isn’t adding up – SafeLives admitted to reviewing Dash, but now insist, along with the Home Office, that they are not. That leaves two options: either ministers are failing to review Dash, which is preposterous, or they have made the farcical decision to let SafeLives review their own work.
“Ministers must come clean and if they deliberately excluded Dash from this review, must independently review it or end its use.
“The families of murdered women deserve answers, and ministers must act urgently. I fear a national scandal born of a deeply flawed system that has denied vulnerable women life-saving support simply because they did not tick enough boxes on a checklist.”
Families of women who died after being wrongly graded “low” or “medium” risk have also attacked the Home Office for awarding SafeLives a role in a separate £53 million project called DRIVE, which targets high-risk perpetrators and seeks to bring about “behaviour change” through counselling.
Mrs Saunders said the project was “wrong” and wouldn’t work. “You can’t change them, you can’t. I don’t care what anyone says,” she said.
“You can’t say they were going from what they were doing to someone, to another relationship, and they’re going to be lovey-dovey. I don’t think so.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/16/flawed-domestic-violence-tool-dash-checklist/
