Lord Mendelsohn has announced that the All Party Parliamentary Group on Get Refusal –when a husband refuses to grant a Jewish religious divorce – will soon publish a new practical guide designed to raise awareness of the issue and improve support for women affected.
Speaking on Monday at Jewish Women’s Aid’s (JWA) annual fundraiser, the Labour peer said the forthcoming guide was intended to help professionals and community figures who may be in a position to recognise the issues surrounding Get refusal and offer appropriate support.
He said Get refusal could leave women vulnerable, particularly when it was accompanied by broader patterns of controlling or abusive behaviour, potentially carrying criminal implications.
“The refusal to grant a Jewish divorce can trap women in isolation and prevent them from moving on with their lives,” Mendelsohn said.
“In many cases, it is used as leverage to alter financial settlements, child access arrangements or other conditions that have already been established. In the worst cases, women are effectively trapped for decades, and at that point, you begin to move into territory that resembles forced marriage.”
He said this guide would help ensure that “wherever these cases arise, people understand the issue and can help women access the support they need”.
Some 230 guests attended the “JWA Illuminate” fundraiser in north-west London, including Victims’ Commissioner Claire Waxman OBE, Baroness Ruth Deech and Lord Stuart Polak.
The evening focused on highlighting the realities of domestic abuse.
Mendelsohn, who was in conversation with JWA trustee and journalist Deborah Joseph, was honoured as a “Champion of Jewish Women” during the evening, in recognition of his support for women impacted by Get refusal, his advocacy in addressing violence against women and girls, as well as his efforts to ensure that men and boys were part of the solution.
JWA, he said, is “an extraordinary organisation that supports people through incredibly difficult circumstances. It is going from strength to strength, and the community should be proud of it. We should all support it.”
At the event, guests heard from Jewish women supported by JWA. They included one woman whose husband controlled the household finances, forced her to ask permission to spend money and repeatedly sexually assaulted her.
Another woman, a highly educated mother of three, told the audience how her husband had stopped her working, isolated her from family and friends and used the courts to continue exerting control, even after she had left the relationship, including refusal to grant her a Get.
Sam Clifford, chief executive of JWA, said the demand for its services continued to grow, and every single week, an average of 15 Jewish women reached out for the first time to JWA for help.
“We support women who have been sexually assaulted, women who lie awake at night terrified of what might happen if they fall asleep, mothers who worry about the safety of their children when they are forced to send them for contact with an abusive father, and women who are not safe in their own home. For many of them, JWA is the only place they feel safe enough to turn,” she said.
In a video message played at the event, former Facebook boss Sheryl Sandberg hailed the charity’s work.
As the executive producer of Screams Before Silence, a documentary on the sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists on October 7, she also thanked Mendelsohn for facilitating a screening of the film which took place in Parliament.
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