Thousands of women are at risk of assault because new laws to curb domestic violence have backfired, deterring victims from seeking help,The Times has learnt.

Since legislation was introduced in July to criminalise domestic abuse at least 5,000 women have failed to report violent partners, judges have claimed. Under the Domestic Violence Act 2007 a breach of a non-molestation order is now a criminal offence and not dealt with in the civil courts.

But battered wives, and sometimes husbands, are reluctant to seek an order for fear of giving their partners a criminal record and, potentially, a prison sentence of up to five years.

The judges’ concerns have prompted talks at the highest level between Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, and Sir Mark Potter, President of the Family Division.

The alarm was raised by both circuit judges and the Association of District Judges, whose members deal with domestic violence cases. A Ministry of Justice spokesman said that an urgent meeting with Sir Mark would be held to discuss his fears. “We would be concerned if the courts were not making protecting orders,” he said.

A spokesman for Sir Mark said: “The president is very concerned that, for whatever reason, the legislation appears to have led to a reduction rather than an increase in the protection afforded to victims of domestic violence as a result of the change of the law.”

Sir Mark felt it important that judges “at the sharp end seeing its impact” were able to flag up their concerns, he added.

Judge John Platt, a circuit judge with more than 20 years’ experience of domestic violence cases, has drawn up a report reflecting the judges’ views for the president.

He told The Times that he estimated that the number of [mostly] women seeking non-molestation orders had fallen by between 25 and 30 per cent since July 2007.

Judges were doing their own informal surveys and “every judge I have spoken to thinks there has been a drop”, he said.

In 2006 there had been 20,000 such applications — so a 25 per cent drop meant 5,000 women had not come forward to ask for the courts’ protection. “Obviously this is a very worrying figure. Either offenders have changed their behaviour — which seems extremely unlikely — or the victims do not want to criminalise the perpetrators.”

Victims in a close relationship with a violent partner, who was perhaps the father of their children and the bread-winner, would not want them to have a criminal record, he added. “It’s human nature.”

Women were deterred from the moment they walked into a lawyer’s office and were told what the new laws meant. “It is obviously very worrying,” he said.

Formerly, judges could add a power of arrest to a non-molestation order. A victim could then ring the police and complain of a breach and the man would be arrested, he said.

Some simple breaches were dealt with within 24 hours but most within 14 days in the county courts as a contempt of court.

Offenders might be given a second chance and ordered to report back to court, he said. They could be given a suspended sentence of up to two years, jailed for up to two years or, rarely, fined.

Now, however, there appear to be few prosecutions, and some offenders are being dealt with by conditional cautions, said Judge Platt. “What we can say is that there are far fewer prosecutions than there would have been arrests if the old legislation was still in place.”

The Crown Prosecution Service denied that prosecutions had dropped. A spokesman said that the most recent figures showed that both numbers of cases and the conviction rate were up on previous years. However, these predate the new Act.

The spokesman added that conviction rates had risen from their lowest recorded point of 46 per cent in 2003 to 59 per cent in 2005, up to 66 per cent in 2006 — up year on year by 7 per cent and 20 per cent over three years. The spokesman added: “The fact that the Government has increased the number of specialist domestic violence courts to 64 is an indication of the number of cases that are being prosecuted and the seriousness with which it’s regarded.”

Judge Platt said that a third problem was severe delays in special domestic violence treatment programmes, which judges felt were effective.

He added that a community penalty was often best in a family context.

But without the special programme, either the woman would remain at risk or the offender would have to be jailed.

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