HOW TO RECOGNISE ABUSE

Several things were significant in releasing me from the prison of my abusive relationship, says Helen, and helping me to recognise that I wasn’t alone, including the way that Rob Titchener moved in on Helen in The

Archers. If you’re trying to pinpoint what passes for controlling or coercive behaviour, it might include: l Isolating a person from their friends and family. l Depriving them of their basic needs. l Monitoring their time. l Monitoring them via online tools or using spyware. l Taking control over aspects of their everyday life, such as where they can go, who they can see and what they can wear. l Repeatedly putting them down. l Enforcing rules and activity that humiliate, degrade or dehumanise. l Controlling their finances. l Threatening to hurt or kill. l Threatening to reveal or publish private information. l Preventing a person from having access to transport or from working.

How many of us in the first flush of a new relationship have dropped our entire social circle in favour of spending every moment with our new squeeze? How many of us have received texts from our partner asking, ‘Where are you?’ How many of us have chucked out a dress because a partner didn’t like it?

One in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetime. Why do so many of us still ask if what we are experiencing is actually abuse? Today we are better informed, so you would think we would know how to avoid it, how to be less vulnerable.

Yet it’s not so, and the reality suggests that we haven’t come very far at all in terms of raising awareness and substantially reducing the number of cases.

How can we make people understand that not all abuse is measured in bruises?