Brutal truth about abuse of women
Two women a week were killed by abusers in past year
OK, so I’m going to hit you straight between the eyes with this: domestic violence. It is heinous. It is unthinkable. It is happening more than ever before.
Please don’t turn the page. People do. They find it hard to even contemplate. Or they’re cowardly perpetrators themselves and can’t face up to it.
The fact is that there are too many controlling men out there regularly dishing out brutal mental and physical abuse to women they’re supposed to love.
In the past year, 1.2 million women experienced domestic abuse. And, shockingly, two women each week were killed in England and Wales.
Calls to the National Domestic Violence Helpline are at an all-time high, meaning 230 women a day, desperate to make it stop and fearful for their lives, turn to the non-judgmental voices of caring strangers. On Tuesday, I went, with Comic Relief, to visit a project they part-fund in South East London. At Bede House, women meet to take part in sessions that enable them to see that abuse is not their fault and to empower them to leave the relationship. They have been told by their partners that they’re stupid, that everything’s their fault, that they’re useless, that they’re lucky they’re with the perpetrator because no-one else would want them. They have been bullied and controlled to such an extent that they have no self-worth. One lady, who escaped her 12-year relationship, showed me a bottle of perfume. She was so proud of it because she wasn’t allowed to wear it before and was beaten if she wore make-up.
One night her nose was splattered all over her face, an artery ruptured, blood cascading everywhere. She had to carry on making tea for the family.
Another lady was ritually beaten for 30 minutes with a metal vacuum cleaner pole. She was so badly injured, she couldn’t walk.
She feared for her life after one gruesome beating when she was told, “I’m going to finish you off”. She has had two babies taken away and adopted, because the abusive environment she lived in was unsafe for the children.
I could fill this whole paper with the unspeakable forms of abuse these bright, smart, amazing women – including a doctor who said she felt stupid for not realising that her husband’s behaviour was serious abuse – have endured.
Another lady, who put up with her controlling husband for 27 years before finding the strength to leave, said the mental torture was hardest.
The others concurred, heartbreakingly saying that they’d rather be beaten up because the pain eventually goes. The effect of the mental torture, they agreed, never does.