Victoria: Day I feared Dad would kill Mum
TEARFUL Victoria Derbyshire told how she once fled her childhood home to call the police, fearing her violent father would kill her mother.
She relived her torment as she returned to the home for the first time in 35 years for a TV programme about domestic abuse.
Victoria, 51, said: “This was the 70s and 80s. No one had heard the phrase ‘domestic abuse’ No one knew what it meant, what it was or what it involved.”
Outside the house in Littleborough, Greater Manchester, for yesterday’s Panorama documentary Escaping My Abuser, the BBC presenter said: “I remember once, he locked my mum in their bedroom and he was hitting her and there was loads of noise and I was scared.
“So I ran from here down to the police station which was, I don’t know, maybe a mile or something.
“I was 12 or 13, I was so scared, I just ran to the police station, just ran in and said, ‘My dad’s hitting my mum, please can you come’.” Mother-of-twoVictoria recalled her experiences after investigating the “shocking” scale of domestic violence committed at the height of the coronavirus lockdown.
She said: “Growing up I remember my whole body tensing every time I heard my father’s key in the back door.
“What mood would he be in when he came home from work? Would he provoke an argument? Would it lead to him hitting me, whipping me with his belt or just slapping me round the back of my head?
“The love in our lives came from my amazing mum who did everything she could to make up for his failings.”
Victoria, the oldest of three children, said they “escaped the violence” when her parents divorced when she was 16. Describing the bedroom attack on her mother, she said: “I was scared he was going to kill her.
“Our phone had been cut off because he hadn’t paid the bill – another way of trying to isolate us from friends and family. “When the Prime Minister told us all to stay at home because of coronavirus one of my first thoughts was for those in abusive households.” Women’s Aid found almost two-thirds of victims living with an abuser said violence increased during lockdown. Respect’s Men’s Advice Line had 65 per cent more calls in the first three months of lockdown.
● The 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline can be reached on 0808 2000 247.