Victoria Derbyshire fled home aged 12 to escape ‘violent father’
VICTORIA DERBYSHIRE has revealed she ran away from home at the age of 12 because of her abusive father, who whipped her with his belt.
The television presenter said she once had to run to the local police station to report a violent outburst.
In a video clip filmed for BBC’S Panorama: Escaping My Abuser outside her childhood home in Littleborough, Rochdale, she 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’.”
She added that following Boris Johnson’s stay-at-home orders at the beginning of the lockdown “one of my first thoughts was, ‘So, what if you are living in a house with a violent partner?’ Because you would be literally trapped.”
In an article for the BBC news website, Derbyshire said that when she heard her father’s key in the door, “I remember my whole body tensing”.
“What mood would he be in when he came home from work? Would he provoke an argument?” she added. “Would it lead to him hitting me, whipping me with his belt or just slapping me round the back of my head?”
She added that going to school while he was working “meant respite from the disruptive shouting and cruel violence”.
“The love in our lives came from my amazing mum who did everything she could to make up for his failings.”
Refuge, the charity which runs the National Domestic Abuse Helpline, has reported a rise in the number of calls it received during the lockdown.
Last month Jane Keeper, the organisation’s director of operations, said there had been “huge spikes in the number of women who have needed our support during lockdown, and as restrictions start to ease we are seeing demand rise yet more”.
Refuge’s telephone helpline, which ordinarily logs around 270 calls and contacts every day, saw an increase of 77 per cent during June.