Domestic abuse is not exclusive to a particular socio-economic group. The reality is that you're just as likely to bump into a victim or perpetrator buying truffle oil at Waitrose as you are anywhere else. A new information portal has launched that aims to lift the lid. We interviewed the founder. Making The Invisible Visible
the truth about domestic abuse and class. the guest interview I t's hard to see yourself as a victim of domestic abuse when your children are at a fee-paying school and you drive a BMW, but, the old image of a "battered wife" whilst still prevalent in the minds of many, is no longer an accurate depiction of domestic abuse. This month, CChat interviews the founder of a new information portal to find out a little more. He kept me, my mother and brother in a perpetual state of fear and hypervigilance. Hi, so tell me a bit about why you started your website Coercive-Control.com Sure. Well, back in 20<strong>13</strong> there was an article that appeared in Tatler <strong>Magazine</strong> that had a really memorable title: ‘Not Too Posh To Punch’ I don’t consider myself “posh” but I guess I come from what would definitely be viewed as the more privileged end of the spectrum and one of the things that I found incredibly difficult to deal with as a child was the belief that domestic abuse didn’t happen to a certain kind of person. The presumption was that it was an issue that only affected those from lower income households where a brutish-looking man of obvious dubious character would be beating you black and blue – this was back in the 1970’s I hasten to add. So, that was the stereotype and we just didn’t fit it. My father was a handsome, charismatic, ex-RAF chap and we had all the material trappings, but ‘behind closed doors’ my entire childhood was devastated by his abusive, controlling behaviour. He kept me, my mother and brother in a perpetual state of fear and hypervigilance. He was so terrifying that my mother and I (my brother was older and rarely home) sometimes had to steal away to hotel rooms in the middle of the night, because if you called the police they’d say: ‘Sorry it’s just a domestic we can’t intervene’. I’d then have to turn up at school the next day as if nothing was wrong. It was mortifying. There was no one to turn to, no one ever spoke openly about this stuff, so it became a source of profound secret shame. So these childhood experiences led you to becoming a campaigner for DA victims? Well, actually,no. For most of my life, not at all. I had a lot of confusion about my childhood as I knew it wasn’t normal, but it just didn’t fit the mould of what anyone was openly talking about. He drank, but it wasn’t overt alcoholism. He pushed and shoved and came right up to your face, but it wasn’t overt violence. What it was, was overt verbal abuse: control and domination. However, because there were no visible wounds it was hard to quantify. My mother couldn’t leave him as he held all the finances and my father made it clear she’d never get a penny and anyway, we knew he wouldn’t have hesitated to make our lives an even worse kind of living hell if we tried. So, we all had to learn to live with it and instead find a way to just sort of ‘manage’ it - and him. Walking on eggshells doesn’t even begin to cover it. So, to answer your question, even though he mellowed slightly in his very old age, I definitely didn’t feel that I wanted to go and talk about this issue to help others deal with, or recognise, abuse. To be honest I just wanted to get far away from home and put it all behind me. Besides, in later years, things did start to change for women, so maybe I believed things were happening. I certainly don’t really recall ever contemplating activism. I know divorce laws were radically improved. Domestic Violence became far more recognised too, but again in my mind, we still didn’t really fit the profile because the narrative was solely around violent behaviour. What had, and was still, happening to us didn’t seem to fit any description, so at the time the changes didn’t help us. Making The Invisible Visible
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