challenging institutional disbelief around domestic & sexual violence and abuse
Where do our values come from? Mine were instilled by my relatives, primary carers, educators and peers. These values contribute to how we view domestic & sexual violence and abuse; they contribute to those internalised views that we hold, and those that we externalise to others. How many of us can honestly say, (and I […]
This piece was first published here in November 2012. Unfortuately it is still very relevant – thanks to author for permission to cross post. The Guardian this weekend reports on one person’s reaction to the disclosures from victims of Jimmy Savile. In referring to children at a residential, the interviewee states, “They didn’t tell me about […]
I have written this post in response to an article in The Observer today, titled ‘Masculinity Crisis leads to family murder, according to new study.’ It is a short piece, which states that Birmingham City University criminologists have studied 59 men who between 1980 and 2012 killed their children and, sometimes, their wives as well. […]
Online child abuse addict: ‘I was curious about images of teenage girls on the internet – a bit like car crashes. There’s a fatal fascination’ was the headline of a piece that appeared in the Indy on Wednesday 23 July 2013. Firstly, I really don’t like the use of the car crash analogy here, car […]
“The Murder Trial” detailed the retrial of Nat Fraser for the murder of his wife Arelene Fraser in 1998. This is a Scottish case so procedure is different in some respects to England & Wales and Northern Ireland but it was still a fascinating insight into a UK criminal trial. The programme featured footage from […]
David, what type of headline is this? Dear David, I write to you in reference to the front page of The Sun, pictured above, published on 30th June 2013. The headline reads: “I GROOMED MY TEACHER, NOW I WANT HIS BABIES” Firstly David I’d like to clarify, just in case you weren’t aware; […]
This week, I’ve been watching discussions on Facebook and Twitter talk about the “agency” of a teenage girl in her grooming, kidnapping, and rape by her teacher Jeremy Forrest. A 15 year old girl was groomed, kidnapped and raped by her teacher; a man she was supposed to be able to trust. Instead of discussing […]
Victim blaming is a problem – but one that seems to go unchallenged so frequently that I wonder why. Maybe part of the reason is that it can be done in a way that leaves me second guessing myself. Victim blaming can be blatant: “she deserved to get raped because of X”. Sometimes it is […]
A 52 year old man has received a suspended sentence after being convicted of raping a 14 year old girl twice and indecently assaulting her twice. The 14 year old girl is his wife’s sister. At the time of the attack, the rapist was 24 years old. A 25 year old man raped a 14 […]
I author a website concerned with child to parent violence: holesinthewall.co.uk. You might be interested in a post, written in January 2012, entitled “I don’t believe it!”. This discusses the way parents are not only held responsible for the abuse they suffer at the hands of their children, but are also sometimes directly punished for […]