challenging institutional disbelief around domestic & sexual violence and abuse
This article is cross-posted with permission from writer Woman as Subject. Having worked with survivors of domestic abuse for many years, I am still shocked at the way in which society continues to blame women for the violence and abuse they suffer at the hands of men. This tendency to minimise or justify male violence […]
Child Sexual Exploitation is in the news again – the media are over-run with commentators who are wringing their hands, apologising, claiming that they’re not sure how they didn’t know, telling us that work is in progress to ‘remove this vile scourge’ from our communities. But what are we actually doing? We’ve looked over a […]
We have sent the following comment in an email to [email protected]. If you’d like to complain, please copy and paste the text into an email and send it to the BBC. The more complaints we can generate, the more likely we are to be heard. ******* I am writing with regard to the broadcast of […]
Details of the cross examination of witnesses in the trial of Ben Blakeley have emerged, revealing once more the pervasive victim-blaming in cases of domestic violence against women. A known and repeated abuser of women Blakeley, 22, is on trial for murdering of his pregnant, 17-year-old girlfriend, Jayden Parkinson, in December last year. Blakeley, who […]
[View the story “#MoralMaze – How can we help more rapists get away with rape?” on Storify]
(Content Note – non-graphic description of sexual pleasure during sexual abuse) We’ve noticed a running trend in our website searches recently, and we wanted to address what appears to be a gap in the information our site provides. The topic is still considered ‘taboo’, and very rarely spoken about. We’d like to help change that, […]
Two of the pillars that underpin the many barriers to reporting domestic and sexual violence are the myths of “those women” and “those men”. Those women are weak, dishevelled, vulnerable. They stare out at us from sexual and domestic abuse awareness posters, with their black eyes and tear-filled eyes. When we experience abuse we don’t […]
Survivor Privilege, Fairies, Unicorns and Other Myths (In response to the George Will article which appeared in both the New York Post and the Washington Post, also referenced by Think Progress here: http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/06/09/3446557/washington-post-college-rape/). Washington Post pundit George Will has finally blown the whistle on the big secret – those of us who have been lucky […]
The debate that revolves around the accessibility of essential services by victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse often reveals the inadequacies that exist and how agencies still lack visibility. This has time and again led to victims who are in desperate need of access to services, being left with no support. The lack of […]
When does it become acceptable for a group of people to own an issue? Racism has killed white people and the families who lost their child are the victims of a heinous crime. But these were racially incited incidents, not a trend. White people do not have issues to fight because of their race; as a […]