On 23rd July 2024 the College of Policing and National Police Chiefs’ Council published the first National Policing Statement 2024 about Violence Against Women and Girls.
The very first sentence in this significant report describes violence against women and girls (VAWG) – including domestic abuse – as having reached ‘epidemic levels’ in the UK. It refers to the data that informed the Statement as ‘staggering’. It goes on to say: “At least 1 in every 12 women will be victims of VAWG per year (2 million victims) and we expect the exact number to be higher”. One in twelve. It is time we heard their voices and challenged that reality. Here is one of those voices.
“A Lost Poem”
A friend at work approached me a few weeks ago. Not everyone realises that about half of the women working at West Mercia Women’s Aid have their own personal experience of domestic abuse. That’s at least 50 of us.
My friend had been clearing out her spare room and found an old exercise book containing a single poem. It’s a poem that she had written late one night when her children were asleep and their father was also sleeping upstairs. She had gone out and walked down the deserted road of the village in which they lived, and sat on an old bench for a while to have a cigarette and just be, alone. She used to do this a lot – when she needed to get some distance. It felt important to get away – if only for half an hour. To be able to be on her own without being watched, questioned, scowled at. Without having to share the bed with someone who could barely disguise their contempt and who revelled in their capacity to be cruel and vindictive.
Looking back, she wasn’t sure now if she hadn’t subconsciously wanted a neighbour to see her, ask her if she was alright so that she could tell her story. But it was usually past midnight and it was rare for even a late-night taxi to drive past. She couldn’t find the words to say out loud and unsolicited how utterly wretched her life was at home. She was scared that they might say – ‘why don’t you just leave?’ As if that was easy. Go where? With what? Until someone asked her, then she just couldn’t find the words. So she went for midnight walks because she had to – well, do something. And she wrote poems.
She had described that feeling of being utterly broken in her poem. And how the magic of the night sky and the flowers on the verge in the moonlight had re-connected her with life somehow.
About six months after that poem was written, she gathered up her children and left that house. One evening the threats became reality and she was kicked and punched as she tried to get out of the bedroom and bundle her children into the car to get away.
Finding that poem had brought it all back to her and made her realise how effectively she had blocked out the memory of those midnight walks to nowhere in particular – just to be ‘away’ for a while. And now – now she could remember exactly how desperate and trapped she had felt. She could still feel it. Feel all of it. Reading that poem had brought it all back and she needed to put those feelings back in their box and get on with her life. She was re-living the desperate isolation, the sense of invisibility that she had felt at that time. And the guilt of leaving her children asleep in the house with a father who was detached and uncaring. How dreadful to not have been able to make it right so that they could live in a home with both their parents – like most of their friends. To become adults still wondering what it was like to have a dad who cared enough to remember birthdays and Christmas. I could hear in her voice how painful it still was. I could see the weight of those memories and how they dragged her back to a time when she felt literally hopeless.
Some people think that once you get away and are safe, then domestic abuse is somehow over – it’s ‘sorted’ and life can begin afresh. But the trauma leaves a mark that – for some – will never completely fade.
My friend stopped writing poems. The one she found was dated August 1990: thirty-five years ago.
She still likes to sit outside at night, feel the warm breeze and watch the stars.
See the full One in Twelve series here