that if I tell anyone or if I leave him, he would come and kill me and the children and my
mum.”
Interviewee 11 said that it was “not the done thing” to discuss these sorts of issues and it
was only after her husband hospitalised her that the police got involved. Interviewee 12
explained that she did not access services because she thought they only dealt with
physical violence and her husband inflicted “mental cruelty” on her:
“I never really accessed any services for domestic violence. Most of the services that you see
advertised are always for women who are suffering from physical violence but not very much for
women who are suffering from mental cruelty. I never felt that I could approach these
organisations. It has only been in the last couple of years that I have heard from the national
media that they seem to include the mental anguish that women suffer. I did not think that
psychological violence is seen in the same light as physical violence because there are no scars,
broken bones and fractures that anyone can see or prove that this particular behaviour went on.
All you are left with is mental anguish and ultimately the lack of confidence that unfortunately I
still suffer from to this day.” Interviewee 12
Most of the women did not speak to agencies about violence and abuse and many only
told their families. When they did tell their families, it was towards the end of their
relationships when the violence had escalated and they needed help to leave.
Unfortunately many of the women reported negative experiences from the professionals
that they did disclose to. Interviewee 2 was in a “very violent” and abusive relationship
whereby she was “hospitalised a few times” over the duration of ten years and believed
that violence against women issues “got swept under the carpet”. She disclosed to her
GP whose advice was to leave her partner which she did not find very helpful at that
point. She also explained that her partner was very controlling and she could literally
not contact anyone for help particularly because this was before the prevalence of mobile
phones and she could not phone for help from her home telephone. However, she
believed that she needed someone to talk to and that this would have helped her:
“I just really wanted to have support and someone to talk to and know that I am not the only
one who is going though this. Maybe if somebody had talked to me about it, I would have
probably come out of the relationship sooner.” Interviewee 2
Interviewee 6, from a rural area, was not aware of any services that were available apart
from her GP but was reluctant to disclose to him because he was a man. Interviewee 7,
also from a rural area, also described problems with her GP who she referred to as
“useless” because:
“The GP said to me that you are clinically depressed. She did nothing about it. She was one of
the problems. She wanted to give me tablets and they made me feel peculiar and Relate did not
help either so I did not try any other services. The thing that helped me most was WI.”
Interviewee 7
Interviewee 17, also had a negative experience with her GP but this was in relation to the
sexual abuse she experienced as a child. She said that she told her school doctor who
responded that sexual abuse she experienced was “not important and it did not matter”.
“I went to my school doctor and home life was not fantastic. My mother was dying from cancer
and I could not tell her about it; it would have destroyed what was left of the family. I thought
McCarry & Williamson, 2009 26
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40