It could take many weeks for women to feel able to talk about sexual abuse. Groups had always organised regular trips to e.g. swimming baths, pictures and specific activities at festival times, birthdays and during the school summer holidays. Groups began applying for funding for workers to work as above with the children, especially for children staying in refuge, as refuges usually had more children staying in them than women. We had recognised that witnessing the abuse of their mother was emotional abuse of the child. We have learned, through listening, that domestic abuse is injurious to women's health and their integrity and dignity as human beings.
Domestic abuse has a long and dishonourable tradition in recorded history.
For millennia, men have been urged to be dominant and keep their women submissive publicly and privately, acknowledging the superiority of men in general and obeying one man in particular. For millennia women have resisted both openly and within themselves. Now, as then in 1973 when we began, we seek both short and long term goals. We provide refuge, we have offices as public contact points for both telephone calls and visits and we work with women and children who have left the abuser. We enable research.