Join Sun’s Give Me Shelter campaign to help save shelters in UK
POLITICIANS from all sides have backed The Sun’s Give Me Shelter campaign – and promised action, writes TOM NEWTON DUNN.
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| Charlotte Kneer now runs refuge after being attacked |
No10 said PM David Cameron would ensure the women’s refuges funding crisis is examined “very carefully”.
His
spokesman said: “We will look at all the ways to ensure the best
available help is on hand for the victims of very serious crimes.”
Communities Secretary Greg Clark praised The Sun for “giving this important issue the attention it merits”. And Labour’s Gloria de Piero, Shadow Women’s Minister, also hailed our campaign.
Scandalously, cost-cutting has closed 32 refuges for victims of domestic violence since 2010.
Below we talk to one victim who is now helping others. And two children reveal, in their own words, how aggression in the home affected them.
EACH
time a trembling finger presses the buzzer on her refuge door,
Charlotte Kneer reflects on her own rollercoaster journey from domestic
violence victim to survivor.
In one severe attack, her partner Wayne Prior, bit flesh from her neck. In another, he almost strangled her.
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| Refuge centres provide support and safe place to stay for families |
On
her daughter’s first birthday, Charlotte bundled her three children
into the family car and headed for a safe house – the only sanctuary
from another beating, perhaps even death.
Now
as the manager of a Women’s Aid refuge herself, it is Charlotte’s job
to care for women who have been living her old nightmare. She does it
with warmth and love born out of true empathy.
Charlotte
said: “Doing this job gives me strength I didn’t know I had. Every
woman that comes through this door is amazing and I want to make her
life better. It takes great courage to leave. I should know because I’ve
been there. It’s my aim to help women stay left.
“The
reward is seeing a family that has been broken leave this house whole.
Some people have the perception of a refuge as a grotty hostel but it
couldn’t be more different. It’s about complete rehabilitation;
discovering what has happened and why.”
Charlotte
is now on the frontline fighting against the closure of women’s
refuges. A staggering 32 specialist refuges have closed in the past four
years and many more are under threat. Nearly a third of referrals to
refuges across the country were turned down last year because of lack of
space.
Campaigners say a recent
£10million government funding pledge is a sticking plaster that can only
sustain services for a further two years.
The Sun’s #GiveMeShelter campaign is calling for a long-term funding strategy and the reinstatement of 32 refuges.
While
funds last, Charlotte and her dedicated team continue to provide beds
and specialist support for nine women and up to 21 children who have
fled violence and threatening and controlling behaviour in the south of
England.
Charlotte’s shelter resembles a
bright and breezy holiday cottage with women busily sharing cooking and
washing chores while their children play outside in a well-kept garden.
Each family lives independently under her
roof but crucially has access to specialist support from onsite Family
Support Workers, Counselling and health support. There are weekend trips
to the cinema for kids and family visits to the seaside and local
farms.
Crucially, the refuge team
distribute food vouchers, toys, toiletries, bedding and school uniform
vouchers . The families they help often flee their homes in fear of
their lives with only seconds to spare. They have nothing.
The
44-year-old mum-of-three still recalls the terror she felt at the hands
of her own seemingly charming partner – and the courage it took to
leave him.
She said: “I met him in 1994
when I was a single mum with a 6 month old son (his dad left us when he
was 10 days old) and my brother was dying from leukemia. Looking back I
can see that I was quite vulnerable.
“My
mum had also been married twice, both times in abusive relationships, so
in a perverse way, violence in relationships was normal to me.
“But
Wayne seemed different. One of the things I found most appealing about
him was that he was incredibly attentive. He wanted to know what I was
doing, where I was going and whom I was with? At the time, I thought:
‘Wow, he loves me so much.’
“I’d heard he
had previously abused women but I didn’t believe it or didn’t want to
believe it. Now I know that all the danger signs were there.”
Charlotte’s
perception of Prior as an ideal partner was first shattered at a
wedding in the summer of 1995. She recalled: “He’d been drinking all day
and became verbally aggressive so I said I wanted to go home and asked
him for the car keys. I started walking towards the car, which was at
the end of a long drive. Suddenly he attacked me, punching the back of
my head so forcefully that I rolled down a steep bank. Then he punched
me in the face repeatedly.”
Charlotte, a
former recruitment consultant, ran back to the wedding desperately
seeking the help of Prior’s parents. Chillingly, they said little and
drove her home in near silence.
“That’s
the point where I should have left,’ Charlotte reflects poignantly, “But
the next day he came round crying, devastated – so I let him in and
forgave him. I wanted to believe he’d never do it again. I didn’t
question what I was doing. I felt so sorry for him.”
Prior’s violent tendencies flared in six-month cycles. At the end of 1995 he tried to kill Charlotte for the first time.
She
recalled: “We had gone out and returned to our flat when he suddenly
flipped. He pulled me out of bed, straddled me and repeatedly punched my
head. He said: ‘I’m going to kill you’ before biting a chunk out of my
neck and ripping out my flesh. Then he dragged me by my hair out to the
kitchen and got a knife, which he tried to kill me with. I grabbed the
blade and he eventually slid onto the floor. I ran.”
Police
put a restraining order on Prior, a carpenter, but the arch manipulator
convinced Charlotte he was a desperate alcoholic who needed help and
she dropped all charges.
Charlotte went on
to have two children with Prior against a backdrop of continual abuse
and harassment that continued until his conviction in 2011.
She
said: “It took a final serious assault for me to leave him. He tried to
strangle and stab me so the next day I went to a solicitor with some
money borrowed from my mum and got a non-molestation order. He breached
it immediately and was arrested. Thankfully, that was the beginning of
the end.”
The Police investigation
uncovered two of Prior’s ex girlfriends with similar experiences who
were also prepared to bring charges against him.
Eventually,
Lewes Crown Court heard Prior admit seven counts of actual bodily harm,
two counts of making threats to kill and one of common assault against
the three women from 1993 to 2010. He was sentenced to imprisonment and
is currently living on licence in Devon.
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