Three years ago I had a phone call while I was shopping at Tesco. A disembodied voice said that a family in Bahrain had decided to create a shelter for battered women and their children and would I like to come and open it. The centre was being created in honor of a much […]

I have been putting together my research for a book detailing the birth of the first refuge in the world opened in Chiswick, London in 1971 and the rise of the feminist movement in the Western world.
For this purpose I am going to write bout my first trips to America when I was invited on […]

Domestic violence is not a gender issue, it affects women and men and both need rehabilitation, whether they are the abuser, or the victim, says the founder of the world’s first refuge for battered women.

Manama - A new rehabilitation centre, which aims to aid battered women and protect families from social, psychological and legal problems, was opened in Hamad Town yesterday. Her Highness Shaikha Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa … opened the Aisha Yateem Family Counselling Centre, the first of its kind in the region.

The cries of abused women must never fall on deaf ears, says the founder of the world’s first refuge for battered women.

Thirty six years ago I opened the first shelter in the world in Chiswick, London. Before that time if a woman and her children were unable to go back to her family, she had nowhere to run to.
A man’s home was his castle and whatever happened behind the front door was nobody’s business. […]

To: senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov

In 1971 I opened the first refuge in the world in Chiswick, London. I said then that domestic violence is a learned pattern of behaviour in early childhood. I also explained that boys and girls exposed to violent and dysfunctional parents often internalise the parent’s behaviour and go on to also lead violent and dysfunctional lives.

Unfortunately at that time the feminist movement was looking for a cause and funding. They had a feminist/Marxist focus on domestic violence that claimed that all men (patriarchy) were guilty of violence towards women and children. They also claimed that the family and marriage was a dangerous place for women and that the ‘new’ family in the future would consist of women and their children. Men and fathers were expendable. …

Next week I am going to the Middle East to open one of the first Arab refuges in that part of the world. I will beg the people concerned not to make the same mistakes that their Western sisters have made.

Erin Pizzey, founder of the battered wives’ refuge, on how militant feminists - with the collusion of Labour’s leading women - hijacked her cause and used it to try to demonise all men.