This is the personal story of a woman who survived decades of domestic violence while grappling with the harsh realities of living with a disability. Her harrowing experiences reveal how deeply intertwined domestic abuse and systemic failures are, especially for those who depend on inadequate welfare systems and unsupportive social services. Despite immense challenges, she continues to advocate for change and a safer future for disabled survivors of abuse.
Trigger Warning: This article contains descriptions of domestic violence, abuse, and systemic neglect that may be distressing to some readers. Please proceed with care.
The intersection of disability and domestic violence
I am a survivor of domestic violence, and I am a disabled person. These two facts are not unconnected. In the past year, one in seven disabled people have experienced domestic violence. By comparison, only one in 20 non-disabled people would have experienced domestic violence within the past 12 months.
Disabled women are twice as likely to experience domestic violence than non-disabled people. When disabled people become abuse victims, the abuse they experience tends to be more sustained due to how we are more dependent upon others for support.
I was with my abuser for two decades before I finally asked him to leave. During that time, I was the victim of physical violence, financial abuse, compulsive cheating, which involved gaslighting, aggression, and giving me sexually transmitted diseases.
He did things such as cutting off our internet and telephone to teach me a lesson, despite me being unwell and two of our children being autistic. He formed secret drug addictions, and, as I later found out, extended his abuse to our children during my hospitalisations.
He kept buying spy cameras so I lived with the constant fear that we were being watched. The abuse eventually led to me spending eleven weeks in 2018 in psychiatric units. I still live with the physical and mental scars, as do our children.
In 2015, I was attacked in front of my children when he twisted my arms, subluxated (partially dislocated) the joints, and then beat me with a computer keyboard until it was in pieces.
He ran away and made suicide threats. I phoned the police to report the events because I was concerned for his safety, but I told the police I would not support a criminal case against him.
I was, however, referred to a domestic violence charity, which did not have the first understanding of the unique barriers which disabled people face when trying to leave, and so this came to nothing. I was placed on a MARAC, which is a multi-agency response to abuse, and I was reassured that they would come quickly if I ever called for help.
When I would try to leave him, he managed to use the police against me, convincing them that the issue was my mental health. He convinced a particularly misogynistic officer to place me on a police section, despite an ambulance assuring him I was mentally fit. I was held overnight until the mental health team assessed and released me in the morning. He spent that night with his teenage mistress in my bed, of my home, which he was not even on the tenancy of.
He was our household breadwinner, the person who would make phone calls, drive me and our children to important appointments and groups, and do the things around the house I could not.
The struggle for independence and the broken welfare system
As a result of the events in 2015, he moved out for six months. During this time, I was reliant, whilst bedridden and in charge of three young children, on a social services care package, which was wholly unsuitable.
Depending upon your locality, you will be expected to pay towards your care, sometimes from the low level of benefits you depend on to live. My care lacked and my carers became exploitative. I even had carers washing my genitalia when I told them not to. It was not long before I was desperate for my husband to return.
Since 2015, it has become exponentially harder for disabled people to leave their abusive partners because of the changes in the benefits system. Once upon a time, you would receive Incapacity Benefit if you were too sick to work, regardless of your partner’s income. This began to change under ESA, but Universal Credit completely eradicated our financial independence.
If your partner worked but you could not, you would receive nothing, so you had nothing to slowly build an escape fund with. And if you do receive Universal Credit as a couple and manage to squirrel away some form of savings (exceptionally hard, considering how ungenerous the system is), you are legally bound to reveal your savings. You have no way to legally hide that money from your partner either.
I am determined to create a safer world for disabled domestic abuse victims, and I have contacted politicians and charities about these significant issues. The only response from my MP, Suella Braverman, was to say that if you receive UC you can ask to split the payments between you – but she failed to acknowledge that, if they’re in work and earn above a certain threshold, there’s no money to split, nor did she acknowledge that it places a stop on being able to save for an escape fund.
Charities simply referred me to their “expert through experience” schemes, which are, quite frankly, a box-ticking exercise using disabled people’s unpaid labour, but none were prepared to discuss with me how they could actually create meaningful change for disabled people.
It has now been a year and a half since I left and many days I regret leaving because of the cruelty of the benefits system. I missed my WCA whilst I was very sick in hospital and am currently awaiting an assessment, but, in the meantime, I am being told I have to live off £34.50 per week of Universal Credit.
I’ve tried writing to them to tell them this is wrong, and far below what a disabled carer is entitled to. I am extremely ill, underweight, and have to be hospitalised several times per year. I cannot afford to pay for basic needs everyone has, never mind the many additional costs which come with my disability.
Keir Starmer says the welfare system is effectively cruel and immoral, but he means because of the money they do give people, not because of all the ways it creates it so that people cannot afford to eat, heat their homes, take hot showers, and wash their clothes. Until this changes, disabled people will continue to feel they have no choice but to stay in abusive relationships.
This brave woman’s story is a powerful testament to the resilience and courage of disabled survivors of domestic violence. Her fight is not just for herself but for countless others facing similar circumstances. Until systemic changes are made to provide genuine support and financial independence for disabled individuals, the cycle of abuse will continue. Her voice, and the voices of so many others, must be heard.
If you are also a disabled survivor of domestic violence and would also like to share your experiences, let us know in the comments box, on social media or contact us to share your personal story.
Thank you for sharing. This resonates with my own experiences deeply and the fear of leaving and the prospect of even more abuse than through the state or charity and a lack of any appropriated support means I cannot escape.
I have also found no domestic abuse charity, and no state system at either local or national level has a clue about the specificity of disabled survivors of domestic abuse, the critical interlinks of how they can escape the abuser when so often there is a partner/Carer/support dependency.
Such systems are constructed around deeply embedded misogynist assumptions for instance about homeownership, and assumed equalities of income power and disabled independence/assumed progress with access barriers being broken down in society/assumed appropriate care and support is accessible.
Due to historical but continuing inequalities, discrimination and systemic barriers – earned incomes of disabled people, and women, are consistently lower on average. At the intersection of disabled women, the earning power is thus considerably lower. It costs more to live as a disabled person, the huge costs of care and access. It costs more being a woman (so much more often disproportionately also doing the additional unpaid work and with still unequal pay in paid work.). And it costs more to escape an abuser, (especially if they have been counted as part of your income measurement, or share your home/belongings, or have been your ‘carer’, or sometimes are also a coparent). So, the expected enormous extra costs that would happen to me being a disabled woman survivor, and parent, I feel for me are an insurmountable barrier to leave the perpetrator. And I found there is no support out there at all, due to the financial and support inter-dependencies and the state inequalities.
These further cuts to disabled people, when there is already insufficient support for disabled domestic abuse survivors, will be devastating to disabled people, but evermore disproportionately to disabled women experiencing or survivors escaping domestic abuse. Especially when so often the abuser has a power also of using interdependency., knowing that insufficient care support and financial support isn’t out there, and is diminishing even further.