On average I watched about 10 hours of violence every week during my childhood. Over 16 years than equates to 8320 hours of watching your Mum be punched, kicked, strangled, slapped, spat at, urinated upon, thrown across rooms, hair pulled out by the handful. A lot of hours for

any poor woman to endure and survive. A lot of hours for children to cry in anguish and fear. A lot of hours for neighbours or the police to try to help her & us and no one ever did. A lot of hours to lie fearing tonight your Mum might die. Each of the blows she endured is

engraved upon my heart, stored up in my body and has forever changed the happy careful child I could have been. And what has changed in these last 40 years in terms of how women a treated; sadly not a lot. Attitudes have changed to some extent and the police now at least make

some effort to intervene and prosecute. But there is still an epidemic of violence towards women. And sexual violence has gotten worse as violent pornography has become normalised. More and more women die during ‘rough sex’ a hideous understatement for sexual murder. The levels

of violence meted out on women across the world is frankly shocking and heartbreaking. The way violent men treat women is nothing short of terrorism. I wish it could be classed as such and maybe governments would marshall the state to intervene properly. I doubt it will happen