‘We think we wouldn’t put up with abuse but we don’t know what we’d do’
PSNI figures show nearly one in 10 domestic incidents affect older women. Linda Stewart from the Belfast Telegraph talks to Women’s Aid Antrim, Ballymena, Carrickfergus, Larne and Newtownabbey about the situation.
Picture a victim of domestic abuse and she will more than likely be young, yet PSNI figures show nearly one in 10 domestic incidents affect older women. Linda Stewart talks to Women’s Aid Antrim, Ballymena, Carrickfergus, Larne and Newtownabbey (ABCLN) about how through their National Lottery funded project, they are working to dispel the myth that domestic violence doesn’t affect older women.
Warning others to run for help at the first sign of abuse, Beatrice (64) describes what it took to leave her husband of more than 40 years.
“When the mental pain is great enough, when you are crippled with physical pain, when you can’t stand unaided, when you are too weak to put food into your mouth, when he ignores your pneumonia, when he tells you that you are needy and selfish, when you have tried for decades, when you know you are dying, you will say NO. Don’t be me, don’t serve a life sentence,” the Co Antrim woman warns.
Six years after plucking up the courage to leave her abusive husband and find a place of safety, Beatrice (not her real name) still experiences flashbacks to the traumatic experiences she underwent.
“He hit me. I had black eyes. I had stitches in my head. I had my clothes ripped. I was thrown out of the house late at night several times. He disappeared sometimes for months on end and I’d no right to know where he was.” she says.
“You try to get a safe place to live… There is a waiting list for housing. Nothing is suitable as you can barely walk. Just getting out of bed is an effort and you can’t do it every day.
“The flashbacks come thick and fast as your brain reworks and reinterprets all the self-delusion. You scream out the pain from the pit of your stomach. As you regain some strength you eventually find a place to live. A safe place to which he has no keys. A place of calm.”
It took years for Beatrice to seek help from Women’s Aid and now, she says, she’s filled with regrets that she didn’t leave much sooner. Her adult children remain unable to accept that their father was an abuser and she has lost her job, her home, her family, her pet, her health, her retirement and her marriage.
“Your adult children distance themselves from both parents, and who can blame them? They too are traumatised and confused. You are alone in your sorrow. Nothing and no one will ever be the same again,” Beatrice says.
Often, the image of an abuse victim is of a younger woman, with small children clinging to her, yet Women’s Aid says this is far from the case.
There is a widespread belief that domestic abuse somehow peters out as families grow older, yet PSNI statistics show that officers responded to 31,817 domestic abuse incidents in 2019-20, with older women representing 9.2% of the total female victims of domestic abuse – a 100% increase from 4.7% in 2004-5 when records began.
Last year, Women’s Aid ABCLN supported 1,674 women and 2,313 children living with domestic abuse, including 93 women in their refuge. Of this, older women represented 6% of the total number of women that Women’s Aid ABCLN supported in 2019/20 and the oldest woman affected by domestic abuse that the charity has supported is aged 84. Since 2016, Women’s Aid ABCLN has received over £2 million from The National Lottery Community Fund to support women and children.
But the group says domestic abuse affecting older women remains under-researched, under-reported and under-recorded, and is often misidentified as elder abuse when it comes to safeguarding legislation, regulation and training. Research by Queen’s University has revealed that this has led to older women failing to get the services and interventions they need to be safe, and a failure to recognise this abuse in later life as a continuation of the violence and abuse perpetrated against women throughout their lives.
Thanks to a £277,144 grant from The National Lottery Community Fund, now, older women using the services of Women’s Aid ABCLN have set up an Older But No Safer project which will work with older women and organisations over the next five years to increase awareness about domestic abuse and provide greater services and protection for women aged 55 and over.
The Older But No Safer advisory group have shared their experiences of silence, psychological and emotional abuse, physical violence, sexual abuse, financial control and isolation over decades to help others to understand the barriers that prevent older woman seeking the help and support they need.
On World Elder Abuse Awareness day, June 15 the campaign plans to screen online a short film, ‘The Lonely Old Woman’, a hard-hitting monologue performed by volunteer Joan Cosgrove, recounting the experiences of an older woman whose life has been dominated and permanently tainted by domestic abuse.
It’s based on the stories she has heard in her role as chair of the advisory group. In many cases, Joan says, the abuse can be insidious and it can take many years to recognise it as abuse.
“It motivated me when I was performing the poem because I thought about what it would have been like going through all that and ending up with absolutely nothing after years of helping to provide. The particular bit of the poem that concerned me was how her family continued the abuse by telling her ‘My dad’s not well, it’s up to you, it’s your duty.”
Joan remembers another woman telling her she would rather her partner had battered her face than her mind.
“We all think we wouldn’t put up with it. But we don’t know what we would do in those circumstances,” she says.
Women’s Aid ABCLN CEO Rosemary Magill is passionate about the issue, saying she encountered domestic abuse of older women many times in her career as a nurse but at the time it often wasn’t recognised as domestic abuse.
“There is a lot of empathy given to children and young people affected by domestic abuse – as there should be – but very often what is missed is older people. I’ve heard it said over the years that it stops at about 40 and there is no domestic violence after that.
“Yet I speak to women who have been abused their whole lives, from the age of 16 on – the oldest I have met was 84 and she was in a refuge in Ballymena. It’s something that can last a lifetime, or it can start in older years.”
And the abuse that has been reported to Women’s Aid by older women runs the gauntlet from emotional and coercive abuse to physical and sexual abuse, she says.
“And escaping after all those years can be almost impossible, such is the web of financial control and social expectation that has been woven around the victim. Their experiences are often exacerbated by social, cultural and physical factors such as judgement by family and friends, financial constraints, depression and anxiety, mobility problems, pain and injuries that require a tailored response.
Women’s Aid ABCLN says limited research on this issue shows that older women are less likely to speak out about domestic abuse and have fewer opportunities to leave their abusers than younger women, for example, due to financial reliance on their perpetrator, housing, health issues, religious views or family pressures.
Rosemary talks about one woman who had been abused throughout a 39 year marriage and didn’t realise for a long time that it wasn’t her fault. “She would be told if she didn’t do this, this wouldn’t be happening to her.
“Finally after 39 years she came to Women’s Aid and actually got out. But it was a very, very hard road to follow at her time of life. She had kept a written record of what had happened to her, but she felt she couldn’t do anything with that information because she didn’t want her two grown up sons to know what had happened to her, because it was their father who had done it to her.”
Rosemary says that when people hear about domestic abuse they are not picturing an older woman.
“When there’s something on TV about domestic violence and lockdown, how many people are imagining older people in there – they aren’t. Because it doesn’t come into their psyche,” she says.
“So we need to recognise it – we need to put campaigns out there to say this is going on, we need to get money dedicated to services for older women. We are so grateful for this new grant from The National Lottery Community Fund to help us take this work forward and be able to support older women. I would also like to thank those who play the Lottery for making the money possible.
“Everybody keeps talking about post-Covid and going back to the new normal. But what is the new normal going to be and what is going to be like for older people?”
One of the biggest problems for Women’s Aid is getting the information and help for older victims of abuse to where it’s needed.
“Were trying to raise awareness of domestic abuse against older people within communities and that is what our new National Lottery funded project is all about,” Rosemary says.
“Many of the things that are coming out are not aimed at older people, so we need to look at how we identify them, where we identify them, where do we put the information? We do lots of work with churches which is where a lot of older people will congregate in safety and post offices where people go to get their pension, but we need communities to tell us how to get in contact with people within their community.,”
Joan says most people don’t realise how rife the problem is within society. One of the things really shook her when she was learning more from the group members was when she learned about sexual abuse by younger family members.
“I have two sons and a grandson and I was really shaken by the fact that people were being abused by their own grandchildren. People wouldn’t tell about it, because they’re too ashamed to tell about it … So we need to know the best way of getting the message across,” she says.
“Knowledge is power and the right knowledge is massive power. Joan says.
For more information and support you can call Women’s Aid ABCLN on 028 25 632136 or go to womens-aid.org.uk