Kent Tonight investigates the scale of domestic abuse across the county.
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00:30I realised how toxic and how volatile our relationship was and the cycle that just kept
00:41repeating and repeating itself.
00:45I thought if it wasn't violence and it wasn't damage to my property, then that wasn't domestic
00:50abuse. I didn't realise controlling finances, racking up debt in my name, that was domestic
00:54abuse.
00:56One in four, that's the number of women that will experience domestic abuse in their lifetime
01:03and it's an issue far closer to home than many may realise.
01:09New data obtained by KMTV provides a snapshot into the scale of domestic abuse in Kent,
01:16with police reports more than doubling between 2014 and 2023.
01:23Over the last few months, we have spoken to those providing vital support and the
01:28women whose lives have been turned upside down by domestic abuse to find out how we
01:34can tackle this issue plaguing our communities.
01:38I don't think we're where we need to be.
01:41Many of the children we support have never heard of domestic abuse before.
01:45In order to change the epidemic, we need to start from grassroots.
01:49This is Kent's domestic abuse epidemic.
01:53Between the 1st January 2014 and the 12th September this year, there were nearly 330,000
02:01reports of domestic abuse to Kent Police.
02:05Though changes in how police record these crimes makes it difficult to make direct comparisons
02:11between different years.
02:14What we do know is that every local authority in Kent has seen a rise, with one place in
02:20particular seeing more reports of domestic abuse than anywhere else.
02:25Over the last decade, there's been 61,000 reports of domestic abuse from people here
02:31in Medway.
02:32That accounts for around 20% of all domestic abuse reports from over the last decade, from
02:39across the entire county.
02:42It's easy to see those as just numbers, just statistics, but those people would have walked
02:47down the same high street I'm stood on right now, shops in the same shops that I'm stood
02:53right next to.
02:54They're co-workers, friends, family members, and if you pass them on the street, you may
02:59not even know they're victims of domestic abuse.
03:02See, I was high-flying in my career.
03:05I didn't want to admit I was a victim of domestic abuse.
03:08I wanted to go to school, go to work.
03:11I didn't want people to think anything different of me, so I didn't know when to get the help
03:14because, well, I was 25 at the time.
03:17Katie Longhurst met her perpetrator back in 2012 when she lived in Chatham.
03:24Over the next four years, she would go on to make nearly 170 reports of domestic abuse
03:32to four different police forces.
03:35Despite her perpetrator being out of her life a decade later, the scars of that experience
03:41have not gone away.
03:44The primary goal of my ex was to isolate me.
03:47He couldn't have me.
03:48No one could have me.
03:49That meant friends.
03:50That meant family.
03:51And people start to question you as a person because your behavior looks erratic, because
03:56you don't know how to deal with the situation that you're in.
03:59So your behavior changes overnight.
04:01You become quiet.
04:02You become withdrawn.
04:04You isolate yourself from everyone to protect them.
04:07While domestic abuse can happen to anyone, women and children are most vulnerable.
04:13Across the county in Margate, Oasis Domestic Abuse Services provides specialist support
04:19to mothers and young people.
04:22This was an unhealthy relationship that he was watching again and again.
04:28And he would turn, I didn't want him to grow to be a perpetrator or to be a victim.
04:34Chloe is one of the mothers who received support from Oasis.
04:38We've anonymized her to protect her identity.
04:41But she says she wouldn't be where she is today without it.
04:45It's taken a lot of support and work.
04:49But honestly, the split was the best thing that's ever happened to him.
04:57He's now much calmer.
04:58He's happy.
04:59He's settled.
05:01He's doing well socially.
05:04He's doing well academically.
05:07He's a well-rounded boy.
05:10It's hard to believe that it's the same traumatized child that lived through that awful time.
05:18But it's in providing support for young people that Oasis is finding its greatest challenges.
05:24In our Children's and Young People's Service, we often have to decline as many referrals as we accept.
05:31And we see hundreds of children a year.
05:34So it's a rising problem.
05:37And every domestic abuse service has a limited capacity,
05:43depending on how many staff we have funding for.
05:47There is no statutory government funding for children who have experienced domestic abuse for support for them.
05:54Apart from for, quite rightly, children who are living in refuges and safe accommodation.
06:01However, that's a very small percentage of the children who need support.
06:08We maybe have, I think, eight children in our refuges at the moment.
06:12But we have supported over 100 in the last year in the community who are living in their own homes.
06:20It's not just Oasis that's struggling.
06:23Cetida supports domestic abuse victims across Medway and Swale.
06:29But the Sittingbourne based charity is seeing more people seeking help than ever before in its 15 year history.
06:38Since 2023, service use has risen by 50%, with more than 1,800 women and children receiving vital support.
06:49I mean, unfortunately, these are statistics I'm well aware of.
06:51You know, we have a real problem in this area and it's a big challenge.
06:56Some of it's linked to the broader challenges that in my constituency and Swale as a whole we face.
07:01We have high levels of deprivation, economic exclusion in the area.
07:06That's a known linked factor to particularly violence against women and girls and domestic crises and violence.
07:15But let's be blunt. I mean, we need to make, as a government and as a country, we need to tackle this head on.
07:21Our mission is one for the whole country to halve violence against women and girls within a decade.
07:29That has to start with drastically improving the policing and criminal justice response.
07:35We heard from the incoming government or the new government a lot of promises and talk around what their ambition is.
07:42And having heard a number of ministers speaking, it was really encouraging in the early days.
07:47It was really sad that in the budget they didn't use the opportunity to secure the existing funding that's being paid to specialised services.
07:55We need a commitment that's long term, not just piecemeal year by year.
07:59And that actually rises with inflationary costs.
08:01I think it's forgotten that there's been an increase in national insurance contributions, which charities were not exempt from.
08:09So our costs go up regardless of whether we get more money in or not.
08:14The government say they are committed to tackling domestic abuse and halving violence against women and girls over the next decade.
08:23And there are signs things are improving.
08:26Our data shows the number of reports of domestic abuse has begun to fall since peaking in 2021,
08:33though this only reflects the number of people who have come forward to Kent police.
08:38The number of unreported victims is likely to be higher.
08:43None of this changes the fact that numbers are still higher than they were a decade ago.
08:50The question is why?
08:52We find that those numbers, as you mentioned, are probably unrepresented of the true cases.
08:58With agencies like ours, we give women choice about whether they go to the police or not.
09:03And because of the problems in our justice system and the delays and some of the mistrust, we find that women don't want to report.
09:10On the one hand, we do have the rise of online misogyny and incel culture,
09:15which is creating a generation of young men who have a very polarised view of women and girls and the role of women and girls in their lives.
09:25We have to take into consideration we had Covid in the middle of that.
09:28So in Covid, you're locked at home with your perpetrator.
09:33So obviously there's going to be higher incidences because you always look at the patterns.
09:38When there's a big football event, incidents rises. At Christmas, incidents rise because you're at home with that person.
09:45Issues such as the cost of living crisis, growing poverty, financial pressures on families and unstable communities because of the housing crisis.
09:57There are all of these other contextual pressures on families.
10:01But the rise in domestic abuse, specifically around power and control issues, is an attitudinal problem among perpetrators.
10:12There's also now there's so many campaigns about recognising domestic abuse.
10:15More people are coming forward and realise that they're actually in an abusive relationship.
10:18The increasing awareness of domestic abuse means that those that are affected are able to come forward and that will give an inflation in the figures.
10:26But what it means is we're reaching those that are really in need that perhaps didn't realise they were victims of abuse beforehand.
10:33When it comes to domestic abuse, there are no easy answers.
10:38The reason these numbers paint such a bleak picture for Kent is not because they rise or fall, but because they count the darkest moments in someone's life.
10:49But there's plenty they don't count.
10:52They don't count the amount of support available, the number of people willing to listen, those willing to learn and unlearn.
11:01Kent may be facing an epidemic of domestic abuse.
11:06The question now is how we're going to prevent it.
11:10Just feeling like I was not alone was amazing.
11:15Honestly, hearing those words, I believe you changed everything for me.
11:18It gave me a new lease of life.
11:19He doesn't hold the same power over me because I'm so much stronger now.