Erin Pizzey is known for having started the first refuge in Britain for women and children fleeing violent partners; by the time she was through, there were refuges all over the country. To begin with she worked with the Women’s Liberation Movement in its early days, but there was a fundamental disagreement in her perception of family violence and theirs. To them, it was simple: brutal men against suffering and downtrodden women; but Pizzey knew it was more complicated than that. Having been abused by her own mother, she understood that women could be violent too.

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