'I never thought it would happen to me'

LAURA was pregnant when her boyfriend started beating her up. He would drag her round the flat by her hair and regularly gave her black eyes. After their daughter was born, the violence became worse as his drinking and drug-taking spiralled out of control.

He stopped Laura seeing her family and virtually kept her a prisoner in the one-bedroom flat they shared for three months. Once, when she was breastfeeding, he punched her in the face. Snatching the baby from her arms, he started kicking her, and she sank to the floor, feigning unconsciousness until he gave up.

The couple had met in a nightclub on New Year's Eve 1998, and soon moved in together.

Laura says: "At first, he was just the usual charmer, taking me out for meals and paying me compliments. I was on the rebound after a five-year relationship so I went along with it.

"I got pregnant in the April and that's when the violence really started. There were little signs before that. He was very jealous and possessive and once he pulled my hair, but I just let it go. I was 24 years old. I never thought that sort of thing would happen to me."

Laura's weight plummeted to six stones and her face and body were always covered in bruises. She left home a few times but her self-confidence was so low, she always returned. She then discovered she was pregnant again.

She says: "He had been out trying to buy some drugs and he came back in a really bad mood. There was some furniture in the garden that needed moving and because I was pregnant, I had left it for him. He went mental.

"He got me between the sink and the kitchen table and started smacking my head against the table. He said he was going to glass me but my daughter woke up. He went calmly to see what was the matter with her and when he came back, he smashed me over the head with a chair and split it open."

It was the last straw. She moved in with her parents but her boyfriend still hounded her, slashing the tyres on her mum and dad's car and having her followed.

"Things are better now but he never got charged because it was all circumstantial. It was all my word against his. I know I should have left him sooner but I kept thinking it was better to stay together for my daughter. I was in denial for a long time."

Laura is just one of the thousands of British women who suffer from domestic violence, which can take the form of actual or threatened physical, emotional, psychological or sexual abuse.

Today is International Day Against Domestic Violence Against Women, and Refuge, the UK's largest single provider of specialist accommodation and support to women and children escaping domestic violence, is encouraging everyone to mark the occasion.

Sandra Horley, Refuge chief executive, says: "Sadly, even in this day and age, domestic violence is not only widespread, but largely unacknowledged. It is a crime and it must not be ignored. It is essential that everyone recognises the unacceptability of domestic violence."

There are a number of initiatives in the North-East to highlight the issue and help victims.

Norcare, the North-East-based charity that provides housing and community services for vulnerable people, has pushed domestic violence to the top of its agenda, taking over the management of supported housing for women and children at a centre in County Durham.

The centre is open seven days a week and staffed 24 hours a day by trained workers, who have direct access to the police, and the women are provided with six-month tenancies. Since April, 69 families have been referred to the centre.

Barbara Dennis, chief executive of Norcare, says: "When you need our help, you need it immediately. We have to be able to offer an open door for people in great distress and fear whatever the time of day or night."

Norcare is continuing to push forward the ways in which victims of domestic violence can be helped. There are plans to work with the community, attempting to minimise the disruption women and children face in having to leave the family home. The charity is also looking at ways in which the partner who inflicts violence is the one who leaves, not the victim.

Norcare works with Three Rivers Housing Association, the Domestic Violence Forum, the Domestic Violence Task Group, the Probation Service, local authorities and the police in tackling domestic violence.

Barbara says: "Centres for domestic violence abuse victims are unfortunately a necessity. Ours not only provides a refuge for families fleeing such violence, but it helps them move forward.

"Families have to have the confidence to go on from the centre independently. It takes a lot of courage to do that, but it is really rewarding to see people making a success of their lives once they've left our centre."

The Solicitor General, Harriet Harman, will be the main guest speaker at a conference on the rights of domestic violence victims in Sunderland tomorrow. The conference - Do They Have Rights - is being hosted jointly by Wearside Domestic Violence Forum and the Legal Services Commission at the Stadium of Light. Its purpose is to raise awareness of Safety and Justice, the Government's consultation document on domestic violence, which was published in July.

The paper sets out wide-ranging proposals to tighten the law and give more help to victims to encourage them to come forward in the knowledge that they will get the help, protection and support they need.

On average, in Sunderland, there are 400 calls to the police a month to attend incidents of domestic violence, but this is just the tip of the iceberg, says Sharon Kane, Sunderland's domestic violence co-ordinator.

"Most incidents do not get reported to the police. For example, between January and July this year, 135 cases of domestic violence against women were revealed to staff at Hendon Neighbourhoold Centre - a drop-in community centre - and none of those had been brought to police attention."