‘You get to the stage where you are afraid to go home.’ MP reveals her experience of domestic abuse

In a first for Parliament, an MP has spoken openly and in detail about her experience of being abused emotionally and sexually by her partner. In an incredibly emotional speech, Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, told the Chamber about a relationship which started so promisingly but which was in fact a controlling one, full of rage and fear. She spoke of how her partner continued to tell her that he adored her, that she was all his, even as she was trying to work out how to leave, timing his morning showers so that she could quietly steal his keys and get him locked out of their home. Her hands shook and a doughnut of colleagues sat around her – as they so often do on all sides of the House when they know a member is about to tell their own traumatic story – to support her.