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Today's a mixed
day. Part three of 'A Little Something To Hide' is out, but I
don't feel particularly celebratory about its release.
Rosa’s a tough
read, one that should arguably come with a trigger warning. I have
solicited opinion on the subject; some suggested I should include
one, others have said it would be wrong to do so. There are valid
points to both arguments, and I respect them equally. In the end, I
opted to highlight Women’s Aid in my promotional
activities, a national charity in the UK working to end domestic
abuse against women and children. It’s an imperfect compromise, but I
hope it serves a purpose. I am humble before anyone that disagrees.
When I wrote the
first draft of Rosa in November 2020, Harvey Weinstein had not long
been convicted of rape. Soon after the first allegations against him
emerged in October 2017, #MeToo entered my conscious as the clarion
call to empower women that have experienced sexual abuse, sexual
harassment or rape. I was, shockingly, eleven years behind the times.
Tarana Burke, a sexual assault survivor and activist, first coined
the phrase and started the movement on MySpace in 2006.
It wasn’t until
15 October 2017, when Alyssa Milano wrote in a tweet, ‘If you’ve been
sexually harassed or assaulted write ‘me too’ as a reply to this
tweet’, that the #MeToo movement developed significant prominence.
That meant that for more than a decade, Tarana Burke’s voice wasn’t
carrying to the masses.
I quietly
celebrated the Harvey Weinstein verdict and that the #MeToo movement
hadn’t just found its voice, but was being heard – there’s a world of
difference between the two. Until then, and for too long, the voice
was muffled.
With the outing
of Harvey Weinstein and other high-profile predators, the #MeToo
movement gained traction. Yet while these cases rightly received
prominent coverage, they are the exception, and the coverage stems
more from the celebrity of the offender or the victims, rather than
because of the crime.
Sexual assault
and violence against women is a monumental issue. According to the Office for National Statistics,
in the year ending September 2023, the Police in England and Wales
recorded 191,186 sexual offences including 67,938 rape offences. Over
the same period, Police flagged 862,765 recorded offences as domestic
abuse-related.
The voices of
most of those victims are unheard, just as Rosa went unheard. That’s
where her story came from, it is intended as a bleak reminder that
although we have a #MeToo movement that is allowing women’s voices to
be heard, there are many, far too many, that are silent.
I was nervous
about writing Rosa. I have no experience on which to draw, nor do I
knowingly know of anyone who has undergone the trauma that Rosa
suffered at the hands of her husband.
I don’t know
whether what I have written diminishes or reflects the brutality that
many women face, but what I wanted to do is remind us that we still
have a long way to travel to ensure that all women and children are
safe and protected.
The conclusion
to Rosa’s story is not one that I advocate. But, if you wear the thin
veil of a smile at the end, I assure you, you are not alone. I didn’t
know the outcome of the story when I started writing Rosa, and
neither do I think, did she - but the ending to her story is an
exception.
Every year for
the past nine years in Parliament, Jess Phillips, the MP for
Birmingham Yardley has read a list of women killed by men
or where a man is the principal suspect in the UK. When she read the
list in 2024, it took her more than five minutes to read out the 98
names.
Despite the work
of Jess and other prominent advocates for the protection of women and
children, including my former MP, Laura Farris, I am conscious that
the #MeToo voice has lost some of its prominence, that it has faded
from the mainstream, leading to a need for greater advocacy when the
safeguarding of at-risk and vulnerable women and children should be a
priority.
The silence that
so many women endure, either because they don’t feel safe to speak,
or because when they do, they are subsequently failed by a broken
criminal justice system, is horrific.
I am not
professing to have a remedy; I don’t pretend to know what needs to
happen to make the systemic changes within society that will make a
lasting difference to the way many women are treated. What I do know,
however, is that there are many organisations that support the women
and children who are the victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault
– prominent among them is Women’s Aid.
On the ‘What We Do’ page of the
Women’s Aid website it states plainly, ‘We save lives.’ To achieve
that goal, the charity relies on donations and fundraising, which is
why every penny of royalties from the sale of Rosa will go to support
their vital work.
Please, if you
can, do a little something to help.
Cheerio for now
Craig
Craig Brown is an author living in Newbury.
Discover his serialised novel, 'A Little Something To Hide' at craigbrownauthor.com
BlueSky/Threads/Twitter: @GOMinTraining
Copyright © Craig Brown, 2024
23 July 2024
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