Erin Pizzey
Erin Pizzey© 2002 Equal Justice Foundation
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The first shelter (Britain refers to them as a refuge) for battered women in the world was opened by Erin Pizzey in Chiswick, London, England in 1971. She continued to run that program until 1982.
Based on her experiences at Chiswick, she wrote the pioneering book on wife-battering, Scream Quietly or The Neighbors Will Hear, in 1974. That book was very successful in bringing the problem of battered women to the world's attention. Shelters, or refuges, for battered women began springing up all over the world in the wake of her inspiring example.
Initially, such shelters were impoverished, overcrowded, and run entirely with volunteer help. Because of the overcrowding, sanitation was often questionable, particularly given the numbers of children often contained in such shelters together with their mothers. Such overcrowding was almost inevitable given the unique nature of the original refuge and the open-door policy Ms. Pizzey insisted upon. Sadly, most shelters today do not maintain such a policy, and it is sad to realize that women with nowhere else to go are turned away by shelters in America.
Ms. Pizzey had repeated confrontations with borough authorities who were concerned with the conditions in her refuge. She was taken to court on several occasions on account of her operations. It was only by the direct intervention of the Queen that she was able to continue.
All of mankind owes an eternal debt to Erin Pizzey for her pioneering work with family violence and providing a place of refuge for women who found themselves in abusive relationships with nowhere to go. But she is an extremely intelligent woman who soon expanded her work into attempting to understand the causes of family violence. Such understanding is essential if we are to reduce such abuse.
Quite early she realized that a clear distinction must be made between:
• Women who accidentally become involved with a violent partner and now wish to leave and to never return again.
• Women who, for deep psychological reasons of their own, seek out a violent relationship, or a series of violent relationships, with no intention of leaving.
Erin Pizzey states that:
"...it is essential to understand the differentiation between our use of the words battered and violence-prone. For us, a battered person is the innocent victim of another person's violence; a violence-prone person is the victim of their own addiction to violence."
She found that: "...62 women out of the first hundred women who came to the refuge were as violent or more violent than the men they left. Also many were prostitutes taking refuge from their violent pimps." Pizzey further notes that such violent women abuse their children as well.
If useful help is to be provided, it seems obvious that such distinctions must be made when running a shelter for battered women. Clearly the two classes of women must be treated in quite separate fashion.
Aid and succor such as new housing arrangements, aid in finding employment, legal, and financial aid may be given a battered woman with a successful outcome likely. Such women have a reasonable probability of reintegrating with society and leaving the nightmare behind. We doubt that anyone begrudges help for such unfortunate individuals.
We do question whether such help is forthcoming from most such shelters in America. Also, it is quite evident that women entering such shelters are treated with a one-size-fits-all approach. Reality is never so simple, however.
In the case of what Ms. Pizzey refers to as a violence-prone woman, new housing arrangements may be provided, legal and financial aid may be given, and all preparations made for such a woman to begin a new life, independent of her abusive partner.
However, experience shows that such women either return repeatedly to her partner (note that lesbian relationships are the most abusive of all), or the violence-prone woman finds herself in a relationship with a new and equally violent partner.
Thus, the help provided a battered woman is quite inappropriate to a violence-prone woman, and may make her problems worse if she ends up with an even more violent partner. Such problems are compounded if the violence-prone woman takes her children from their biological father into the new relationship.
Based on her experiences with such violent women, in 1982 Ms. Pizzey published a book, Prone to Violence. For her efforts she was picketed by a group of British shelter workers, who referred to themselves as 'feminists.' These militant extremists staged demonstrations against her and she and her family members received death threats. "ALL MEN ARE RAPISTS," "ALL MEN ARE BATTERERS," read the placards. She was advised to travel with a police escort during her promotional tour. The book disappeared from the shelves of libraries and book stores alike. The publisher went bankrupt in the process.
The harassment of Erin Pizzey became so bad that she was driven into exile in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and did not return to England until the late 1990's.
Ms. Pizzey is a liability to the women responsible for her abuse, as she knows many of them quite well from the early days of the women's shelter movement. Many of these radical women, some of whom quite literally were Communist or Maoist terrorists, e.g., they participated in the bombing of the BBC TV van and the attempted bombing of the British Post Office Tower, the hub of the UK's TV network, during the 1970 Miss World Congress, but are now safely ensconced in prominent positions in government and the media (Walter Schneider, personal communication, 1999).
In 1995, Mark Rowley from New Zealand had a librarian from the Library of Congress do a search of library catalogues that could be accessed through the interlibrary network. Only thirteen copies of Prone to Violence were found in the whole world. Walter Schneider (personal communication, 1999) checked Canadian library catalogues and found three copies listed, one at the University of Alberta and two at the University of Toronto. When Mark Rowley checked the Library of Congress, they didn't have a copy of it either. He then donated the one that Erin Pizzey had sent to him. That copy is still listed in the catalogue and is still on the shelf as of late 1999 when he checked during a visit to Washington DC.
However, as with many things people would prefer to hide, her original book is now available on the Web at http://www.bennett.com/ptv.
Ms. Pizzey has documented her travails in a 1999 article entitled Who's failing the family?
The extreme reaction generated by Ms. Pizzey's work suggests she has tapped a fundamental truth that militant feminists would desperately like to hide. However, unless all aspects of a problem are examined, it is unlikely the problem can be solved.
If the violent nature of many women is simply hidden and denied, domestic violence will continue and likely increase. Patricia Pearson has examined in detail the myth of innocence associated with women. But Erin Pizzey has not been idle either.
In 1998, Ms. Pizzey published another book on The Emotional Terrorist and The Violence Prone. This book also includes an updated version of her Prone to Violence work. A basic section of her 1998 book is "A comparative study of battered women and violence-prone women" (1998, p. 12-27). Unless, and until, shelters can routinely distinguish between battered and violence-prone women, they are batting in the dark. She has provided the basic foundation needed for making such distinctions.
Feminists have long noted that domestic abuse included both physical and emotional aspects. What they attempt to hide is the fact that emotional abuse is most commonly associated with women. Ms. Pizzey tackles that issue head on in her 1998 book on emotional terrorists and her findings are summarized here in a section by that name.
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| Chapter 5 — Shelters For Battered Women |
| Next — Shelters used in war on men |
This site is supported and maintained by the Equal Justice Foundation.