by Peter Lazenby and Ceren Sagir
PEOPLE are being urged to check in with loved ones at risk of domestic abuse over Christmas, ahead of an anticipated rise in reports.
Domestic Abuse Commissioner Nicole Jacobs warned today that pressures around Christmas this year could provide an “excuse” for abusers to aggravate their behaviour.
Domestic abuse reports have soared during the coronavirus pandemic, during which a record number of cases have been dealt with by the family courts.
One in five offences more than a quarter of a million recorded by police during and immediately after the first national lockdown in England and Wales involved domestic abuse, according to the Office for National Statistics.
How the coronavirus sent women back to the 1950s
As the UN says the pandemic has turned the clock back decades on gender equality, Laura Bates explores the long-term implications for women
15 December 2020 • 6:00am
Research from the UN has led to warnings that the turmoil caused by the pandemic could last longer than the immediate public health crisis
Credit: Anais de Busscher
Before the pandemic hit, 2020 was going to be the year Melissa went back to work. “I had taken four years off to raise two children and I was itching to use my brain again,” she says. “There are only so many nursery rhymes one can remember and only so many tantrums one can lovingly endure.”
A sacked Eton College tutor at the centre of a free speech row has today lost his appeal.
The governing body of the £42,500-a-year Berkshire college has upheld the decision of school chiefs to sack Will Knowland.
The English teacher was dismissed over an online lecture tackling radical feminism and the concept of toxic masculinity .
His dismissal, for reportedly refusing to take down his lecture from his personal YouTube channel, sparked outrage among students, who immediately launched a petition for Mr Knowland to be reinstated.
It also plunged the private school, which is currently closed due to a Covid-19 outbreak, into a row over its supposedly woke values under current headmaster Simon Henderson.