Erin Pizzey

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Erin Pizzey
Born Erin Carney
(1939-02-19) 19 February 1939 (age 74)
Qingdao, Republic of China
Residence South London
Nationality British
Occupation Writer and campaigner
Years active 1971 to present
Known for Establishing Europe's first domestic violence shelters, founding the charity Refuge[1]
Notable work(s) Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear,
Prone to violence
Spouse(s) Jack Pizzey
Children 2
Website
www.erinpizzey.com

Erin Patria Margaret Pizzey (née Carney, born 19 February 1939) is an English family care activist and a best-selling novelist. She became internationally famous for having started one of the first[2] women's refuges (called women's shelters in the U.S.) in the modern world, Chiswick Women's Aid, in 1971,[3] the organisation known today as Refuge.[1] Pizzey has been the subject of death threats and boycotts because of her statement that most domestic violence is reciprocal, and that women are equally as capable of violence as men.

Contents

Early life [edit]

Pizzey was born in Tsingtao (now Qingdao), China in 1939. Her father was a diplomat and one of 17 children from a poor Irish family.[4][5] The family moved to Shanghai and were captured by the invading Japanese Army in 1942 and exchanged for Japanese Prisoners of war.[6]

Overview [edit]

Pizzey set up a women's refuge in Belmont Terrace, Chiswick, West London where abused women were offered tea, sympathy and a place to stay for them and their children. She later opened a number of additional shelters despite hostility from the authorities. Pizzey's crucial pioneering work and determined campaigning was widely praised at the time. In 1975 MP Jack Ashley stated in the House of Commons that, "The work of Mrs. Pizzey was pioneering work of the first order. It was she who first identified the problem, who first recognised the seriousness of the situation and who first did something practical by establishing the Chiswick aid centre. As a result of that magnificent pioneering work, the whole nation has now come to appreciate the significance of the problem".[7]

Pizzey said that militant feminists—with the collusion of Labour's leading women—hijacked her cause and used it to try to demonise all men, not only in Britain, but internationally.[8] After the hijacking the demand for a service for women survivors of domestic violence grew and soon public funding became available. Today the movement has been rebranded as Women's Aid and garners millions of pounds a year from a variety of sources, the primary one of which is the state. Pizzey has lamented that the movement she started had moved from the "personal to the political".

Soon after establishing her first refuge, Pizzey determined that much domestic violence was reciprocal, with both partners abusing each other in roughly equal rates. She reached this conclusion when she asked the women in her refuge about their violence and she concluded that most of the women were equally as violent or more violent than their husbands. In her study "Comparative Study Of Battered Women And Violence-Prone Women,"[9] (co-researched with Dr. John Gayford of Warlingham Hospital), Pizzey distinguishes between "genuine battered women" and "violence-prone women;" the former defined as "the unwilling and innocent victim of his or her partner's violence" and the latter defined as "the unwilling victim of his or her own violence." This study reports that 62% of the sample population were more accurately described as "violence prone." Similar findings regarding the mutuality of domestic violence have been confirmed in subsequent studies.[10][11]

In her book Prone to Violence Pizzey has argued that many of the women who took refuge had a personality such that they sought abusive relationships. Pizzey describes such behaviour as akin to addiction. She speculates that high levels of hormones and neurochemicals associated with pervasive childhood trauma lead to adults who repeatedly engage in violent altercations with intimate partners despite the physical, emotional, legal and financial costs, in unwitting attempts to simulate the emotional impact of traumatic childhood experiences. The book contains numerous stories of disturbed families alongside a discussion of the reasons why the modern state care-taking agencies are largely ineffective.

Pizzey says it was after death threats against her, her children, her grandchildren, and the killing of her dog, all of which she states were perpetrated by militant feminists,[12][13] that she left England for North America. She returned to London in the 1990s where her insights were sought by politicians and family pressure groups.

Current work [edit]

Pizzey is still actively working to help victims of domestic violence. She is a patron of the charity Mankind Initiative.[14]

Pizzey said in 2009 that she has "never been a feminist, because, having experienced my mother's violence, I always knew that women can be as vicious and irresponsible as men".[15]

Libel case [edit]

In 2009 Pizzey successfully sued Macmillan Publishers for libel over content in the Andrew Marr book A History of Modern Britain. The publication had falsely claimed she had once been part of the militant group The Angry Brigade that staged bomb attacks in the 1970s.[16] The publisher also recalled and destroyed the offending version of the book, and republished it with the error removed.[17] The link to the Angry Brigade was made in 2001, in an interview with The Guardian, in which the article states that she was "thrown out" of the feminist movement after threatening to inform police about a planned bombing by the Angry Brigade of the clothes shop Biba, "I said that if you go on with this - they were discussing bombing Biba [the legendary department store in Kensington] - I'm going to call the police in, because I really don't believe in this."[18]

Personal life [edit]

Pizzey married Jack Pizzey, then a naval lieutenant, when she was 20, first meeting in Hong Kong. They had two children.[19] Pizzey lives in South London. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2000.[20]

In 2000 Pizzey's grandson Keita Craig, who had schizophrenia, committed suicide in a prison cell. Pizzey and his family campaigned against the coroner's verdict of death by hanging and in 2001 a jury at a second inquest unanimously found that his death was contributed to by the neglect of prison staff. The case was the first ever to reach a finding of neglect in a suicide case.[20][21]

Books [edit]

Nonfiction [edit]

  • Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear
  • Infernal Child (an early memoir)
  • Sluts' Cookbook
  • Erin Pizzey Collects
  • Prone to violence ISBN 0-600-20551-7 Out of print
  • Wild Child
  • The Emotional Terrorist and The Violence-prone ISBN 0-88970-103-2

Fiction [edit]

  • The Watershed
  • In the Shadow of the Castle
  • The Pleasure Palace (in manuscript)
  • First Lady
  • Counsul General’s Daughter
  • The Snow Leopard of Shanghai
  • Other Lovers
  • Swimming with Dolphins
  • For the Love of a Stranger
  • Kisses
  • The Wicked World of Women
  • The Fame Game (work in progress)
  • The Lifestyle of an International Best selling Author

Awards [edit]

  • International Order of Volunteers For Peace, Diploma Of Honour (Italy) 1981.
  • Nancy Astor Award for Journalism 1983.
  • World Congress of Victimology (San Francisco) 1987 - Distinguished Leadership Award.
  • St. Valentino Palm d’Oro International Award for Literature, 14 February 1994, Italy.

See also [edit]

References [edit]

  1. ^ a b "35 years of Refuge". Refuge. 2009. Archived from the original on 4 January 2010. Retrieved 7 July 2011. 
  2. ^ Haven House in California was founded in 1964, seven years earlier than Pizzey's shelter (see About Haven House).
  3. ^ Rappaport, Helen (2001). "Pizzey, Erin (1939— ) United Kingdom". Encyclopedia of women social reformers 1. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO. p. 549. ISBN 978-1-57607-101-4. "In 1972 the center was visited by U.S. feminists, who set up similar ventures in the United States..." 
  4. ^ Ross, Deborah (10 March 1997). "Battered? Erin Pizzey? Yes, a bit". The Independent (London). 
  5. ^ The World who's who of women - Google Books
  6. ^ Pizzey, Erin (24 September 2009). "Why I loathe feminism... and believe it will ultimately destroy the family". Daily Mail (London). 
  7. ^ "BATTERED WIVES (RIGHTS TO POSSESSION OF MATRIMONIAL HOME) BILL (Hansard, 11 July 1975)". Retrieved 9 June 2011. 
  8. ^ "How feminists tried to destroy the family". Daily Mail (London). 22 January 2007. 
  9. ^ "Domestic Violence Against Men by Charles E. Corry, Ph.D.". Retrieved 9 June 2011. 
  10. ^ Fiebert, Martin S. References Examining Assaults by Women on Their Spouses or Male Partners: An Annotated Bibliography. First published in Sexuality and Culture, 1997, 1, 273-286; updated May 2009
  11. ^ Malcolm J. George of the Department of Physiology, Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, United Kingdom.Riding the Donkey Backwards: Men as the Unacceptable Victims of Marital Violence
  12. ^ Fox News article on Erin Pizzey
  13. ^ Erin Pizzey's 20 March 1999 article published in The Scotsman
  14. ^ Mankind Initiative: About Us
  15. ^ Pizzey, Erin (24 September 2009). "Why I loathe feminism... and believe it will ultimately destroy the family". Daily Mail (London). 
  16. ^ "Campaigner accepts libel damages". BBC.co.uk. 1 April 2009. Retrieved 1 April 2009. 
  17. ^ Adams, Stephen (1 April 2009). "Andrew Marr's publisher pays 'significant' damages to women's campaigner". The Daily Telegraph (London). Retrieved 2 May 2010. 
  18. ^ Rabinovitch, Dina (26 November 2001). "Domestic violence can't be a gender issue". The Guardian (London). Retrieved 20 March 2009. 
  19. ^ Hoyle, Antonia (5 April 2009). "Erin Pizzey: When Andrew Marr accused me of being a terrorist, it was like a bomb going off in my chest". Daily Mail (London). 
  20. ^ a b "Domestic violence can't be a gender issue". The Guardian (London). 26 November 2001. 
  21. ^ "Prison neglect 'contributed to suicide'". BBC News. 11 October 2001. 

External links [edit]

Authority control
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