'When I think of childhood, the abuse was always there'

Victoria Derbyshire recalls her family's suffering as she backs our campaign to build a refuge for domestic abuse survivors.

- ELIZA KETCHER

Victoria Derbyshire has told The Independent how her father used to beat her with a wooden spoon, hit her with a belt, and regularly beat her mother so severely that he once broke her rib.

Recalling the terrible domestic abuse her family suffered, the BBC journalist described how her father once threw scalding soup on her school uniform and put his hands around her throat.

The physical and mental abuse was so bad that Derbyshire, along with her mother, brother, and sister, left their home to stay with her aunt, only to return, as “life kept drawing us back”. Derbyshire said: “When I think about my childhood, it feels like domestic abuse was always there.”

She went on to detail how, although the violence wasn’t constant, it was a regular part of their lives. “It was so, so normalised. I don’t want to minimise it,” she says. “It was just a feature of us growing up – me, my brother, my sister, and my mum.”

The seasoned broadcaster spoke in unprecedented detail about her experience in support of The Independent‘s Brick by Brick campaign, in partnership with Refuge, which aims to raise £300,000 to build a safe house for survivors fleeing domestic abuse. Although her father, who died in 2020, denied hitting his children, Derbyshire recalled a childhood where fear was a constant presence.

“We would hear my father’s key in the back door, and wherever we were in the house, we’d dash to our bedrooms and shut the door. We just didn’t want to be around him.” She described how the family lived on edge, “walking on eggshells” to avoid provoking his anger. Derbyshire revealed that the abuse wasn’t limited to physical violence, and something as mundane as a boiling kettle could set off her father’s rage.