Domestic abuse: Spotting signs & training teachers

Meet Celia. She was in her late 50s when I met her and is the owner of a booming business. She had raised three children who had all gone to private schools and had successful careers. Money had never been lacking for Celia, she went to private school and often travelled abroad with her father’s work. She had her own pony, music lessons and beautiful homes to grow up in. To all the world she had lived a charmed and easy life.

Except that she spent much of her childhood terrified. Hiding in her room, or the stables with her beloved pony, while her father tore into her mother, with words and sometimes fists. She learned how to live on eggshells, never sure what would set him off so always on her guard, looking perfect, being the well-mannered, well-groomed daughter, doing well at school, trying to please him so that she didn’t trigger an outburst which would inevitably be taken out on her mother as evidence of her poor parenting, as well as any other domestic crime he accused her of (overcooked food, unstarched sheets, a smear on the window, the wrong tone of voice).