Cherie Blair has opened up about how she was pushed down the stairs by a domestic abuser while representing his vulnerable victim.
The leading barrister said her attacker was out of control and clearly felt entirely justified in his attack on her, which took place when she was a young lawyer.
In a deeply personal interview with The Independent, the wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair also described her guilt after a client was killed by her abusive partner because she returned home as she had nowhere else to go.
Recalling the attack on her, Blair said: “As a young barrister when I was in court and we got the [restraining] order against the perpetrator, as I came out of court, he followed me and he pulled me down the stairs in the court.
“I had to be rescued by the court staff because he was so out of control. He believed he was entitled to behave in that way, he was perfectly prepared to attack me.”
She added: “I’ve been in court when we’ve also seen judges being attacked.”
Killed after getting court relief
Blair spoke out as she backed The Independent’s and Refuge charity Brick by Brick campaign which aims to raise £300,000 to build a safe house for domestic abuse survivors, and highlighted the desperate need for more refuges to be built.
“I can always remember one client of mine who got relief from the court,” she said. “But afterwards, as I’m afraid happens, with nowhere else to go, she returned to the matrimonial home – she was killed by her partner.”
Detailing the devastating impact that the murder had on her, she said: “It was very difficult, I felt so guilty. Could I have done more? It has stuck with me and remains with me ever since, that tragedy.”
Calling for change in how society punishes domestic abusers, the KC said: “We have to challenge the inbuilt sexism, which says that somehow women are not as entitled to respect as men.
“As a society, we are standing up and saying ‘this is not acceptable behaviour’.”
Explaining how she first became involved with supporting domestic abuse survivors, Blair said: “Refuge’s work is incredibly important to me and has been so all my professional life.
“It all started way back in 1976. I was a young barrister starting off in my career and in those days I don’t think anybody – the lawyers, the judges, the police – really understood how serious domestic abuse was, and therefore it was regarded as a very good way for a young barrister to start getting some advocacy experience.
“They would send me along to the county court to get an order either restraining, usually a man, from assaulting his partner or an order actually excluding him from the home.”
Blair admitted that she had not known anything about domestic abuse until she began representing victims as a young barrister.
”I had been brought up in an all-woman household so it wasn’t really an issue I would ever come across,” she said. “Certainly, no one talked about it during my childhood.
“I found myself [during her early twenties] in these courts meeting these women and the occasional man who, in the privacy and sanctity of their own home, had experienced this horrible violence.
“It opened my eyes to the fact that the world was not as safe a place as I thought it was.”
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