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Erin Pizzey (born February 19, 1939 in China, daughter of a diplomat) became internationally famous for having started the first Women's Refuge (called women's shelter in the US) in the modern world during the 1971. She began in the Goldhawk Road, West London where abused women were offered tea, sympathy and a place to stay for them and their children. 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 although primarily from the state. Erin Pizzey parted company with the movement owing to a difference of opinion regarding its underlying philosophy. She wrote a book, Prone to Violence, which propounded the theory that many of the women who took refuge had a personality such that they sought abusive relationships. She told the story of one woman in the shelter known as 'Jaws' who bit the finger off another woman staying there. She did not say that most women were violent or that women were more violent than men. Her view is opposed by those who placed the blame upon prevailing patriarchal attitudes. After death threats against her, her children, her grandchildren and the shooting of her dog; Pizzey left England for North America. She returned to London in the 1990s where her insights were sought by politicians and family pressure groups. She lamented that the movement she started had moved from the personal to the political.
Her book Prone to Violence was supressed by feminists to such an extent that a search of all libraries in the world that could be accessed from the US Library of Congress through the Inter-Library Network in 1996 revealed a total of 13 listings in the whole World.
ErinPizzey (born February 19, 1939 in China, daughter of a diplomat) became internationally famous for having started one of the first Women's Refuges (called women's shelters in the US) in the modern world in 1971.
ErinPizzey parted company with the movement owing to a difference of opinion regarding its underlying philosophy.
Many, including Pizzey herself, have claimed that Pizzey founded the modern women's shelter movement, that her Women's Refuge was the first in the modern world, or both.
ERIN: They were touching you, and so were the men touching you, and you start to slag, and the trouble is that you get your fl eye, like you did the other day, one way or another, because you get driven to it.
ERIN: I want you to talk to an Irish lady who was in yesterday evening, because she told me about a man, nothing like as bad as yours, but she's just been in hospital because he put beer bottles up inside her.
ERIN: Well we do know that several judges thought he was so dangerous, he had to be kept on remand for eight months.
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