I cringe when I think back to how I used to talk to domestic violence victims. I was a newly qualified doctor. At 26 years of age, I was dealing with life and death on a daily basis, long before I had any real-life experience. Such was the clarity of my convictions when I met my first battered woman in the emergency room. Her drunken husband had broken her jaw. “You must leave him,” I said. “Mm,” she said. “One woman dies every eight hours at the hands of her partner. He might kill you if you stay, ” I…
