FORTY years ago, when Scottish Women’s Aid was first set up, society tried to turn a blind eye to what went on behind the closed doors of a marriage. The unspeakable violence inflicted on thousands of “battered women” was largely tolerated.

But now, in 2016, not only is domestic violence viewed as reprehensible, but a ground-breaking domestic abuse bill, passing through Scottish parliament over the next year, is set to acknowledge the specific nature of the crime – that it is part of a pattern of behaviour by the abuser often called coercive control.

That pattern frequently includes financial abuse, isolation and degradation of the victim, mind games and the micro-regulation of everyday life from phone calls to dress and food consumption. Violence itself may be rare or sporadic, though the threat of it may lead the victim to exist in continual terror.

To mark this fortieth anniversary, SWA has been bringing together an oral history project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Researchers have been collecting women’s stories, some of which are drawn together with donated objects in an exhibition, Speaking Out, at the Museum of Edinburgh this week.

It has been hard-fought journey, from the early collective meetings of then “women’s libbers” and the opening of the first refuges in the 1970s, to recently pushing for this new domestic abuse bill.

The story of those four decades of changing attitudes is told through four women here, some of them Scottish Women’s Aid workers, others who were themselves abused. They are testimony both to the success of the network and its continuing need. Last year over 58,000 domestic abuse incidents were reported to the police, 82 per cent of them involving a male perpetrator and female victim, though it’s believed many more are unreported.

Morna Burdon

Joint National Coordinator and first National Information and Education Officer, 1978-86

“One of my jobs at Scottish Women’s Aid was to produce the Information Pack for Agencies – the police, GPs, social workers, health visitors, the clergy. Getting through to the police was a big challenge. In the 1978-9 Scottish Women's Aid Annual Report the Edinburgh Women’s Aid input says, “We were turned down by the police training college in Edinburgh as a speaking topic and feel this is a realistic reflection of the predominant police attitude to wife-battering and to Women’s Aid.”

By the time I left, some progress had been made – the police were ordering our information pack, we had been invited to spend overnight with the police in their car to see how they dealt domestic violence cases.

Changing people’s attitudes was a large part of the work. It was my job to edit the Scottish Women’s Aid newsletter and we would include little snippets to show prevailing attitudes. A typical example is a quote from someone talking about housing conditions in the Glasgow Evening Times, and saying, “All of them have told me you can’t swing a cat in the room. Now if they were swinging their wives by the hair I would understand it because it would give them a pretty exact measurement and at the same time show her who was boss.”

It seems mind-boggling now, but that was common.

Things have changed. Back then domestic abuse wasn’t spoken about. But in a wee Scottish town recently, I went into a pub and came across, on the table, beer mats that said “Domestic abuse, no excuse”. Quite a traditional pub, a fairly male kind of place to be – and that beer mat was there. Remarkable.

Some of what we took on was naively risky. I remember there was a woman who was trying get away from this violent man who had people he was paying to kill her. What I cannot believe is that we used to take it in turns to sit in a house with her to protect her – in case somebody came. What were we thinking?

What I learned from Women’s Aid was that if the cause is just you can take on the state and society and you can change things. However, in terms of statements and changing things, for me that first woman in Scotland who walked out of her house, walked away from the abuse, and walked to a refuge, whoever she was. The courage of it – then and now – is phenomenal.

Mairi McAllister

Domestic abuse survivor, 1980s, and former Women’s Aid Worker,1995-2003

“I got involved with Women’s Aid in 1995 because I saw an advert in the local paper saying we’re looking for women who might be interested in being involved in this new project to set up a group in East Fife, and I thought “Oh my God, I know about that.”

When I was experiencing abuse myself in the Mull of Kintyre in the Eighties, there was no Women’s Aid service there. I met a man when I was in sixth year at school. He was in his thirties and he had come to work on a local building project. He was very violent to me, though not all the time, because he didn’t have to be – I was just terrified of him.

I ended up having a child with him and then another baby very quickly. who unfortunately died. I went into labour early and she didn’t survive – that was connected to the abuse.

There was one big incident where he really hammered me. He had an axe and he threatened me with it. My son was only a baby and he threatened to throw him through the window. He hit me so that my face was black and blue. Nobody really saw how bad it was, because he wouldn’t let me out.

I don’t really remember him hitting me again after all that because I was just so terrified. I was so young but everyone expected me to be able to do something about it. They just thought I should tell him to get lost.

He had a wife and children that I didn’t know about until it was too late. I was so naïve. His intention was to make sure I was pregnant. That was one of the things he used to talk about – how he had babies all over the country. As soon as I was pregnant then he had control.

For a long time I was really angry at myself – because I just assumed it was my fault. Why did I allow that to happen? Women need to not be blaming themselves.

I’ve now a couple of degrees. I’m a counsellor. Coming out of that relationship, I thought my life was just going to be terrible for ever. I didn’t have any self-belief. I was living in a council house, on benefits. I had been led to believe that I had just wasted my life. And getting involved with the group that set up Women’s Aid in East Fife just changed everything. It is possible to get through it. If the support is there women can come through it and they can survive and have a good life.

Dorothy Aidulis

Domestic abuse survivor, 2002

“All I had with me on the day I left my ex was my handbag and my three-year-old son. I had intended to leave for quite a while, but what made think I couldn’t put it off any longer was something my son said to me. We were in Boots the chemists and I was looking at something on the bottom shelf and my son said, “Mummy, next time someone shouts at you, I’m going to say, No Daddy, stop it.”

My ex was shouty, very intimidating, very controlling. I feared his rages and threats. He hated everybody I knew. He ridiculed me. He called me lazy and stupid. But I had a first class degree and a PhD.

I get flashbacks to a time he went at me. He had my baby in one arm and he had my neck in the other hand and he was pushing me against the wall. And my wee baby’s looking at me as he does this and I’m looking at my baby. And I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t struggle to try to get away in case he dropped my baby. He was being used as a wee human shield.

He didn’t ever smack me in the face, but he pushed me a lot and he grabbed me a lot. He yelled. He cut off all my communications. He had pots of money, but I wasn’t allowed to spend any of it. I was allowed £40 a week to spend, for me, my new baby, everything.

He would make up a spreadsheet on the computer for the spending and I would have to type in a box every time I spent anything.

My family all knew there was a problem. I’d always lived in Glasgow but I’d moved to Darlington when I met him and I wasn’t allowed to see them. If I was on the phone he would be trying to stop me speaking. I was teaching science in a high school, and I would go into the bathroom, send a couple of texts to my family and then delete them. That was how I communicated. Because he checked my phone.

We left a month after my son made that comment in Boots. My ex, who worked away from home in the Dominican Republic, came home for Christmas. During that visit he pretty much ignored us. Then, after he went back to the Dominican Republic. he phoned with lots of plans for the house. I said, “Wait a minute, I need to tell you something. I’ve had enough. We’re leaving.”

He said, “Now don’t panic. All you need to do is go down to the travel agent, get yourself a round the world ticket. I don’t care what it costs. Bring our son and come out and we’ll sort it all out.”

Because of Women’s Aid, I knew about this isolation thing that they can do to you, so I said, no. Because I knew I would be literally at his mercy. I had visions of him picking up my son and just walking away down the beach.

I’d seen Women’s Aid leaflets. There was a tiny pink one that folded out. I would read them and file little bits in my brain, but I was careful not to leave anything lying about. So I knew about Women’s Aid, and I’m so glad I did. Because that was what made me realise that it was not just me, that I was not all the things he said: maybe there was something wrong with him.

My ex came back for a week or two. I don’t know how I got through that week. I would put my son’s passport and mine in my handbag and take it to work because I was worried he might take my son away. I came home one day and he said, "Where’s the passports?" I said, "I’ve got them in my bag." And he said, "I know because I looked.”

Then I was on the phone one day to my sister and she said, “Dot, you can come and live with us.”

The night before I left he pinned me in the kitchen and talked at me for hours, saying things like, "Some people would say that I could just take our son, take his passport and take him away. But I’m not going to do that." And he kept talking about things that he could do, kind of threatening me.

The next day I dropped my son at nursery, went to the train station to make a phone call. I’d been planning on driving to Glasgow but I couldn’t because the previous day I’d bumped my car. I phoned my sister. She said, “Dot, you can’t go back to that house.”

She told me to get in a taxi and come up. So I went to the nursery, picked up my son, telling them he had a doctor’s appointment that I’d forgotten. And we got in the taxi. Scariest thing I’ve ever done. My son was just sitting with his wee chunky jumper and his lunchbox.

Lily Greenan

Former Chief Executive of Scottish Women’s Aid, 2006-2014

“The domestic abuse bill going through parliament is something that I was pushing for in my time at Scottish Women’s Aid. I worked there in 1989, but came back in 2006 and worked as chief executive till 2014. The trigger point for the bill was Bill Walker’s [the former SNP MSP] conviction.

It was awful that it took something like that. But what it did was highlight the difficulty that the existing legal system had putting through cases that involved not the stereotypical slaps, punches, kicks associated with domestic abuse, but patterns of behaviour that were more subtle than that, more about control, manipulation and undermining the autonomy of a partner, about what we call coercive control.

The Bill Walker case became so big because of timing. He was convicted on August 20, 2013 and the parliament was in recess, so no politics, and newspapers are looking for stories. People were shocked that 30 years of abuse against three different partners and a stepdaughter was going to attract a maximum one year custodial – but this was as much as the sheriff could impose. That triggered a lot of debate.

We found ourselves saying two things over and over again. Firstly, this is what domestic abuse is: the range of behaviours he perpetrated. And two, this is what happens in domestic abuse cases: they get tried in summary courts and the maximum custodial is one year.

Journalists would ask why, and I would say because mostly the physical assaults don’t involve broken bones and lacerations, so they’re not at the level where they would require a jury trial. They’re considered to be minor assaults. And the fact that they happen within the context of a pattern of behaviour that is completely about controlling this woman is not of relevance to the way that the legal system processes these cases.

It was quite radical to have that talked about in the media.