A woman who was raped by her Tory MP husband while she slept has come forward to tell her courageous story.
After waiving her right to anonymity, Kate Kniveton, 54, has warned how domestic abuse can affect anybody, despite their profession or background following years of abuse at the company of Andrew Griffiths, her former Tory minister partner.
“People don’t think it can happen to professional middle-class people – but domestic abuse has no boundaries, it can affect absolutely anybody,” she told the Mirror.
Griffiths, who once served as Theresa May’s chief of staff, resigned in 2018 after a Sunday Times investigation revealed he had subjected two constituents to over 2000 sexually explicit messages over the course of two days in 2018.
Kate subsequently ran for the post, succeeding her husband as the Tory MP for Burton and Uttoxeter in Staffordshire.
“When I was elected I made a promise to be an advocate of victims of domestic abuse. I am traumatised – not just by the 10 years of abuse I experienced – but the following five years where he continued to use the legal system to abuse me.”
She also spoke about the ease of getting in an unhealthy relationship: “He was very personable, charming and charismatic.”
But adds: “In hindsight I can see there were warning signs – but I always put it down to him being under a lot of pressure.
“For most people looking in from the outside our relationship was perfect, but the abuse had been going on for several years. Every time I said I was going to go to the police, I’m going to report you, he’d always say, ‘Nobody would believe you, Kate. I’m the MP here. I’ve got a great relationship with the police — they all think I’m the blue-eyed boy.”
Away from the public eye, things were not as they seemed.
Fearless Kate recalls how her husband raped her while she was sleeping and screams of abuse that Andrew Griffiths would give to their two-month old baby.
“It would start when I was asleep – I’d wake up and he would have started having sex with me,” she says.
“Sometimes I’d just think ‘let it carry on’ but there would be other times when I would cry. And those times he’d sometimes stop – not all times – but then he’d be in a foul mood if he did. I remember he’d be kicking me until he kicked me out of bed. And I would go into our spare room and barricade myself in another room for the night or leave the house.”