Alleged British abuse expert claims emotional abuse isn't "real" abuse

Here’s a story about a British domestic violence activist who takes an extremely hard-core attitude toward emotional abuse. Research has proven time and again that emotional abuse does more permanent damage than physical abuse, but this activist not only disagrees with this proven research, she insists that anyone who points out this fact is insulting every woman who has been beaten up. British officials want to make it a crime to bully a spouse emotionally, and this woman is actually trying to block the law! She claims “It serves to trivialise genuine cases of domestic abuse….To me, the definition of domestic violence is quite clear: if you are not in fear of your life, you are not suffering it.” She doesn’t believe that this behavior is a “real” crime, and she doesn’t want to lump victims of emotional abuse in with “women who really suffer.” She suggests that victims of emotional abuse have easy avenues to getting out of their relationships, and she insists that the authorities shouldn’t “meddle”. She even claims that all police forces take domestic violence seriously! Then she rants about the alleged excesses of feminism and claims that Prime Minister David Cameron is pushing the law because he is sucking up to female voters. I personally find her attitude incredibly insensitive, and pretty surprising since she claims to be a 40-year veteran of the domestic violence effort – what is less surprising is that the other DV advocates chucked her out of her job.

Here’s the article. -- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2074284/Domestic-violence-To-say-emotional-abuse-bad-insults-battered-wife.html?ito=feeds-newsxml