Judith Vickress

Fellow’s Profile

Judith Vickress

Fellow’s Profile

Judith Vickress

Coordinating Rural Communites for an Effective Response to Domestic Abuse

Fellowship

Themes

Focus

Making survivors of domestic abuse living in rural areas safer and holding perpetrators to account

Countries

Fellowship year

2023

Supported by

Locality

West Midlands

Biography

I am Senior Housing Manager at Standing Together Against Domestic Abuse. My Fellowship is about domestic abuse in rural areas, co-ordinated community response (CCR) and holding perpetrators to account. The purpose of my Fellowship is to understand how the CCR model can be adapted to improve the response to survivors of domestic abuse.

I was born and grew up in rural Herefordshire. I worked in a rural domestic abuse service supporting survivors for several years and recognised that the challenges and barriers faced by them were significantly different to those faced by survivors in urban areas. Access to services, isolation and a dominant patriarchal community enforces silence. Services are underfunded and often do not have the capacity to reach survivors where they live. I feel passionate about levelling up the gap between the response available to survivors in rural areas and those living in cities.

I want to see what works, and how the CCR model has been adapted to ensure survivors in rural areas are seen and supported to stay safe. I would like my research to drive systems change in the UK and to see a CCR in rural areas that makes survivors of domestic abuse visible and safe.

Activity

editorial

Bringing Rural Abuse into Focus: What survivors are telling us, and why we must listen

As part of my Fellowship, I travelled across rural regions in the USA, Canada, and Australia, connecting with experts and victim-survivors to explore how to improve safety and achieve equity. My learning and earlier conversations with Rhianon Bragg – a survivor whose story reveals deep cracks in our justice system – helped shape my focus post-Fellowship, laying the groundwork for a new social enterprise to raise the status of rural domestic abuse in public policy and support more coordinated, realistic responses.

By Judith Vickress, 29 May 2025

Disclaimer

All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.

Activity

editorial

Bringing Rural Abuse into Focus: What survivors are telling us, and why we must listen

As part of my Fellowship, I travelled across rural regions in the USA, Canada, and Australia, connecting with experts and victim-survivors to explore how to improve safety and achieve equity. My learning and earlier conversations with Rhianon Bragg – a survivor whose story reveals deep cracks in our justice system – helped shape my focus post-Fellowship, laying the groundwork for a new social enterprise to raise the status of rural domestic abuse in public policy and support more coordinated, realistic responses.

By Judith Vickress, 29 May 2025

Disclaimer

All Reports are copyright © the author. The moral right of the author has been asserted. The views and opinions expressed by any Fellow are those of the Fellow and not of the Churchill Fellowship or its partners, which have no responsibility or liability for any part of them.

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