Survivor helps women gain financial independence

A domestic abuse survivor is teaching women about the importance of financial independence in order to break away from abusive relationships.

Cheryl Sharp, 44, said she often felt "absolutely worthless" after experiencing coercive control in the past.

The mum-of-five from Essex said a lot of the behaviour involved putting her down, making her feel like everything she did was wrong.

Now a qualified accountant, she told the BBC how her own friend "saved her life" by helping her gain control of her finances and finding a career.

Now in a happy marriage, she first started to help women in 2014 with their financial independence and shared her own story of abuse publicly in 2021.

Mrs Sharp founded her own remote accountancy practice called Pink Pig Financials and said it was "now her time to give back" by giving the free advice at women's refuges.

She believes helping victims gain autonomy is important because they are less likely to return to abusive and violent situations.

"It is a huge challenge and I think that is one of the barriers of stopping women from leaving these situations because there is no financial independence," she added.

Her work involves helping women understand budgeting and its importance.

"I'm able to help them to talk about the next part of their lives, what they want to do and how they are going to do it."

She said some women often go back into their relationships because it can feel like a safe option.

"As much as it's not a safe place to be, it can feel safer because it's familiar especially when it comes to money.

"Financial independence gives us choices and it gives us security that if we are in a situation we can get out of it because we have the money to leave."

In 2022-23, 10,824 domestic abuse survivors found themselves in UK women's refuges.

Fewer than half of domestic abuse cases in England and Wales end up as police-recorded crimes and most of these do not lead to prosecution, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales.

An estimated 2.3m people were victims of domestic abuse in the year to March 2024, according to the figures. Just over two-thirds were women while 712,000 were men.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) research said 1.4m incidents of domestic abuse were recorded by police and of those just 39,000 resulted in criminal convictions.

If you've been affected by any of the issues in this story you can find help and support via BBC Action Line here.

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