Recently I’ve launched a blog called ‘Stories behind the stats’, which has been specifically created for individuals to write about their own personal experiences of violence against women. Earlier this year I conducted a confidential survey of my fellow AM’s on this issue where three Assembly Members admitted to being the victims of rape with one Assembly Member admitting to being a victim of domestic abuse.

One in four women will suffer some sort of abuse in their lifetime, simply because they are women. The first time you come across this statistic, it is shocking, but the more you hear it, the less of an impact it has, and the shock soon disappears. But behind the stats are women with real life experiences of suffering violence and abuse purely because of their gender. These are women from all types of background, professions, class, religion, ethnicity and age.

This blog's aim is to show the human stories behind the statistics in order to bring home the severity of the issue. It demonstrates that this is happening in ALL of our communities, in our streets and in our villages and to people we know and love.

Domestic abuse and violence against women is not talked about in our society largely due to the fact that women do not speak out about their experiences. They somehow feel that they are to be blamed for being a victim and therefore the severity and incidence of the problem is largely ignored by most in society, as if it doesn’t exist. After all it’s easier to try and ignore the issue rather than try and deal with it, isn’t it?

This is the second part of my campaign to bring more attention to this issue. The first part gained a lot of media attention when 3 AM’s admitted to being victims or rape and 1 of domestic violence. Those stats aren’t as shocking as they seem, they follow national trends and I suspect that there are more experiences with the Assembly than the anonymous poll indicates. The shocking thing is that it took politicians to speak out, albeit anonymously to get attention to the issue.

I’m calling on the One Wales Assembly Government to fund an awareness raising campaign to challenge attitudes towards violence against women, both domestic abuse and otherwise. Abuse can take numerous forms: physical, emotional, psychological, and financial and it’s about time we opened up this debate and challenged the attitudes that exist, for the good of the whole of Welsh society.

I’d like to thank the brave women who have had the courage to write about their experiences here. If you would like to contribute anonymously you can contact me at nerys.evans@wales.gov.uk or you can visit the blog by clicking on this link http://storiesbehindthestats.blogspot.com We now all look towards the Welsh Government to take a lead in challenging this behaviour.