2022 Winner
PRIDE OF MANCHESTER
Jane Gregory
Has helped thousands of women escape domestic abuse through the inspirational Salford Survivor Project she set up and runs.
Jane was inspired to set up Salford Survivors after two local women were murdered by their abusive ex-partners. She had grown up in a violent household herself, spending time in shelters and homeless units and was watching history repeat itself within her own family. Jane, 51, had been in a difficult relationship with the father of her five children and was increasingly worried that daughter Hannah was repeating the same pattern.
She explains: “I came from a home where my dad regularly beat my mum. I believed that was how things were. Then in my own marriage, if we fought, I would fight back. Both my husband and I were victims of our own upbringings. I was worried that my daughter was headed the same way with her partner.”
Determined to help her daughter, and spurred on by the deaths of Linzi Ashton and Leanne McNuff, Jane set up the Salford Survivor Project in 2013. “I decided enough was enough,” she says: “The local services that were all available all had long waiting lists, few staff, and I thought I have got to make a change. I wasn’t going to sit around waiting for my daughter to become the next victim.”
With a team of 25 volunteers, Jane has helped thousands of women – and men – over the past nine years. She and her team accompany people to criminal or family court, police meetings and housing and medical appointments. The project also has a helpline that is open seven days a week, manned by operators with lived experience of abuse.
Their work was even more important during lockdown, when Jane says they received four times the usual amount of calls from women asking for help.
Jane says: “I want to use my voice, both as a survivor of abuse and for sharing the voice of the thousands of survivors I have helped, and those who are too afraid to speak up. For my own grandchildren and for every other child in this world, the cycle of abuse has to be broken and we are the ones to break it.”