A survey has found "deep mistrust" towards police from black women who have been victims of abuse. The findings from the charity Sistah Space show tha
A survey has found “deep mistrust” towards police from black women who have been victims of abuse. The findings from the charity Sistah Space show that almost all black women believe organisations such as the police or social services would not believe them if they reported a domestic abuse. In England and Wales, black women are more likely to experience domestic abuse than any other ethnic group – with 33.1% affected, according to the Office for National Statistics.
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Sistah Space published its 2025 Hidden in Plain Sight research based on 2,208 participants in England and Wales, focused on African and Caribbean heritage Black women and their experiences of domestic-abuse support. Among respondents who had experienced abuse, 76.4% said they wanted to report but felt unable to do so. The leading reasons included fear of retaliation (49.9%), fear of being stereotyped as a Black woman (47.8%), and fear of not being believed (43.2%).
Even more striking, 97% of Black women surveyed said they lacked confidence that reporting abuse would result in fair or supportive treatment. Sistah Space reports that 54.2% of those who experienced abuse had not reported it to any service, and among women describing interactions after reporting, roughly 70–75% characterized those experiences negatively.
Sistah Space found women describing fear of being stereotyped as Black women. Respondents described being perceived as the “angry Black woman,” being viewed as aggressive, and feeling that their Blackness could work against them when seeking help.
We tell women: Speak up. Report. Be clear. Tell them you’re afraid. Advocate for yourself. Keep calling. Don’t take no for an answer.
But a Black woman may also know that assertiveness can be read through an entirely different racial stereotype.
So she can face an awful double bind: she may need to be forceful enough to get protection while worrying that being forceful will be interpreted as evidence that she is aggressive rather than vulnerable.
And Sistah Space found another complication that deserves careful attention. More than a third of respondents described the conflict between seeking safety and concern about what involving the criminal-justice system could mean for Black men. Their research describes women wrestling with racial solidarity while simultaneously needing protection from abuse.
That is racially gendered violence becoming racially gendered help-seeking.