Ex-Burton MP Kate Kniveton has finally talked publicly about the traumatic abuse she endured while she was married to former Tory MP Andrew Griffiths, according to Metro.
Kniveton gave an emotional testimony of years of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse — being attacked in her sleep, screamed at when looking after their newborn baby, and subjected to controlling threats meant to gag her.
Kniveton, MP for Burton between 2019 and 2024 and the replacement for Griffiths in the position, appeared as part of the new ITV1 and ITVX documentary Breaking The Silence: Kate's Story. The documentary also reveals the flaws within the family courts, which deal with hundreds of thousands of cases of domestic abuse every year.
"Other people don't believe it can happen to professional middle-class individuals — but domestic abuse knows no bounds, it can happen to absolutely anyone," she said. "At the time I was elected, I vowed to be a champion for domestic abuse victims. I am traumatized — not only by the 10 years of abuse I endured — but the subsequent five years where he still used the legal system to abuse me."
Kniveton claimed that Griffiths, whom she wed in 2013 and split with in 2018, raped her during sleep and abused their newborn daughter verbally. "It would begin when I was asleep — I'd wake up and he would have begun having sex with me," she said. "Sometimes I'd just think 'let it continue' but there would be other moments when I would cry.". And those times he'd sometimes just stop — not always — but then he'd be in a bad mood if he did.
She also remembered being physically pushed out of bed and having to barricade herself in a separate room, or even leave the house altogether to get away from his tantrums.
Turning point, she claimed, was when she witnessed how their newborn baby was being affected. She described a scene when their baby had cried out for a feed one morning and Griffiths had shouted, "shut the f*** up" to their infant as he headed off to Westminster. That stunned her into realising how the abuse was putting their child in harm's way too.
Kniveton said Griffiths was "personable, charming and charismatic" — qualities which made the abuse all the more difficult to spot from the outside. "Looking back, I can see now there were warning signs — but I always attributed it to him being under a lot of pressure," she added. "For most people viewing from outside, our relationship was brilliant, but the abuse had been happening for a few years."
Whenever she threatened to report him, Griffiths allegedly dismissed her with chilling confidence: “Nobody would believe you, Kate. I’m the MP here. I’ve got a great relationship with the police — they all think I’m the blue-eyed boy.”
After being a hero of women's rights and a previous chief of staff to Theresa May, Griffiths experienced a public collapse in 2018 when news broke he had sent more than 2,000 graphic messages to two young women. In 2021, a judge in a family court ruled that he had raped and serially abused Kniveton over their marriage.
Kniveton's strong testimony in Breaking The Silence seeks not to simply present her own account but to document the systemic breakdowns that enable abuse to continue — even after victims have escaped. She highlights how the family court system frequently fails to safeguard children and survivors from further abuse.
Her account is a harrowing reminder that domestic violence can masquerade behind well-groomed public personas — and that, if left unreformed, the very mechanisms intended to safeguard victims can be turned against them to perpetuate their torment.
Read also| China Commences Building World’s Largest Dam on Brahmaputra in Tibet
