A mobile phone won't save you

but it might be very useful if you are attempting to leave an abusive situation. At least, it might be useful if there is no tracking device on it.

This morning there is actually a piece in the paper which talks about that. I wonder how many "committees" and "meetings" they had to have before they came up with the idea of actually providing mobile phones to some women? 

There was an extra mobile phone here for a short time. I passed it on to someone I know who needed one. Yes, she had a mobile phone but she knew it was being tracked. She borrowed this one long enough to get out the situation she was in and then offered it back to me "but if you don't want it then I'll pass it on to someone else here who needs one". I told her to pass it on. The woman I knew had enough money and ability to do things for herself. She was only in a a place of shelter for three nights before she was on her way elsewhere. It is one of those rare success stories we do not normally hear about.

At the time though getting a second mobile phone would have been difficult, if not impossible. As it was I worried her very controlling partner at the time might realise she had it. The piece in the paper this morning is only going to make abusive partners search for those phones.

I remember another incident some years ago. I was in the supermarket when the woman ahead of me asked to pay for some batteries separately. She was dressed in the way that a certain religious group here dresses. The women in it are very subservient to the men. There were (and I presume still are) strict rules about no television, no radios, DVD or CD players. I have never seen one of the women dressed like that using a mobile phone. The batteries were the sort you might put into a small transistor radio which was common at the time.

The check out girl did as was asked and I bought my items and followed the other woman out. She was someone I knew by sight and she knew that I knew other women in the group.

"You won't say anything will you?" she asked me anxiously.

"Of course not," I told her as I realised she was buying the batteries for a radio. She must have had one hidden somewhere. It would have been taken from her and she would have been "shut up" if it was found. Later I discovered she had left the cult like situation she was in. Her husband was apparently a very, very controlling man. Where the money for the radio or the batteries had come from I do not know. He checked every docket so that he knew precisely what she was buying and how much she had spent. 

The mobile phone idea will also have to consider that. Someone else is going to have to set them up and make sure calls can be made. I must suppose that this will be done but I often wonder whether the other woman kept her radio or whether the discovery of it led to another step towards leaving.