Why We Built This Guide

CHAYN believes everyone has the right to a happy life - safe from abuse, oppression and control. Sadly, 1 in 3 people around the world face domestic violence and in some countries, this figure shoots up to 80-90% of the population. From working with women, we know that seeking justice is most challenging, especially if you are still in an abusive relationship. We wanted to create a guide to enable you to seek justice, on your own terms. Even if you don’t decide to press charges, you never know when it may come of use! So, as a tiny 100% volunteer-run charity, we sought a small grant of £300 to put this together and a team of 10 volunteers, we worked over every minute of our free time. We collaborated on the guide while walking on the street, live-chatting from different parts of the world, over lunch breaks during our office jobs and over weekends. Once we wrote a good bit of the guide, we reached out to our networks to find NGOs, activists, support workers and most importantly, survivors and lawyers to help us refine the document. You’ll find all the names of these brilliant people at the end of the document.

The contributors to the guide firmly believe your life matters to us and others in the world. It’s why we made it. Several of us endured and survived abuses first hand and hope the insight we share in this guide will help reduce any further unnecessary suffering. You take real action toward making a future for yourself in the present by seeking help from people and resources like this guide to move on.

This guide has been put together with the very best of intentions and while the information may not always be accurate for your context, the general principles should hold.

If you found this guide useful, we would really appreciate it if you could fill in our feedback form or drop us an email ([e-mail]). As we are completely volunteer-led and on a shoe-string budget, your feedback on our work means the world to us!

One last favour - please show it at least one person who may find it useful.