Kate Kniveton, who served as the Member of Parliament for Burton from 2019 to 2024, has publicly revealed the traumatic abuse she endured during her marriage to former MP Andrew Griffiths. In an emotional account shared with UK-based publication Metro, Kniveton alleged that Griffiths sexually assaulted her while she slept, screamed at their newborn daughter, and repeatedly dismissed her threats to report him, saying, “Nobody would believe you.”
Kniveton recalled waking up to find Griffiths assaulting her. “Sometimes I would just think, ‘let it carry on,’ but there would be other times when I cried,” she said. On such occasions, she added, he would sometimes stop, but not always. If he did, he would be in a foul mood. “I remember he’d be kicking me until he kicked me out of bed,” she said. She would then barricade herself in the spare room or leave the house altogether.
The breaking point came when she realised the abuse extended to their newborn. Kniveton recounted an incident where Griffiths shouted at their crying two-week-old daughter to “shut the f*** up” as he got ready to leave for Westminster. That moment, she said, marked a clear escalation in the danger they both faced.
“Nobody would believe you, Kate”
Despite the abuse, Kniveton said she often felt trapped and powerless. “Every time I said I was going to go to the police, he would say, ‘Nobody would believe you. I’m the MP here. I’ve got a great relationship with the police, they all think I’m the blue-eyed boy,’” she said.
Charming in public, abusive in private
Kniveton married Griffiths in 2013, and they separated in 2018. She described him as “personable, charming, and charismatic”, traits that masked the abuse from the outside world. “People don’t think it can happen to professional, middle-class people, but domestic abuse has no boundaries,” she said.
Now 54, Kniveton said that even after leaving the relationship, the abuse did not stop. “I am traumatised, not just by the 10 years of abuse I experienced, but the following five years where he continued to use the legal system to abuse me,” she said, pointing to failures in family courts to protect vulnerable women and children.
Family court ruled Griffiths raped and assaulted her
In 2021, a family court judge ruled that Griffiths had raped and repeatedly assaulted Kniveton during their marriage. Griffiths, who had previously been a women's rights campaigner and chief of staff to future PM Theresa May, had earlier been removed from his government role after it was revealed he sent more than 2,000 sexually explicit messages to two female constituents over three weeks.
New documentary sheds light on systemic failures
Kniveton’s story is now the focus of an ITV1 and ITVX documentary titled Breaking The Silence: Kate’s Story, which explores her personal journey and the wider failures of the family court system in dealing with domestic abuse. The documentary also sheds light on the nearly 30,000 family court cases each year in the UK that involve allegations of domestic abuse.
