‘I thought going public about my domestic abuse experience would ruin my police career’

Feeling ‘ashamed’ to be a victim, chief inspector Sharon Baker kept her secret for a decade but now she’s shared her story with the Queen

When Sharon Baker shared a video at work revealing that she had been a victim of domestic abuse, she expected a handful of her peers might come forward to say that they had endured the same. Instead, the chief inspector for Avon and Somerset Police received more than 130 messages from staff of every stripe, detailing years of violence and coercive control.
“The two most commonly used words were shame and embarrassment,” Baker, 46, recalls as the reasons why so many of her colleagues kept silent. Much of that was driven by an environment that is “quite unique to policing,” in which rank and a duty to protect others leads to victims feeling too humiliated to speak out.
Baker details her story in Her Majesty the Queen: Behind Closed Doors, an ITV documentary exploring campaigners’ efforts to quash the stigma around abuse. “I didn’t want anyone else to know because I was just mortified,” she reflects, her position of power providing no protection against the man who coercively controlled her for five years.
“I felt embarrassed and ashamed because of my job.” Going public, she feared, would mean “they wouldn’t want me as an inspector, because I can’t keep myself safe… I thought it would ruin my prospects in policing.”
When Baker met her then partner more than a decade ago, he appeared to her like a “knight in shining armour”; lovebombing her with constant affection. But over the course of a few months, he made himself the centre of her universe, exerting control over all elements of her life and cutting her off from everyone and everything she loved. Baker’s dinner would be thrown into the bin if she came home late from a shift, or she’d be locked out. He told her that her friends were making derogatory remarks behind her back, making them so unwelcome at their home that on one occasion when she invited someone round, she had to be smuggled out the house when he unexpectedly returned.
She couldn’t go running or to the gym, as her partner insisted those were selfish pursuits that took time away from him. “It was like I was living my life on a rollercoaster blindfolded, never knowing what to expect,” Baker says of the “almost constant state of emotional turmoil” she was living in. “One day you turn around and go, ‘God, there’s hardly anyone left,’ because the isolation is part of that control.”
Initially, Baker couldn’t even say the word “abuse” out loud. But everything changed when she came across a Mumsnet thread in which people detailed their own debilitating circumstances. “You go through this horrible realisation, and then you start thinking: Oh my goodness, that’s where I am. How on earth did I get here? How on earth am I going to get out?’ And that’s when you get scared.”
It took almost a year before she felt able to end the relationship. When she told her partner that she was leaving, he became increasingly more drunk and more threatening, leading him to turn violent for the first time. “I just feared for my life,” she says and decided to call 999. “I didn’t want to involve the police – these are my colleagues,” she says. “I didn’t want the world to know; I just wanted to leave.”
When the police arrived, she didn’t tell them the truth about what had happened, thus no arrest was made. Baker moved out and, after they divided their finances, they had no further contact. Although he was out of her life, the shame remained. Baker doesn’t like the word “trauma” because “it sounds dramatic,” but by throwing herself into work rather than dealing with her experience its impact bubbled up in unexpected ways; she had recurring nightmares that she was dying. And “when I spoke out, it all jumped out of the box again.”
Baker remained silent about her ordeal for almost a decade after the split, and later married her new husband, who works in finance, in 2018 (she also has a teenage son from a prior relationship). She told only her line manager and one colleague what had happened. But when she went to visit an officer who had been assaulted by her partner, things shifted.
“How she spoke about herself really shocked me. She was really blaming herself and was embarrassed… she was feeling all those things that I felt.” So she told her that she too had been a victim, “and we had a few tears”.
Over the months that followed, that colleague told Baker that she had lifted the burden of shame: “She saw me as that visible representation of strength and influence and power, and if it can happen to Sharon… that made her feel better.” The women did not know victims could look like them; that officers across their 6,500-strong force were being bowed into silence by their professional standing. “We genuinely thought it was us and us alone.”
Her colleague decided to write an anonymous blog about her experiences, pushing Baker to go a step further. Four years ago Baker filmed what was intended as an internal video, which Avon and Somerset used as a central part of their 16 Days of Activism (an international campaign against gender-based violence). It forced her to tell her parents and husband the details of what had passed for the first time.
“I was sick with nerves in the 24 hours before filming, because I thought, will everyone ridicule me? I thought, everyone will think you’re an idiot, people would think I was weak, wouldn’t want me as their boss, and I’d be judged for it. But that didn’t happen.”
The seven-minute film, in which the usually upbeat Baker becomes emotional detailing her abusive past, prompted an outpouring. On watching it a male boss called her, tearful; the messages from those who had endured the same kept coming. “That told us that the scale of the problem was much larger than we thought.”
Baker says this reflects society at large. Just over two million people (1.4 million women and over 700,000 men) suffered domestic abuse last year, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, with less than a quarter of instances reported. The police receive a call on the subject every 30 seconds and a new Rapid Delivery Response tool has been rolled out in some parts of the UK to deal with domestic abuse reports via video link, leading to arrest rates 50 per cent higher than those dealt with in the traditional way.
After the video was posted online, Baker set up a meeting with those who had responded – “and then we never stopped.” It was clear from the off that “part of the problem was [the police’s] organisational culture. No one was talking about any of this.” Her view, which echoes the Queen’s, is that talking about abuse more openly is vital: “[We need] more people speaking out and busting those myths. I’m still quite shocked that people are shocked that I could be a victim.”
Since the video was shared, “not a week goes by where someone inside the organisation [doesn’t] say, ‘I’ve been a victim’”. The survivors’ network that formed from those initial meetings at Avon and Somerset has become a crucial resource filled with people who just “get it,” she says, and their coming together has triggered organisation-wide change of which Baker is rightly proud.
Domestic abuse is now explicitly outlined in Avon and Somerset’s compassionate leave policy, and a dedicated refuge has been set up for employees needing to escape violent homes. Several members of the survivors’ network have reported their partners as a result of the infrastructure the force has built, leading to their abusers being charged. These changes needn’t be restricted to one force alone, she says. “All organisations can do that, not just policing.”
Still, while shame remains an enormous barrier to reporting for victims, so too do arduous judicial procedures and poor results. Last year, less than five per cent of domestic abuse cases recorded by police ended in a conviction. Policing and a criminal justice outcome is right for some people. “It wasn’t right for me” (her partner had been financially abusive, and she was terrified he might do irreparable damage as a form of revenge), Baker says. “There needs to be a balance in policing.” While she says that “there is a way to go, I think we could improve conviction rates for violence against women,” securing their safety is to her mind the primary objective. “The criminal justice bit is second.”
Activism has further galvanised Baker in a job she always felt destined to do. “My mum would describe me as being bossy, and having ants in my pants, so I was either going to be a teacher, or a police officer.” She is a career officer, having first served in Hampshire (where she grew up following her staff sergeant father’s last army posting, after stints in Germany and across the UK), and at her current constabulary for the past two decades. “It feels such a privilege to be able to help people in their lives at their worst moments, and to be part of that pivotal change in policing,” she says.
While she relishes the accomplishments her work has brought, “it’s still not easy to talk about what happened”; she had therapy for the first time after the video went live. Telling her family was especially hard, because “You don’t want them to think less of you… and you don’t want them to feel guilty. I think they feel – could they have seen something, could they have said something.”
All have been hugely supportive, she adds, especially her husband. Their respectful partnership, as she calls it, only magnifies the anguish of her life before. “I literally pinch myself every day. I still smile when I get a text saying: ‘Are you alright, darling, do you want me to put dinner on?’”
No one close to her could have predicted that she would be appearing on television and meeting the Queen, however – least of all Baker. The documentary charts the Queen’s work with campaigners, alongside contributions from a range of abuse survivors including actor Patrick Stewart and MP Rosie Duffield. The Queen has personally known people who have experienced domestic abuse and been a patron of SafeLives, a domestic violence charity, since 2020. “By scratching the surface, you get a terrible shock,” she says in the programme. “It’s a heinous crime.”
She and Baker were first introduced at Clarence House last month: “I was quite nervous,” she says, “but I shouldn’t have been… She was really warm and authentic. I think she realises she’s got that ability to influence and connect all the people working in [ending domestic abuse] which then just creates momentum, which is fantastic. She’s using that influence in a really positive way.”
The Queen herself has a no nonsense approach to eradicating domestic abuse, saying in the documentary: “Don’t let’s kid ourselves, it’s going to take a long, long time.”
Baker is intent on being part of the change, however slow. “What I went through now has meaning, because I am changing Avon and Somerset, at least, [from the] inside out.”
Her Majesty the Queen: Behind Closed Doors is on ITV on Monday 11 November at 9pm