life and career

Dr Jessica Taylor, born in October 1990 in Macclesfield, grew up in Stoke on Trent with her parents and siblings. The eldest of seven children, Jessica describes her early childhood as ‘a normal, working class upbringing in a small mining town’. Whilst studious and committed to her education, she was subjected to many forms of violence and abuse between the ages of 11 and 18 years old. This resulted in her leaving school early, and not completing her high school education. She did however, attend all of her GCSE exams in 2006 after many months of refusing to go to school and leaving home. She achieved 13 A-C grades.

Despite over a decade of abuse, becoming a teenage mother (and mother of two children by 20 years old) and further abusive relationships, Jessica went back to education at 20 years old. After seeing an advert for The Open University on the television, she applied to undertake a BSc Psychology (Hons). She studied part time, usually in the evenings and on weekends whilst she worked with victims of sexual and domestic violence during the day.

Jessica often credits her approaches and perspectives to the roles she has held in supporting victims. Her first role was voluntary, working in domestic abuse criminal cases to prepare and support women and girls before giving evidence. From there, her roles included service and area management of vulnerable and intimidated witness programmes, victim support services, management of rape centre services and therapist training, and management in research and training in child sex trafficking and child sexual exploitation services.

Jessica graduated from The Open University in 2015 and immediately started a PhD in Psychology at University of Birmingham Forensic and Criminological Centre. Whilst completing her undergraduate degree, she had written to professors and academics to submit her ideas and research proposals on the psychology of victim blaming of women and girls. Academics at University of Birmingham accepted her preliminary literature reviews and research proposals and offered Jessica an opportunity to study a PhD beginning in October 2015, at the age of 25.

During the PhD, Jessica explored emerging perspectives and critical approaches to understanding victim blaming. She also studied advanced psychometric theory and created the BOWSVA Scale (a validated psychometric which has the ability to measure victim blaming attitudes of women subjected to sexual violence and abuse).

It was this specialism which led Jessica to become publicly critical of psychometrics and screening tools being used with teenage girls subjected to sex trafficking and exploitation. In 2016, wrote several articles and speeches about the oppressive use of screening tools and measurements which led to widespread anger and backlash from leading services, academics and authorities. The organisation Jessica worked for in senior management was targeted, and told to stop her from criticising the tools. It was this which led her to resign from a position she loved, as she didn’t want to draw negative attention to a charity she was committed to.

At Christmas 2016, and whilst still undertaking her PhD, Jessica chose to tender her resignation to stop the negativity towards the vital work of the charity, and to give her the freedom to publicly speak and write about oppression, abuse and poor practice in sexual and domestic violence theory and practice without fearing backlash towards employers.

Jessica had a vision for an independent organisation that could challenge, change and influence millions of people to understand that victim blaming, misogyny and pathologisation was embedded into every system in the world, and so in April 2017, she launched VictimFocus.

In September 2018, Jessica was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts for her outstanding contribution to psychology and feminism.

Whilst VictimFocus grew, she continued to study for her PhD which she completed in March 2019 and successfully defended in May 2019. Two days later, she flew to New Zealand for three weeks to roll out her ideas around victim blaming and trauma informed approaches to therapists in North NZ.

When Jessica returned from New Zealand, she left her long term relationship and came out to friends and family as lesbian. In September 2019, she publicly came out as lesbian and announced her relationship with her closest friend, Jaimi Shrive. She changed her name back to her birth name and they married in a private ceremony in May 2021.

In April 2020, Jessica released ‘Why Women Are Blamed For Everything’ in paperback by self-publishing via Lulu. With no publisher, agent or publicist, the book caused an international conversation and celebrity endorsements resulting in 10,000 copies sold in the first six weeks. With no distribution centre or logistical support, Jessica, Jaimi and Jaimi’s mum, Mandy, fulfilled tens of thousands of international orders from their dining room during the first part of COVID-19 Lockdown.

The book was spotted by J.K Rowling who offered her support and contacts to Jessica, and in July 2020, she signed with Rowling’s literary agents The Blair Partnership, who negotiated a multi-book publishing deal with Andreas Campomar of Little Brown at Hachette.

’Why Women Are Blamed For Everything’ was professionally edited and reviewed and then released in hardback and paperback in the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The new version included reviews from Dawn French, Caitlin Moran, Matthew Wright and The Morning Star. The book was featured in all major press outlets including magazines, TV, radio and podcasts before becoming a bestseller.

Dr Jessica Taylor has since featured in many documentaries, news programmes and discussion shows, focussing on misogyny, male violence against women, victim blaming and trauma of women and girls including Sky, BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and MTV.

In May 2021, Jessica and Jaimi released a report on the largest UK sample of women surveyed about their experiences of violence against women since birth. ‘I thought it was just a part of life’ was downloaded tens of thousands of times and was shared across TV, radio, newspapers and magazines. The findings suggested that 99.7% of the 22,419 women who took part had been subjected to violence and abuse, with each woman being subjected to 37 crimes each during the lifespan. The novel methodology and item construction, influenced by Jessica’s approaches to psychometry, has inspired several top universities to change their own methodological approaches to VAWG studies. Jessica and Jaimi have since been commissioned to replicate the study in different areas.

In June 2021, Little Brown announced that they will be publishing Jessica’s second non-fiction ‘Sexy But Psycho’ in March 2022. Jessica released an early statement saying that she feels that this book will be the ‘most important thing she will ever write’.

In March 2022, 'Sexy But Psycho' was released and went straight to Sunday Times Best Seller, entering at #5 in the national non-fiction book chart. Sexy But Psycho explores the way women and girls are pathologised and labelled as mentally ill in order to discredit them, shame them, control them or blame them.

In April 2023, Jessica co-authored and released the Indicative Trauma Impact Manual (ITIM) which became a #1 Amazon Bestseller in USA, UK, Australia and Canada in the first week. The ITIM was developed and written by Dr Jessica Taylor and Jaimi Shrive in order to provide an anti-pathology, trauma-informed alternative to the DSM which explained trauma responses and coping mechanisms without the use of psychiatric language or labelling.

victimfocus

Founded by Dr Jessica Taylor in April 2017, the aim of VictimFocus has always been to provide critical thinking, evidence based practice, accessible information, affordable educational resources and challenging ways of approaching victim support services. Jessica started the business on her own, and took on several small contracts of training, consultancy and research with universities, authorities and research institutions. In 2017, she was commissioned to write the national evidence review in child sexual exploitation practice, which was published open access by Research in Practice in October 2017.

In 2018, Jessica created the VictimFocus Blog, which quickly became a viral blog discussing contentious issues of victim blaming of women and girls subjected to male violence. As of 2021, the blog has been read by 2.6 million individuals across the world with particularly large followings in the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, India, South Africa, France, Philippines and Spain.

To respond to growing demand for VictimFocus resources and education, Jessica launched two new arms of VictimFocus in 2019: VictimFocus Resources and VictimFocus E-Learning Academy. The resources store contains a large collection of flashcards, educational guides, journals, books, handbooks, audio resources and digital resources for professionals and public. The profit from all sales are invested in niche research projects with women and girls subjected to male violence which are then peer reviewed and published for free via VictimFocus. The E-learning Academy is an intuitive platform for professionals, students and public to learn more about key topics with CPD accredited, reviewed modules at affordable prices (and in some cases, for free).

Between 2017 and 2022, VictimFocus has worked with hundreds of large and influential clients to challenge victim blaming, poor practice and pathologisation in policing, social care, education, mental health services, care homes, hospitals and prisons. The team grew from Jessica on her own, to an international team of 27 paid staff by Spring 2022.

By 2021, VictimFocus had 6.1 million readers, followers and subscribers and Jessica’s resources are being used in 70 countries. VictimFocus has trained over 30,000 professionals and provided free sexual violence and trauma education to over 50,000 members of the public subjected to sexual abuse.

You can learn more about VictimFocus at www.victimfocus.com and www.victimfocus-resources.com

views and perspectives

Jessica describes herself as a trauma-informed, radical feminist psychologist. We asked Jessica to write about some of her key views and perspectives here.

On being trauma-informed

'It took me a while to realise my own perspectives on mental health, trauma and pathologisation. I had worked with so many adults and children before I fully understood what made me so uncomfortable about telling traumatised, oppressed, abused and scared people that they have mental health disorders and personality disorders. I was certainly taught that people just developed these mental health issues naturally, but it didn't add up. Every person I ever worked with was having a natural, normal reaction to extreme distress, trauma or ongoing difficulties in their lives. When I was around 25 years old, I started to read more around different theories of mental health and trauma, and found that I was not alone.

My perspective on mental health and trauma is now strictly trauma-informed, and that is something I am proud of. It has always guided my work, but I hadn't realised that it had a name until about 2016. I now work actively against pathologisation, medication and psychiatric diagnosis of adults and children who have been subjected to trauma, harm, abuse and distress of any kind. I consider the mental health movements to be misguided, often with good intentions - but ultimately lead to people believing that they have something wrong with them which needs treating or managing.

This is especially true for women and girls who are subjected to male violence, who are commonly diagnosed with psychiatric disorders within months of disclosing abuse and harm. I am committed to challenging the deliberate pathologisation of women and girls. Psychiatric diagnosis following a disclosure of male violence is the ultimate form of victim blaming.'

On being radical feminist

'Understanding my own feminist principles was also a journey for me, although this started earlier. I was around 21 when I started to read feminist literature, but I had absolutely no knowledge of different feminist perspectives, waves or theories. I simply bought second-hand books from all different authors and read them without discriminating. It was only through this process that I realised that I agreed with some principles and arguments, and completely disagreed with others. This was often guided by my own work with women and girls in rape centres, domestic abuse, human trafficking, sexual exploitation and child abuse.

I remember spending a lot of time trying to understand the differences between liberal and radical feminism, and trying to figure out which book, and which author, was which. I was probably 25 years old when I realised I leant more naturally towards radical feminist principles. I saw female oppression as a global phenomenon which was supported and encouraged by huge patriarchal structures which needed to be dismantled for us all to move forward.

There are many challenges of being radical feminist and owning that perspective, not least that it is probably the most demonised and misunderstood form of feminism in the world. In my opinion, this isn't through a mere lack of education, but due to a century of deliberate twisting and reframing of radical feminism as a form of extremism. Instead of the acknowledgement that millions of women every year are subjected to male violence, oppression and discrimination across the world which prevent us from being viewed or treated as equal humans, the approach has mainly been to ridicule radical feminism so women do not understand their own oppression or experiences.

I am a proud radical feminist, and it shapes everything I do for women and girls.'

On being critical realist

'When I was younger, I would have described myself as a social constructionist. I recognised that so much of the world was socially constructed using language and ideas, and this intrigued me. However, when I was 25 years old, I met a Professor who challenged me about social constructionism, and I found that I couldn't answer their questions. This forced me to rethink. I realised that not everything in the world is socially constructed, because some things sit outside of our social ideas and constructs. A good example would be gravity. Or Oxygen. These are things that will continue to behave and exist without our constructions of them. We could argue that gravity was socially constructed, but it wouldn't change how it worked. Gravity would still impact our bodies and our world. We would still hurtle to the ground if we decided that gravity was simply a socially constructed idea of humans.

I started to read more about different epistemological and ontological approaches to our work and to how we produce knowledge about the world, and realised that I sat more comfortably with critical realism, which essentially utilises both social constructionism where appropriate, and realism, where appropriate.

The reason this is important to me, is because I work with real harm, real abuse, real danger and risk. The Professor who challenged me asked me to consider what the impact would be, if someone simply told me that rape was a social construction that was positioned as harmful just because we said it is. This was the turning point for me, that meant that I moved away from a pure SoCo position and embraced critical realism in my work.'