Kate Kniveton: In a powerful and heart-wrenching disclosure, former Burton MP Kate Kniveton has shared the details of a decade of domestic abuse at the hands of her ex-husband, disgraced former Conservative MP Andrew Griffiths. In an upcoming ITV1 and ITVX documentary titled Breaking The Silence: Kate’s Story, Kniveton opens up for the first time about the harrowing reality behind her marriage including repeated sexual assaults, coercive control, and emotional abuse directed at her and their newborn daughter.
Kniveton revealed that Griffiths would often assault her while she slept, responding with fury when she resisted. “It would start when I was asleep – I’d wake up and he would have started having sex with me… Sometimes I’d just think ‘let it carry on,’” she recalled, adding that when she cried, he would sometimes stop, but not always. “I remember he’d be kicking me until he kicked me out of bed.”
“Traumatised by the Abuse and the System”: Kniveton Speaks Out on Legal Harassment and Family Court Failures
Despite separating from Griffiths in 2018, Kniveton said the abuse didn’t end. She spoke about the trauma inflicted not just during their marriage but in the years that followed, as Griffiths allegedly continued to use the legal system to control and harass her. “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 stated.
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Kniveton, who succeeded Griffiths as MP in Burton from 2019 to 2024, stressed that domestic abuse does not discriminate by class or profession. “People don’t think it can happen to professional middle-class people – but domestic abuse has no boundaries.” She committed to being a voice for survivors when she entered Parliament and is now using her platform to highlight the often-ignored issues in family court proceedings involving abuse, which number around 30,000 cases annually.
The final turning point in their relationship, Kniveton revealed, came when Griffiths aggressively shouted at their crying two-week-old baby. “He turned and screamed, ‘Shut the fu*k up,’ at our newborn,” she recounted.
Griffiths, once a high-ranking Conservative figure and former chief of staff to Theresa May, was forced to resign after a scandal involving sexually explicit messages sent to constituents. In 2021, a family court judge ruled that he had raped and physically assaulted Kniveton.
