“The truth is that domestic violence touches many of us. It is very possible that someone you know – a friend, sister, daughter or colleague – is experiencing abuse…  This violence is not a private matter. Behind closed doors it is shielded and hidden and it only intensifies. It is protected by silence – everyone’s silence…  Most people find the idea of violence against women – and sometimes, though rarely, against men – abhorrent, but do nothing to challenge it.”

- Patrick Stewart

Patrick Stewart is an English actor best known for his role as Captain Jean Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation.  This quote is from a piece Stewart himself wrote for The Guardian on the dangers of domestic violence, his own experiences of witnessing the abuse of his mother at the hands of his father, and his activism in the Refuge group and it’s Four Ways to Speak Out campaign.