'Raped me in my sleep, said no one would...': Kate Kniveton’s chilling account of abuse in marriage with UK politician

Kate Kniveton, the former MP for Burton who served from 2019 to 2024, has spoken out for the first time in detail about the abuse she endured during her marriage to ex-husband and fellow MP Andrew Griffiths. In an emotional account published by Metro, Kniveton alleges years of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, much of it hidden behind a carefully managed public image.

Griffiths, once a prominent Conservative politician who served as a women’s minister and aide to Theresa May, is accused by Kniveton of raping and assaulting her repeatedly throughout their relationship. “It would start when I was asleep – I’d wake up and he would have started having sex with me,” she said, recalling moments of silent endurance and, at other times, weeping during the assault. “Sometimes I’d just think 'let it carry on’... but there would be other times when I would cry. And those times he’d sometimes stop, not all times, but then he’d be in a foul mood if he did.”

Her distress deepened when she saw signs that her newborn daughter was also exposed to danger. Describing a particularly traumatic morning when their baby cried for a feed, Kniveton recalled Griffiths turning to the infant and yelling: “Shut the f*** up.”

“There were warning signs,” she said, reflecting on how Griffiths' public charm masked a darker reality. “He was very personable, charming and charismatic… but I always put it down to him being under a lot of pressure.”

Kniveton married Griffiths in 2013 and separated from him in 2018, later succeeding him as Burton’s MP. However, she said the abuse didn’t end with the marriage. “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.

The abuse extended to terrifying physical episodes. “I remember he’d be kicking me until he kicked me out of bed. And I would go into our spare room and barricade myself in another room for the night or leave the house,” Kniveton told Metro.

Kniveton’s experience is the focus of a powerful new ITV documentary, Breaking The Silence: Kate’s Story, which also sheds light on systemic failures in the UK’s family courts. The programme exposes how courts handling around 30,000 abuse-related cases annually often fall short in protecting women and children.

Highlighting the stigma and disbelief many survivors face, Kniveton said Griffiths often dismissed her threats to report the abuse. “Every time I said I was going to go to the police, I’m going to report you, he’d always say, ‘Nobody would believe you, Kate. I’m the MP here. I’ve got a great relationship with the police — they all think I’m the blue-eyed boy.’”

The trauma, she said, has long outlasted the relationship. “People don’t think it can happen to professional middle-class people — but domestic abuse has no boundaries. It can affect absolutely anybody.”

A family court judge ruled in December 2021 that Griffiths had raped and repeatedly assaulted Kniveton — a judgment that laid bare the extent of the abuse she had long endured in silence.

Now, with her story made public, Kniveton hopes her advocacy will empower other survivors and bring long-overdue scrutiny to how the legal system handles domestic abuse cases. “When I was elected, I made a promise to be an advocate for victims of domestic abuse,” she said.