She’s standing down as chairwoman of Rape Crisis this month after five years at the helm. But Nicole Westmarland’s mission to stop violence against women is ongoing, as she tells Julia Breen.

THIS is not the kitchen of a feminist. A beautiful range cooker, complete with stove-top kettle, sits in a large open fireplace. This looks like the kitchen of someone who likes to make jams and chutneys and Victoria sponges for the local WI.

Only this isn’t the kitchen of a cake-baking housewife. This kitchen belongs to Nicole Westmarland, a successful campaigning academic, and the chairwoman of Rape Crisis England and Wales. Nicole is a feminist by ideal, a lecturer in criminology at the University of Durham, and the author of many pieces of research on prostitution, rape, sexual assault and domestic violence.

Walk through Nicole’s kitchen – still a work in progress – and into her study, and you are greeted with sweeping views of Richmond, the castle nestling on its bastion above the river in the distance.

Twelve years ago, Nicole couldn’t have imagined for a second that she would be a successful academic. She had left school at the age of 16 with just two GCSEs, and had a series of deadend jobs – from washing pots to selling kitchens.

She grew up in Piercebridge, near Darlington, and attended Hummersknott School, but left home as soon as she could and did “about 45 jobs”.

“I would do them for about a day and then say, that is c**p. I had one where I was selling kitchens in a DIY store and they said my job was to use anything in the store to make the kitchens look good. So I went round the store and got dried flowers and vases, and spruced up the kitchens, and I thought this job was great.

“But then I went back on the second day and asked what I could do that day, and it was exactly the same thing. So I left. I couldn’t stick any job that was the same two days in a row.”

Nicole managed to scrape together £500 to go to Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form college – and miraculously retook her GCSEs and did her Alevels – all in one year, before university tuition fees were introduced. She bankrolled her study by working on the phones at a taxi company, working 18-hour shifts at weekends.

When Nicole got a place at Teesside University she bought her own taxi and started driving at night. Her undergraduate dissertation was about violence against taxi drivers. She admits driving at night wasn’t very safe – and sexual harassment increased when passengers realised she was female.

She says: “I used to tuck my hair into my coat and pull a hat down and, if I was lucky, I could get the whole way without someone realising I was a woman.”

After graduating in psychology and women’s studies, Nicole did her PhD at York University while working as a research fellow in gender violence.

She was involved in Rape Crisis Tyneside, and, when the national umbrella organisation was faced with collapse in 2003, she and a group of volunteers got together to rebuild it, with Nicole taking over as chairwoman.

Each Rape Crisis centre operates independently, and Nicole co-ordinates the umbrella organisation, raising awareness and campaigning.

She says: “The difference about Rape Crisis is that we are women-centred. We don’t push women to go to the police. It is about empowering women to make their own choices and help rebuild their lives. It isn’t about getting convictions.

Only about ten per cent of women who come to Rape Crisis report their rape.”

One of Nicole’s bugbears is the stigma that surrounds rape – especially judgements that are made if a woman is raped while drunk, or walking home alone from a nightclub, or in taxis.

She says: “Women should be able to walk home from a club if they want to. There are a lot of things that play on women feeling unsafe.

Each year we can guarantee there’ll be a story about drug rape or taxi rape, but these are not by any means the most common forms of rape.

“The most common are men using alcohol to get women drunk, what would once have been called ‘taking advantage of someone’, and the other thing is rape within the family.”

This, says Nicole, is far more widespread and shocking than many people imagine. The man dubbed the “British Fritzl”, who in November was jailed for life for rape – after holding his two daughters virtual prisoners for 25 years – is one of many unreported cases, she claims. The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, fathered nine children by raping his two daughters, moving them around South Yorkshire and Lincolnshire to avoid detection.

Nicole says: “Rape Crisis volunteers all have stories to tell – and this case wasn’t a one-off. We can’t talk about some of the cases we hear about, and even if we did, many are so farfetched and horrific the general public wouldn’t believe it. I don’t think people realise just how much abuse is going on within some families.”

Nicole says that most of the women and girls who contact Rape Crisis have lived with their experiences for many years before being able to talk to anyone about it.

“And it’s not just rape. We are contacted about a wide range of different forms of sexual violence that no one wants to talk about: girls forced to have sex with animals, or their brothers, or who were raped when they were babies and toddlers, and also whose videos and pictures of abuse exist forever on internet sites making money for profiteers.”

Rape Crisis offers crucial support and counselling services for these victims – and it’s not all doom and gloom. Nicole admits she feels inspired by people who come through the other side. “The women we meet, who have been victims and are now survivors, are amazing.”

Nicole has spent a lot of time working with police and the criminal justice system to try to improve responses for rape victims. But her next project is health. “Criminal justice are realising they need specialist trained officers for rape victims.

Our mental health wards and prisons are full of women who have experienced violence.

“We need a massive shift in attitudes to all forms of violence against women and it is only that which will encourage long-term change and promote equality.”

Nicole is to step down next month as chairwoman of Rape Crisis to concentrate on building up the criminology degree course at Durham University. Five years at the helm of is enough, she says. “I enjoy starting the plates spinning, but once they are spinning away, I like to look for a fresh challenge.

“I have gone from being a taxi driver and doing washing-up jobs to doing something I love; live debates on television with Government ministers and the like. It has taken about a decade but I completely turned my life around.

I feel incredibly lucky.”

■ Rape Crisis can be contacted at rapecrisis.org.uk