As a child, Emma witnessed many violent assaults on her mother by her stepfather; both were alcoholics. As a result of her brutal home environment, she ran away many times and spent periods in care and on the road.

At an early age she began using drugs and alcohol and was exploited in pornography and prostitution. At the age of 16, Emma was homeless and working on the streets of Nottingham as a prostitute.

A client, Trevor Armitage who, at 32, was twice her age, offered her shelter in his home. Emma believed at first that Armitage loved her, the only person ever to have said as much to her. However, his possessiveness and desire to control her meant she was subjected to extreme physical, sexual and emotional abuse. Armitage constantly monitored her movements and even nailed down the windows to stop her running away. During this time Emma was gang raped by three men and, despite her distress, Armitage would continue to abuse and rape her.

On 25 February 1985, Emma once again terrified of being raped, slashed her wrists in an attempt to stop the assault and hid the knife in panic. Fearing Armitage would then use the knife on her, she stabbed him once and he died a short time later.

On arrest Emma’s state of shock was such that she was unable to explain why she had killed Armitage or describe the history of violence and abuse. Because of her extreme traumatisation, Emma allowed the police to construct her statement and could not give any evidence in her defence. Emma was convicted of murder and was sentenced at 17 years old to prison with an ‘indefinite sentence’.

Emma contacted Justice For Women in September 1992 after seeing media coverage of the Sara Thornton and Kiranjit Ahluwalia campaigns. Justice for Women campaigned for two years to bring her case to the Court of Appeal by which time Emma had spent more than 10 years in prison.

On the 7 July 1995 Emma’s conviction for murder was quashed by the Court of Appeal and she walked free, greeted by crowds of cheering supporters. The story was front page news and was a landmark legal case.

For three years after her release Emma was an active campaigner for Justice for Women. On 11 July 1998 Emma died in her sleep after an accidental overdose of prescription medication.

After her death colleagues and friends from Justice for Women set up a memorial prize award in her memory to acknowledge the contribution of Emma and women like her who are working to end violence against women and children.

The Map of My Life: The Story of Emma Humphreys tells the remarkable story of Emma, whose struggle for justice left a legacy that continues today.

Convicted aged 17 of murder, Emma spent 10 years in prison before being released by the Court of Appeal in 1995. She was welcomed by hundreds of cheering supporters, her case having changed the law for battered women who kill. Emma’s tragic death, three years later, from an accidental overdose of prescribed medication, created shock waves for those who saw her as the ultimate survivor.

The story is told through Emma’s writings: her poems; letters from prison; and documents only discovered after her death, including diaries and a retrospective account written from Durham prison. These powerful writings document the life of an abused teenager in care, who became exploited into prostitution and beaten by her pimp/”boyfriend” to the point where she was driven to kill him.

Edited by Julie Bindel and Harriet Wistrich, key members of the campaign to free Emma Humphreys, with contributions from Beatrix Campbell, Judith Jones, Julie McNamara and Rosie Fitzharris. With a foreword by Vera Baird QC MP.

This is a story of survival through the most extreme adversity, and of a woman whose life we all should learn from.

Freedom

What does it mean?
It means to get up in the morning and not to be afraid, like I was as a child, like I am in my confinement, what will hit me today?
I hope to wake up without anxiety, wake up slowly or fast whatever the day feels like.

If the weather is fine I shall sit outside and have a cup of coffee and a cigarette, I’ll brush my teeth first but I will take it all slowly.

Won’t be sat like our life depends on the shout of the medication, eight tablets for my breakfast.

I’ll enjoy my coffee, may even be eating a small amount in the mornings, but I doubt it old habits are hard to break.

If its not fine outside I’ll sit somewhere fresh or even jump into bed I’ll be fresh because I’ll of been bathing and washing with toiletries I choose and when I want to.

I don’t think buying a paper every morning is for me but I would love fresh flowers everyday, pick them myself or go and buy some.

Dreams

Not the ones that plague your mind in the night,
I wanna tell you about the ones that keep me alive.
Lived and living a nightmare, but not in the still of the night.
I was conscious, I am conscious, it’s all real, but I dream.

I dream of laughter from within and around me.
Running naked in the rain, taking a shower form the heavens.
No one knows what it is about me, that wakes me from the nightmares, to carry on some more, it’s my dreams.

Flat out on a hot search, free of my clothes, free of my past.
A safe place I can call home, my space, my loves.
It would make you stop and stare as you passed it.
As you would see the full beauty I need inside and around me.
I will always dream.


The Map of my life

I’m Angry, yes I’m very fucking angry, but it’s not close up. Close up is sadness and tears welling up but I have cried so much today that my head hurts.

You who drugged me up and did god only knows what to me. A stray fourteen year old. Did you think it was fun feeding me pills? Let me collapse in the shower, next thing I know you’re trying to hold me up and dress me on the bed. What did you tell me? Through the haze of drugs. Kool ade, that was it we needed to go to the shop for kool ade. How kind of you to dress me and help me stagger out of your apartment me, fourteen, drugged wasn’t thinking let you prop me up in the freezing snow, must have been about minus fifteen degrees and I fucking stood there for a while, all of about a couple of minutes I couldn’t stand, didn’t have the co-ordination, so I slumped in the snow like a good believing child. As I waited for you to return, from a house you said you were going for money, you bastard. You may have left me for dead, but here I am today.

Had your fun did you? And then did you get scared? Scared that you’d closely killed me with pills? Fucking cowardly bastard. I was bleeding down below, but I don’t want to know what you did, I know enough about you to know I hate you ok, your just one but I remember you clearly. I never thought I could get to help but I did. It’s a wonder I wasn’t killed, wobbling my way across one of the biggest roads in Edmonton, I made it all right and got help to get a taxi. I came back to haunt you, you fucking prick. Outside your apartment door I sliced five inches up my arm, I call my scars the map of my life. Yours is still very much there a bleeding nose from falling blood rushing out of my arm. Blood between my legs dumb struck weren’t you? Prick.

Tried to stop the flow of blood and threw me in another taxi, that was the end of it of it for you, and I hope it was the end of you playing with fourteen year old girls.

It didn’t end there for me and you weren’t even the first mother fucking bastard to mess with me and you certainly weren’t the last.

Trevor was the last and rest his soul that people like you contributed to his death.

At seven years old I picked chunks of skin out of my hands, the smell of the blood must have been there then.

Linda made me lie flat on my back one day the smell of the blood was there then. I’ve been alone in places and smelt blood when it was not around.

I’ve cut my arms since the age of twelve, lots of blood there.

A man with a knife wound would died in my arms at seventeen.

When I went through my break down, the cocoa was blood on the clothes in my sink, the smell was there , I through the clothes away.

I’ve been anorexic, I’ve been bulimic, I’ve been a compulsive eater, Compulsive washer.

I do a lot physically in my sleep, even abuse myself.

I’ve been, abused and travelled on. I don’t remember burning myself the first time, it happened in a blackout, the next time I did remember doing it.

I put four cigarettes out on my arms at the weekend.

I needed to leave myself,First the pain, Then the numbness, Then nothing.

Someone heard me scream, but I think I’d gone by then.

I loved my cell,

I made it my home.

I washed to bathe,

In a blue plastic bowl.

No potty but a toilet an instant disposal.

Beautiful pictures on the walls, hours of looking and admiring, a comfortable corner, for music, drugs and dreaming.

A bedroom always in use.

To sleep doss or make love in.