When PC Saara Nawaz was called to a domestic abuse incident in 2023, she found herself sitting on the pavement with the survivor. “The woman had reported being strangled by her partner,” says Saara, a police officer in her 30s from Mansfield , Notts. “We arrested the suspect, but she ran away from us. I managed to speak to her and said, ‘we’re here for you, we can support you’ – but she kept saying, ‘there is nothing you can do for me’. “I explained I was a domestic abuse survivor and I’d been