FREEMASONS have donated more than £165,000 to help protect women and children from domestic abuse in the last three months.?Around 2,000 women have been helped by Freemasons during the lockdown, with support continuing beyond the lockdown and more than 1,000 care packages have been donated to women and their children.

Cases have increased substantially in Devon during the Coronavirus pandemic. The services of SAFE (Stop Abuse For Everyone) have come under incredible pressure and financial strain, so the Freemasons, hearing of their plight, funded a grant of more than £3,000 to enable them to continue their essential work.

Lucy Skye, SAFE Fundraising Manager said:“We are very grateful to the Devonshire Freemasons. SAFE is a grassroots local charity and this money will help us to continue to deliver vital recovery services.

"It is only by working together that we will succeed in achieving our aim of ending domestic abuse.”

In the first four weeks of lockdown in the UK, 16 women and girls were killed in suspected domestic homicides — more than triple the number from the same period in 2019.

After that, 10 more have died in the two following months. The oldest was 82-years-old and the youngest, killed with her mother and four-year-old sister was only two.

According to their projections, the institution looks after more than 1,000 exploited girls, women and men; and now, during the pandemic they have 50 per cent more cases than normal.

The United Grand Lodge of England’s Covid-19 Response group, which has been co-ordinating the relief programme, will continue to support women’s refuges in the second phase of its donation initiatives.

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