In 1997, my wife, Pat Finnon, who has died of cancer aged 63, began managing a small Newcastle charity, ASCA (Adult Survivors of Childhood Abuse), leading a counselling service for people coming to terms with abusive childhoods. She spoke passionately about this in local media and raised issues and funds to develop the charity’s work and quality of service. She later became northern UK manager of St Vincent de Paul (SVP), a charity supporting the homeless and aged and helping run bail hostels. Her first encounter with cancer ended this role, but she returned to work as a counsellor, dealing with many client groups, a notable example being train drivers who had witnessed suicides, helping them find the emotional strength to face work again.
Pat was born in a poor area of Sunderland, the fourth of eight children of an abusive father and a mother suffering from depression. She described her upbringing as a war zone and knew from an early age that education was her only escape. A bright, determined child and avid reader, she passed her 11+ to go to the local grammar school, but her mother’s early death forced her at 16 to find work and money to help raise three of her younger siblings.
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