Dr Jessica “Jess” Taylor, formerly Eaton, is a writer and research psychologist specialising in VAWG (Violence Against Women and Girls.) She is based in the Midlands area of England and has a heavy social media presence. She has a personal history of abuse, which she has spoken about extensively in interviews and published material.
Her work is based on the view that mental illness and neurodivergence don’t exist, they are just expressions of “trauma"; which can, and should, always be resolved through talking therapy. Medication, psychiatry, and any form of diagnosis are oppressive and misogynistic. She can't provide credible evidence to support these claims, which are vastly at odds with the opinions of most doctors and clinical psychologists.
She runs VictimFocus, a company that provides training around mental health and VAWG, with her wife Jaimi Shrive. VictimFocus sells a number of courses and materials, but its main product is a course that allows someone to become a VF trainer or “facilitator.” They then sell the course to other people and pay an annual fee to keep their certification current. If you think that sounds like a multi level marketing scheme, you’re right. VF also provides a free course aimed at survivors of sexual violence. See below for concerns about VictimFocus including the courses it sells.
Jess has published a number of books about psychology and self-help, and a memoir. These books contain personal stories from at least three abuse survivors, published without their knowledge or consent. She has repeatedly attacked and tried to silence a very vulnerable woman for speaking out about Jess's unauthorised use of her story.
Jess claims to be working towards major systemic change in mental healthcare, and be asking important questions no one else will touch. In fact she takes credit for others' ideas/work, and offers few or no credible alternatives to current practice. Much of her advice is uninformed or outright harmful. Essentially, she's an influencer who makes money from engagement and controversy.
Professional credentials and opinions
Qualifications
Jess holds a PhD in psychology. This involves intensive research in a specific narrow niche, e.g. the impact of advertising on body image. It is different from a DClinPsy (Doctorate of Clinical Psychology), which is NHS-based training with a heavy taught component that includes six-month rotations across different mental health and learning disability services. The DClinPsy qualifies someone for clinical practice; a research PhD in psychology, like Jess's, does not.
Jess takes advantage of the fact that the general public isn't aware of the difference between an academic/research psychologist like her, and a clinical psychologist who has taken the DClinPsy. She deliberately gives the impression that she is clinically trained and has provided direct therapeutic care to survivors of sexual violence. Her opinions on subjects like autism, bipolar disorder, and trauma therapy are no more informed than those of the average person on the street, but she sets herself up as an expert in the knowledge that most people will hear "psychologist" and assume she actually has a background in these things. She has been repeatedly cited in the press as an expert in topics that she has no specialist knowledge in, such as this article about electro-convulsive therapy.
Jess has repeatedly said that she chose not to take the DClinPsy and her PhD is just an alternative route into the same profession. This is false; they lead to separate career paths. She attempted to justify herself here (paywalled, but the preview shows enough), saying that judging her for having "just" a PhD is dismissing her talents and telling her she's not good enough. There is nothing wrong with her PhD, but she shouldn't misrepresent what she's qualified to do and where her experience lies.
There is no regulatory oversight into research psychologists. This means that Jess is not required to register with any organisation, and there is no one to hold her to a set professional standard, or intervene if she acts unethically. She belongs to the British Psychological Society, but it is a membership body with loose regulation and little legal clout. See wiki page 2 for what's happened when people tried to report her to them.
She often talks about the following credentials:
PhD in forensic psychology - The title of her PhD is just PhD in Psychology, but her doctorate thesis was on the subject of victim blaming and was awarded by the University of Birmingham's Centre for Forensic and Criminal Psychology. You may or may not consider this a PhD in forensic psychology. What it is not is a Doctorate in Forensic Psychology (called a ForenPsyD at Jess's university), which is the standard qualification in the UK for a career in that field. "Forensic psychologist" is a protected title you must not use unless registered as such with the Health and Care Professions Council, which normally requires a ForenPsyD or equivalent.
Jess gets around this by saying that her PhD is in forensic psychology and talking about her work with police, etc. - giving the impression to a person with little knowledge of the field that she is a practicing forensic psychologist. If challenged, she can then truthfully say "But I never said I was a forensic psychologist!" This doesn't stop her allowing others to falsely call her a forensic psychologist, including her wife and the makers of a Netflix documentary she appeared in.
FRSA (Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts) - Jess claims to have been "awarded" this for "her outstanding contribution to psychology and feminism." It is not an award; anyone over 18 can apply and pay for it, and you do not need to have made a specific contribution in any field, just to demonstrate that you share the RSA's values of social change. Even if another Fellow initially nominated her, she's paying for membership of a professional body.
AFBPsS (Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society) - Again, this is membership of a professional body that you have to apply and pay for. Jess qualifies because she has more than four years' experience within the field of psychology.
Sunday Times bestselling author - You can achieve this by selling as few as 2000 copies of a book. That includes any copies that the author buys themselves, which Jess does so that she can sell them through VictimFocus. See this article about an author who reached #8 by buying 400 copies of his own book - this doesn't mean Jess is deliberately inflating sales, however, the copies she buys to sell through her own company will contribute towards her place on the list.
Career history
This is Jess's career history as shown on her LinkedIn page:
She previously had a more detailed CV online (Jessica Eaton was her previous name during her first marriage.) Again this emphasises that before she started VictimFocus, she worked in a number of roles related to training and service delivery. Jess repeatedly claims that she has years of extensive "front line experience with women and girls" and that this is all she's been doing since the age of 19. However, with the exception of her work at The Eaton Foundation (a men's mental health charity she founded - see below for more on that) and her academic research, most of her work prior to VictimFocus was in administrative roles. Calling this "front line experience" is intentionally misleading. If someone were, for example, a training manager in an engineering company would it be fair for them to present themselves as "working in engineering", knowing what other people will assume from that vs what they actually do?
Here is how she described her experience in 2023 to sell tickets to an event she was hosting in New Zealand.
Much of this is misleading:
See above regarding forensic psychology.
You would expect any psychologist to have carried out mixed-methods studies, and she would have done this even during her undergraduate degree.
Describing roles in training and service provision as "front line work" directly with survivors. She also says that she has been doing this for 14 years (since she was 19.) Yet, around the same time, she stated on Twitter that 14 years ago she was working in a factory.
The "national evidence review" she refers to was essentially just a VictimFocus report. The "BOWSVA Scale" is used solely by VictimFocus, as are her resources that are supposedly used worldwide (there are VF trainers in different countries - not 70 though.)
Lists consulting work, training, or sitting on boards as proof of expertise when they are more of a reflection on her marketing skills.
"Confidential projects" that she conveniently can't verify or discuss further. Jess says (see page 2) that questioning her work on these is accusing her of lying or that her work is "fake." We're not suggesting that; just that it is impossible to verify anything she says about these projects.
The men's health charity she refers to (The Eaton Foundation/TEF) was one she co-founded herself and where she was most likely paid. See below for more on TEF.
Anyone can write books or publications on any subject. This doesn't mean Jess is an expert or that what she has written is informed. See above: you do not need to sell that many copies of a book to make the Sunday Times bestseller list, and that includes copies you bought yourself - Jess buys some to sell through VictimFocus and her website. (For example, see this picture she posted, showing that she bought many copies of Underclass.) That's perfectly legitimate but it still counts towards the total and her place on the list.
Her free course contains material that is potentially harmful to survivors, and she uses it to mine content/data. See wiki page 2.
Jess states that she is a senior lecturer and teaches on doctoral programmes. It appears she is a guest or contract lecturer at the University of Derby. Most universities would not even allow her to supervise a doctoral programme because she doesn't have any officially published, peer-reviewed work. Even if she's paid at the rate of a senior lecturer, that doesn't mean she has the experience you would normally expect at that level. Climbing the career ladder to senior lecturer takes many years, even in a full-time academic role.
As of October 2024, Jess has 21 publications (mostly self-published; none are in peer-reviewed journals) and 55 citations (some of which are self-citations), far short of what you would normally expect from a working academic. She defends this by saying that journals are exploitative and she refuses to publish in them.
Lack of peer review
Peer review is when an independent subject specialist reviews, and provides critical feedback on, an advanced draft of a manuscript. This is the standard system for validating academic work. A peer reviewer should be an expert in their field or at least equally as qualified as you, and they are normally anonymous.
Jess's books Why Women Are Blamed For Everything and Sexy But Psycho were published without peer review and contain a lot of unevidenced and factually incorrect ranting, but she uses her PhD to suggest that it's all research-driven. For her PhD thesis, she used "reviewers" who were obviously unsuitable. One of these was her then-acquaintance Rose (see wiki page 2), who did not have a relevant background in the subject. Another person who supposedly peer reviewed her PhD thesis was a Master's student or recent graduate at the time, i.e., not even at Jess's own level.
Jess claims that the material she releases through VictimFocus is peer-reviewed. But she selects the reviewers and knows who they are - so it isn't really peer review. For example, here's an email she sent asking someone to review a VictimFocus report.
Jess self-published the Indicative Trauma Impact Manual (ITIM), a supposed alternative to diagnostic manuals. She claims that it is peer-reviewed by "30 clinicians, professionals, academics and those with lived experience of trauma." (What this means is that anyone can be a peer reviewer, since she believes that everyone experiences trauma.) But she had several personal friends as "peer reviewers", some of whom have no background in psychology or mental health. These people were promoting the book on social media and had obvious conflicts of interest. For example, one person she lists as a peer reviewer is Sarah McGrath, the CEO of a charity for migrant women experiencing domestic abuse. McGrath's background is in finance and project delivery, she had not worked in VAWG before becoming CEO of this charity in 2021, and she went on a night out with Jess and Jaimi around the time of the book's publication.
Jess considers standard peer review to be "handing (her) ideas over" to "corrupt companies" who want to prevent the public from ever reading them. Instead, she says she pays for "independent" peer review. The entire reason why peer review isn't paid for is to prevent bias. If she is paying for it, it's not independent! In the past, she did not pay VictimFocus's panel of supposed peer reviewers.
Professional views
The main theme of Jess's work is that there is no such thing as mental illness or neurodivergence, they are just labels for natural responses to "trauma." She says that everyone experiences trauma, and her definition of trauma is very broad, including normal feelings (like disappointment or loneliness) and common events (like watching violence on TV.) According to Jess, even serious conditions like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder aren't illnesses and should not be treated as such. She states that she does believe autism exists but does not agree that it is a mental illness. Most medical professionals are not saying it is; autism is widely recognised as a neurological/developmental disorder.
She believes that all anti-psychotic and antidepressant medication is inherently harmful, addictive, and traps the person in a cycle of dependency. She claims that a drug must be dangerous if it needs to be tapered off without stopping abruptly - even though this is true of most prescription drugs for any condition. She also believes that medication has no role in treating trauma. This is equivalent to telling someone who has been beaten by their partner and sustained broken ribs "well, clearly the underlying cause of your pain is the abuse. We're not going to prescribe you any painkillers because that's just masking the real problem."
Jess aggressively promotes anti-med and anti-psychiatry views, ignoring the opinions of qualified clinicians and of patients who find that medication works for them. Despite this, she can offer no solutions apart from talking therapies - which aren't effective for some conditions. She doesn't seem to be aware of the existence of any other treatments such as somatic therapies. Jess describes herself as "revolutionary" and advocating for radical changes in mental healthcare, but many of the talking points she recycles have been around for decades. See more here about the history of mental illness denialism.
She responds poorly to criticism, and often claims that it is motivated by personal dislike or jealousy. If an academic criticises her, they're elitists who can't bear to see a working-class mum being successful. If someone outside academia criticises her, they don't have the expertise to know what they're talking about. She also likes to say that she is being held to unfairly high standards that a man would not be held to. It's unlikely that some of her claims would be accepted without question if they came from a man.
Jess fails to understand why someone may want or need a diagnosis for mental illness. Many people find it to be positive as it helps them get appropriate care and support. It can also mean that someone is entitled to claim benefits or legal protections. If Jess's ideas were accepted as fact, it would be difficult to justify mental illness being a protected characteristic under the law - why should it be, when it is just "trauma" and everyone experiences trauma? The way she talks can be more stigmatising towards mentally ill / neurodivergent people.
Jess has outright stated that she doesn't want to work with patients because she would earn less money. She refers to working with vulnerable people as just "holding cases", and says that she's "done her time front line" as if it were something she has to get through so she can do the "real" money-making work. Again, she hasn't worked clinically front line at all. She has repeatedly said that she chose to be a research psychologist and take a PhD rather than the DClinPsy. Why, then, does she so often talk about her "front line experience" as if she had practiced clinically?
Whether deliberately or through ignorance, she's misleading people about what it means to practise as a chartered forensic psychologist, because they can choose to be involved in research (which is why a 50,000 word thesis is a core component of their training). The first one who jumps to mind for me is Dr Rachel Beryl, who currently leads a trauma and self-injury service and whose most recent publication is this chapter in the new book Trauma-Informed Forensic Practice. There's nothing wrong with choosing to do a PhD if you want to do research exclusively, but Jessica never did want that. If she had she wouldn't keep eluding to her vaguely worded, elastically expanding "years of frontline experience" (which mysteriously took place while she was working in B&Q). She would be honest about what the nature of her jobs has been and what she is qualified to do. Instead she keeps wording things in such a way as to give the impression that she has worked as a therapist and could do continue to give therapy if she wanted to, she's just far too busy being a radical changemaker to sit on a ward from 9 to 5.
That 9 to 5 therapy comment is itself inaccurate, because a lot of forensic psychs design and lead services and provide consultancy/training to other professionals, as opposed to doing direct therapy. Some do none at all. And of those who do, I can't imagine any of them would describe their job as "holding case after case". Those 'cases' are real people. Human beings with hopes and dreams and good qualities as well as criminal records. Not 'cases'. For a good practitioner psychologist it's a privilege to listen to their stories and help them to reach a better place. I can't imagine even the most burnt out jaded practitioner I've ever met referring to their therapeutic work with patients as "doing their time frontline", as if it's a prison sentence in itself. That says an awful lot about Jessica's own thoughts and priorities.
Jess announced in December 2023 that she would now be taking cases as an expert witness in family court after receiving many requests for her services. Again, see this article as to why it can be harmful for unregulated academic psychologists with no clinical experience to serve as expert witnesses in court. Also see this judgement by the President of the Family Court regarding unregulated psychologists as expert witnesses, and why there will likely be much closer scrutiny in future cases. Jess charges high fees for consulting, mentoring, etc. and likely also does for her services as an expert witness. She may be indirectly helping predators - it is a common abuse tactic to use a court case to drain the victim's finances.
VictimFocus
VictimFocus (VF) is Jess's company. It offers training about mental health and VAWG for professionals, including NHS staff and police. VF is heavily marketed around Jess as a leader, which is unusual for a business of this nature. You probably wouldn't know who the leaders or CEOs of most major organisations in VAWG are, unless you work in the field yourself. It is not a charity, and Jess has never claimed otherwise; but a lot of her followers seem to be under the impression it is, and she makes no attempt to correct this.
The VF website contains material that is poorly researched and deliberately misleading. For instance, a report titled 'I thought it was just a part of life': Understanding the Scale of Violence Committed Against Women and Girls in the UK since Birth' says that 99.7% of women in a study of 22,000 had experienced physical or sexual violence. The site claims "It is likely that every woman and girl will be subjected to violence, abuse, rape or harassment." However, there was very clear self-selection bias in this study: see here for details. (The original tweet reads: "Sorry, I think JT does great work and I like to link to her important articles, but with this study, especially the presentation, something went horribly wrong. And asking questions about it isn't 'obsession.'") Notice Jess's aggressive, dismissive responses.
Jaimi is a director of VictimFocus and was hired as the Head of Research and Development in 2020, shortly after they got engaged. Jaimi does not have a relevant educational or professional background; her degree is in politics and prior to VictimFocus she worked as a private tutor. When she joined VF she had little work experience, yet went straight into a highly paid senior role requiring people management. Jess claims that "lived experience of trauma" is at least equally as valuable as formal education when working in VAWG, but many women in the field are abuse survivors yet they don't get hired for senior management positions straight out of university.
Training courses
VictimFocus sells several courses aimed at professionals, all of which have no value or use outside of VF. Jess says they are "CPD accredited", essentially this means they are approved by a sales company rather than any reputable institution. Large companies like this because they can meet quotas for staff CPD (Continuous Professional Development), and Jess wins more business.
The most heavily-promoted course allows someone to become a VF trainer or "facilitator." Afterwards, they will then sell the course to other people and train them, and pay an annual fee to Jess to keep their certification current. This is concerning, as it's the same way multi-level marketing schemes work.
This sort of business model (sell some form of "training" and figure it out as you go) might be OK if you're doing sales or customer service training or similar but is hugely unethical when you're potentially dealing with vulnerable victims.
Some VictimFocus courses offer Klarna payment, which should not be offered on something that vulnerable or low-income people may be buying. Jess has written about the documented link between debt and poor mental health; in fact, she posted a Twitter thread about it around the time she added the Klarna option. Some courses are sold at a reduced rate, which she says is because professionals are often priced out of resources. In that case, why is she inviting them to get into debt to buy from her?
To take a VictimFocus course, you have to agree to let Jess use any information you share, in anything she may publish in future. This isn't mentioned on the main website; you would only find out after buying, and if you don't agree, you can't proceed with the course. The use of data would supposedly be anonymous, but using a pseudonym (or no name at all) doesn't mean someone can't be identified. When Jess published Sally Ann and Rosie's stories, they were both recognised by friends because she had included very specific details.
The website also doesn't state who can see your answers, where data is stored and for how long, etc. Jess also appears to use some of her paid courses (aimed at professionals) to collect resources, as the course asks students to complete tasks such as designing training materials or explaining how they'd go about teaching a certain topic; but they don't receive any assessment or feedback on these answers.
Course for survivors
The VictimFocus website offers a free course for female survivors of sexual violence. It contains a number of questions and prompts that are potentially harmful and risk re-traumatising the person. This includes asking the survivor to compare their sexual assault with their current partner and sex life. British Psychological Society guidelines state that questions like this shouldn't be asked online (see page 18.)
As with other VF courses, you must give consent for Jess to use any information you provide. This is especially bad given her history of publishing survivors' stories without their consent. Screenshots from the course can be seen below, there is also a detailed Twitter thread by someone who took the course.
VF accounts
VictimFocus's accounts for the financial year 2021-2022 state that the company had no employees in 2021. People who formerly worked for VF have said on Tattle that they were employed by Jess (i.e. not contractors) in 2021, and that at this time, she paid salaries from her personal bank account. The accounts show that Jess took out a £13,000 loan for the business during the year, which was likely a COVID "bounce back" loan from the Government. Did she claim this on the basis that she was struggling and had to make all her employees redundant? VF's old website gave a rather defensive explanation as to why the company was registered as dormant until 2022.
Their accounts up to 31st March 2024 show that Jess and Jaimi have taken £117,387 in director loans between them - in the previous financial year, it was £133,534. These are loans that can be taken out by the director of a company and have to be paid back into the business within nine months, but there's nothing to stop the person borrowing the same amount again and again. It is also not taxable if repaid within the time frame, and some unscrupulous people use this as a tax loophole. Jaimi was made a director of VF on 1st March 2023, and by the time the accounts were filed less than a month later, she had already taken out a loan of more than £36,000.
Working conditions at VF
Former VF employees have appeared on Twitter and Tattle, and given worrying descriptions of what it was like to work there. This is a summary of what they have alleged:
Most positions are part time or "flexible", and staff earn as little as £8,000 a year; it is understood that they'll be claiming Universal Credit (a welfare payment given to supplement low wages.) Staff regularly work long outside their contracted hours unpaid. Jess has repeatedly promised pay rises and overtime pay, but later reneged on it. This is despite her frequently talking about "the trauma of poverty"!
There is a cliquey, underhanded atmosphere where people are frequently gossiped about and excluded. Anyone who does not conform to the "company culture" risks being shunned and ultimately driven out of their job. There was a lot of micromanagement and overly-strict rules such as not allowing meetings to be held (for any reason) if Jess were not there.
Jess prefers to hire staff through the Job Centre (i.e., unemployed people receiving welfare), or young women straight out of university, as they are less likely to challenge her or ask too many questions.
People who leave or are fired are punished by withholding pay and/or references, locking them out of emails, and forbidding current staff to talk to them. It is common for someone to be dismissed with immediate effect and not allowed to work their agreed notice period. Remaining staff are often not told when someone has left.
There are no proper HR procedures and no way to appeal, as Jess has the final say in everything. She uses the threat of legal action to intimidate her staff, which is effective because they are on low incomes and many of them have had distressing experiences in the court system.
After it emerged that she had used some people's stories in, Jess began requiring staff to sign an NDA forfeiting the rights to anything they do. This means that (among other things) Jess can put her name on their work, can change it how she likes, and can use photos of them any way she likes. At least one person has alleged on Tattle that some VF resources were actually written by Jess's employees but published under her name.
Jess is very conscious of her "brand image", monitors what is being said about her online, and is extremely sensitive to others' opinions. This led to incidents like staff having to present her with a printed copy of positive comments from social media, or being pushed to pay for a spa break for her because she was upset about negative feedback on her work.
Staff were expected to defend Jess in arguments on social media and she would contact them late at night to ask them to do this. She had staff on different websites to defend her as well. Evidence of this can be seen on Mumsnet - for a while, any threads asking questions or criticising her would quickly be swarmed by posters warning the OP that Jess would sue and asking moderators to close the threads.
Jess allegedly encouraged employees who were on antidepressant/antipsychotic medication to stop taking it without medical advice or supervision. This had severely negative consequences for some of them.
Inappropriate and harmful discussion in the company group chat - see wiki page 2.
We can't prove that anyone who claims they worked for VF is who they say they are. But some of these posters have shared screenshots of private messages from Jess, or VF group chats. Sally Ann and Rachel were also contacted with evidence of what was being said about them at VF. So, evidently there are people that used to work for Jess who have tried to expose her.
They also allege that after concerns over the group chat, Jess updated the terms of the staff NDA to include not sharing screenshots of the chat. She brought in an external consultancy to try and enforce this, and threatened that anyone breaking the NDA would be sued and "stripped of their assets." Again, most people working for VF at this time were survivors of sexual assault and/or domestic abuse; and many of them had had negative experiences in the court system.
Increasingly, staff began to express discomfort about the working atmosphere. Jess initially seemed open to discussion, but ultimately nothing was done, and she tried to shift blame onto the people who had complained. They were all eventually pushed out of their jobs, or fired on shallow pretexts; and as a result she lost around 15 staff members. She allegedly justified her poor treatment of these people by saying that they were "feminists" conspiring to infiltrate her company as a personal attack on her - see wiki page 2 regarding Jess's obsession with supposed feminists. She made most of the remaining VF staff redundant at the end of 2022.
Examples of ignorance and unethical behaviour professionally
Lack of knowledge about mental health
Here are some examples of Jess's misunderstanding or misrepresentation of subjects in mental health.
Jess believes that most people with psychosis function normally day to day and it doesn't cause them significant impairment. She says horror films are to blame for why anyone would think otherwise.
She demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what psychosis is, how it manifests, and how it affects the life of the person with the condition. She has repeatedly equated psychosis with religious belief - "how come we don't call Christians mentally ill when they say they can talk to God?" She also trains VictimFocus staff that psychosis is just a "social construct." And she believes that there is no such thing as sudden onset psychosis; it is always a result of "trauma" and there are no physical causes.
In general, she doesn't believe mental illness ever has a physical cause/trigger, even though there are any number of physical disorders that can cause symptoms of mental illness. Childbirth, epilepsy, brain tumours, menopause, Parkinson's Disease, dementia, infection, and drug reactions are just a few examples. She says that she "doesn't believe in the concept of 'delirium'", even though delirium is caused by a physical illness or infection. If someone who claimed to be a medical professional said "I don't believe in the concept of 'sepsis'", how seriously would they be taken?
Jess says that hallucinations should be accepted as natural and that "we are supposed to see and hear things." She bases this partly on a statistic that up to 15% of people have auditory hallucinations in their lifetime. Jess apparently equates all auditory hallucinations with hearing voices - even though they do not always take the form of voices. The statistic includes people who only ever experience them once, and hallucinations with a physical cause. There is credible work by Romme & Escher about hearing voices and how it does not have to be a "problem." But for many people, it is a sign of serious mental or physical illness, and it's dangerous for Jess to tell her followers to ignore symptoms which could be very concerning.
She does not seem to understand that severe mental illness can leave people unable to communicate or engage with talking therapies. For example, she claims she can treat schizoaffective disorder without medication just by talking to someone. Not all people with this condition are able to speak, and for those who can, therapies (including trauma-informed approaches) are already available. Similarly, she rejects the idea that people experiencing psychotic symptoms may not be able to participate in talking therapy without medication.
She calls CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) "victim blaming" because it encourages abuse survivors to think differently about their experiences. In cases of abuse, CBT is generally used to help the person view themselves with compassion, and accept that what happened was not their fault. Jess either doesn't understand CBT, or is misrepresenting it to support her view.
Misunderstanding or misrepresenting research. One example is the study on auditory hallucinations above. Another is when she said that a study from Nottingham Trent University "used women with BPD diagnosis to see how much men wanted to have sex with them." This study (findings here) examined evolutionary preferences for "dark triad" traits, associated with BPD. It investigated how the presence of certain personality traits affected male and female subjects' interest in a potential partner, either for a long term or short term relationship. The research used hypothetical scenarios and computer generated imagery, and did not involve people with a particular diagnosis. She's evidently going for clicks and outrage here rather than facts.
Ignorance/lies about the DSM
Jess frequently criticises the DSM, and published her own book (ITIM) as an "alternative." The DSM is widely acknowledged as flawed; even beginner psychology students learn this. Jess claims that the DSM is the predominantly used diagnostic manual worldwide. This is false - it's mainly used in the USA, to decide what health insurers will cover. Most other countries, including the UK where Jess lives, use the ICD (International Classification of Diseases.)
She had the idea of trying to prove that the DSM isn't valid by running tests on women, and then concluding that they meet the criteria for a high number of psychiatric disorders. Having her devise and run these tests herself would be worthless, as she has an obvious bias and isn't qualified to carry out clinical assessments. She wants to do this "experiment" with a large number of women and film their reactions, presumably to be shown on TV and/or social media. You would expect her to understand why that would be unethical.
My issue with it (one of many), is the repercussions of taking a possibly vulnerable woman (as those seem to be the only ones she interested in), telling them that she's psychologist who is assessing them and then telling them they reach diagnosis for a mental health disorder on video for likes.
Some women will take a diagnosis from a 'psychologist' as being valid and it could seriously affect them. She clearly has no ethics around ensuring the women aren't harmed by it.
Corruption is rife in the pharmaceutical industry, but correlation does not equal causation. Even if the DSM is wrong, that doesn't mean that mental illness does not exist. Flawed though the DSM may be, at least it's written by a group of people, not one person who thinks she has the answer to everything.
Misrepresenting her qualifications or experience
Jess will often use carefully worded language to suggest, without outright saying, that (for example) she is clinically trained or a practitioner psychologist. Here are some examples:
Someone criticised Jess on Twitter for misrepresenting her experience, and asked if she had ever worked with patients clinically. Jess responded that she has "chosen to work in non-pathologising roles" although previously had a "med" job in a prison. (She can't have, because she's not qualified for any such position.) This is trying to give the impression that she is qualified to work with patients clinically, but chooses not to because she doesn't agree with a medical approach. Clinical psychology is based around providing direct care and support to people, and does not mean that the psychologist always takes a medical approach - some clinical psychologists actively caution against it. Jess either doesn't know this herself, or expects her audience not to.
In response to someone asking if her opinion is informed by clinical experience or academic research, she said "Both." This is obviously going to lead people to think that she has clinical experience, and it gives her plausible deniability since she didn't explicitly say it was her experience.
Jess calls herself a therapist (a term with no legally protected definition, so it can mean anything you want it to) and uses this to suggest that she is clinically trained.
Jess argued with a psychiatrist who said that she evidently has no experience working in (for example) homeless shelters, prisons, or inpatient psychiatric units. She responded, "I've worked in almost every single one of those settings." If she did, it would have been research or consulting - when in context, he was clearly referring to hands-on clinical work.
In this blog post, Jess describes working in a prison and challenging a psychiatrist about their diagnosis of a prisoner. Her job wouldn't have involved assessing a patient herself but she deliberately makes it sound as if she is qualified to do this. She says that the prisoner was deemed to have a personality disorder and was to be put on medication immediately, when the real problem (as always) was trauma. Medication isn't generally prescribed for personality disorders, but can be prescribed for effects of trauma or other co-morbid conditions alongside the disorder.
Unethical advice
Examples of unethical or potentially harmful advice given by Jess:
Jess tells people not to take antidepressants, giving the impression that they are addictive and that doctors do not warn about side effects. Doctors do warn patients about side effects, and if it's affecting the patient badly, they will often modify the dose or change the medication. SSRIs (the most commonly prescribed antidepressants) are not addictive, and almost all prescription drugs have to be "tapered off" if taken for an extended time.
She encourages people who are already taking antidepressants to stop. While she does usually advise that someone speak to their doctor first, they may not always do this - especially if she is scaring them about the effect of antidepressants. One person alleged on social media that their friend had to be sectioned after stopping her medication on Jess's advice.
Here's an example of Jess praising a new mother for abruptly stopping her medication, seemingly without the supervision of her GP. This would put both the mother and baby at risk and by expressing approval, Jess is encouraging others to do the same. She often receives comments on her social media from people saying they have stopped taking their prescribed medication on her advice; again this is just one example.
Jess shared this on social media about how to find a "trauma-informed" professional to work with, where "trauma-informed" means anyone who shares her anti-med and anti-psychiatry views. Saying that otherwise, the person is not trauma-informed and their advice is dangerous. Again, this may cause someone to stop taking medication they need, or to stop working with a professional that is actually helping them. It also keeps Jess's audience dependent on her.
She warns women that perimenopause/menopause are "frequently misdiagnosed as mental illness", and a doctor is likely to label a menopausal woman as mentally ill and put her on psychiatric drugs. In fact, menopause is a common physical trigger for mental illness. SSRIs are often prescribed because they can help with vasomotor symptoms, not because the doctor thinks the woman is mentally ill; and they will likely be used less often now that Veoza (not a psychiatric drug) is available for the same purpose. Jess's advice encourages women who think they are going through menopause not to see a doctor. At best this can cause unnecessary suffering and at worst it is dangerous, because menopause shares some symptoms with serious medical conditions. It's not unusual for a woman in her 40s or 50s to find out her irregular bleeding was actually ovarian cancer or her "brain fog" was early-onset dementia.
Jess published an article for World Suicide Prevention Day 2022, which we will not link to here (it can be found at her Substack, Facebook, and Instagram.) In the article she presents a positive, even romanticised, view of suicide and justifies suicidal thoughts. She ends by saying that Shout and Samaritans have "trained crisis counsellors"; they don't, both organisations are run by volunteers. The entire article is irresponsible and contravenes guidelines for media reporting of suicide, including those published by the Samaritans.
She also advises that anyone threatening suicide is being deliberately manipulative/abusive. Suicide can be used as a form of manipulation, but her argument here shows a total lack of nuance. She's either very obtuse or just posted this to be provocative - regardless of what harm it might cause to others. Statements like this are hugely stigmatising towards suicidal people.
Some of her advice can be harmful to women in abusive relationships; a huge oversight for a so-called VAWG expert. For example, telling women to ignore warning signs such as grandiose/narcissistic behaviour or someone trying to warn them about their partner. She advises her followers to end relationships they feel aren't serving them, even though trying to leave an abusive partner can be highly dangerous.
Jess wrote that the vast majority of women who disclose rape or sexual assault are rejected and ostracised by their families. While what she says is sadly true for many women, she phrases it in a deliberately provocative, scaremongering way. If you had been a victim of sexual violence and you went to her social media looking for help/advice, how might you feel to be told that your whole family will sign witness statements saying you're a liar?
She ties this in with her anti-psychiatry agenda, warning women that if they have ever been to a doctor about their mental health, this will be used against them. E.g. jury won't believe you were raped, family court judge will decide you're unstable and give your abusive ex full custody. It's important to discuss the reality of what can happen, but Jess does it in a way that can be very harmful, all so she can get engagement and clicks.
In this Twitter thread Jess says that therapy is just an "industry", and is no more effective a way to "process trauma" than hobbies like music or reading. This is essentially no different from advice that tells women they would feel better if they just had a nap or bubble bath - which is widely criticised in VAWG circles as patronising and reductive. Jess herself has criticised this type of advice, but apparently is happy to give it when she has a book to sell.
Promoting unsuitable products
Jess sells various materials designed to "help" survivors work through their feelings about their abuse. She suggests it is elitist, classist, or discriminatory to tell people to access professional help. It's no more discriminatory than saying that someone with a physical condition should see a doctor; the solution is to improve access to mental healthcare. In this post for example, she complains about the "professionalisation" of help and says that people should not feel they have to engage with "expensive services." If this sounds reasonable to you, imagine she's talking about a physical condition and encouraging sick people to buy her product instead of going to a doctor. That's effectively what she is doing here.
Among the self-help materials that Jess sells is a journal aimed at women and girls who have been sexually assaulted. It contains a number of prompts for the reader to complete; examples can be seen in the below images (taken from an Amazon review.) Note typos that indicate the journal wasn't proofread before going to print. Jess says in the foreword that it would be "infantilising" and "controlling" to recommend using the journal with clinical support. In other words, she's telling vulnerable women and girls to get on with it. Even a mature adult is likely to struggle with the question of what happened while they were being sexually assaulted, much less a child or teenager. It can be very harmful to try to ask someone to self-analyse without proper support.
Along similar lines, Jess sells flash cards containing similar prompts to those used in the journal. She seems to have no regard for who uses them or in what circumstances. For example, she praised a follower who is a counsellor/life coach for using the cards with young girls at a riding school. Obviously, it is concerning that a person with no appropriate qualifications is using these materials with children, and it's not clear whether the students' parents have given permission or have seen the content of the cards. Jess has no issue with any of this.
In 2024 Jess released an app she calls the "Life Experiences Reflection Tool", again designed for women to self-analyse without support. (It's free, but see wiki page 2 - she has published women's stories of abuse without consent, and uses a free online course for data-mining.) See this Twitter thread by someone who used the app and found the questions to be very triggering. It appears to be similar to a magazine quiz, with Jess recommending the user Google for further advice. Anyone could do this already without having to use the app, give Jess their data, and risk re-traumatising themselves.
Private Facebook group
In December 2023, Jess opened a private Facebook group for her followers, encouraging them to post there rather than to her main page. She says it now has over 2000 members. To join, they need to message her asking for a link to the group. This means that Jess has access to personal information about everyone in the group - concerning, given her history of threatening people who have upset her in some way (see wiki page 2 for more.) It also means she can say whatever she likes, can freely give unethical advice, and has access to vulnerable women. Since a lot of her followers/fans are abuse survivors and/or have mental health conditions, this raises questions as to how serious disclosures will be handled within the group.
Other concerns
For concerns relating to personal attacks and false allegations against other people, see wiki page 2.
Relationship with Jaimi
Jess's work involves victims of abuse, particularly domestic abuse. So it's somewhat concerning that her own marriage includes what she would call warning signs of grooming or manipulation in a straight couple.
A man dating a woman he first met when she was 16 and he was 24 - she would call that grooming. Said younger woman becoming ‘step mum’ - she would say exploitation. Quick wedding and lavishing the younger woman with expensive holidays and a big house - she would definitely have something to say. She’s such a hypocrite.
Jess frequently cites her marriage as an ideal example of respect and healthy communication in a relationship. She acknowledges Jaimi was a teenager when they first met, but says that they did not know each other well and were not in regular contact until 2018, when Jaimi was 20. They quickly became "best friends" while Jaimi was still an undergraduate and Jess a married mum in her late 20s. Old social media posts suggest that Jaimi was overly admiring of Jess, and was vulnerable at the time they became friends because she had recently got out of an abusive relationship. She and Jess then began dating in 2019 and got married the following year. Jess gave Jaimi a senior role at VictimFocus involving people management, even though Jaimi was just out of university and had no background in mental health or VAWG.
Jess states it is abuse if an adult in their 20s dates a 16-17 year old, but also insists that since Jaimi was 20 when they got together, she clearly was a consenting adult who could not be groomed or manipulated. At the same time, she has acknowledged when talking about Amber Heard (see "Publicity-seeking" below) that a young adult in their early 20s is still vulnerable to manipulation by an older partner. Jess says anyone questioning their relationship is just homophobic, or treating Jaimi like she's stupid - this is what she's referring to when she talks about "people calling my wife stupid/a bimbo!", which no one has actually said.
Jess and Jaimi are the public "faces" of an organisation that purports to advocate for abused women. It's not homophobia or malicious gossip to question why behaviour they describe as a warning sign of abuse in a heterosexual relationship is apparently healthy and normal for them. In any situation like this, questions would be asked, regardless of gender or sexuality. A straight man in Jess's position with a much younger wife and a job that brought him into contact with vulnerable people would expect scrutiny. Jess knows this, but acts like she's being personally attacked when the same standards are applied to her.
Conspiracy content
Jess believes in a number of conspiracies including mass social control/manipulation, and the idea that COVID-19 was "weaponised" against the public. She gave an interview on a conspiracy theorist's Substack about this and openly admits that she travelled abroad during pandemic restrictions - as can be seen from her Instagram posts at the time.
Here are some examples of content that she posts on her social media, hinting at things like aliens and mass grooming.
While Jess is entitled to her beliefs, it's irresponsible to share and promote this kind of content to her audience. A Tattle poster who works in mental health explains why:
I honestly find her posts like this quite sinister. She seems to be trying to build a following of ppl who believe mental illness isn't real, this is inevitably going to include ppl WITH severe mental illness who aren't taking their meds and have distrust (most likely with good reason) of formal services etc. Ppl who are prone to conspiratorial and magical thinking. Her talk of mass social grooming, alien life etc could really set someone off. We were told in no uncertain terms at MIND (a mental health charity in the UK) to never discuss politics, conspiracy theories etc in front of service users because of the potential to feed psychosis/delusion or cause further distress to those with clinical depression which of course can often lead to that sort of existential despair. As everyone here will know these are both big risk factors for suicidality.
She has often spoken about the topic of "satanic ritual abuse", a conspiracy associated with the 1980s "Satanic Panic", based around the idea of Satanists sexually abusing children en masse. Abuse involving ritualised and/or religious elements does exist, and is simply known as ritual abuse. Some examples include NXIVM and The Family International. But there is no proof that Satanists or devil-worshippers have ever abused children on an organised scale. See the Wikipedia article on the Satanic Panic for more information.
However, Jess claims that satanic ritual abuse is real and that she has personally been involved with cases. It's not clear in what capacity this supposedly was, since she's never worked with anyone clinically. She speaks about cover-ups and survivors being silenced; deliberately targeting her language to appeal to conspiracy theorists. As a result, she has gained a number of followers who believe in satanic ritual abuse, and has been cited by them as proof of its existence.
Her book Sexy But Psycho describes cases she says she's witnessed, with graphic accounts of ritual sacrifices, rape, cannibalism, and more. Understandably, this could be harmful and triggering to those reading the book.
One woman ("F.") who claims to be a victim of satanic ritual abuse has said on social media that she sent her clinical notes to Jess, and Jess later said that she had included F.'s story in Sexy But Psycho. F.'s social media makes it clear that she is very vulnerable - she believes that she is being controlled with 5G, that there is poison in her water supply, and so on, and says that she has multiple serious mental health diagnoses. This is an example of the sort of person who might be following Jess and to whom she is repeatedly talking about conspiracies. Furthermore, F.'s description of events does not suggest that she ever gave informed consent to publish her story - see "Unauthorised use of survivor stories" on wiki page 2. Why would Jess publish an account from someone in F.'s position as unquestioned fact, and did she have any consideration for professional ethics before doing so?
Inappropriate social media content
Jess's business social media accounts contain a lot of unprofessional personal content, such as provocative photos of her and her wife and "jokes" about their sex life. Content like this can be distressing to survivors of sexual assault, and should not be shared on the public account of someone working in VAWG.
This reminds me of what caused the wool to fall from my eyes. I was in the midst of reporting SA to the police, my ISVA was shit, remembered victim focus, but couldn't remember the name & found her Twitter account to look for said resources.
Instead, I found sexual bragging about coming back from honeymoon & making very loud proclamations about strap-ons on the flight back. The tone of it, the in your face-ness & wrongness of it all upset me at the time. It reminded me very much of the person I was reporting, and I had a very visceral and horrible reaction to that. And another one remembering. Yeah sexual bragging when you call yourself all the stuff she calls herself is not a good look. That was the last thing I needed at that moment, and I'd guess that similar has happened to others.
(note: SA = sexual assault, ISVA = Independent Sexual Violence Advisor)
Jaimi does it as well; at one point when she and Jess were flying out to a Women's Aid conference, she tweeted about packing a vibrator in her luggage. Again, this is something that could be triggering to survivors, and should not be posted at a time when people would have been watching her and Jess's accounts for posts about the conference.
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Jess has said many times that criticising her for this is homophobic. But would you expect to see a straight woman use her work account to joke about her sex life with her husband, or share photos of him grabbing her bum?
A particularly bad example was when Andrew Tate tweeted encouraging his followers to "reach for the strap" (pull out a gun) over trivial annoyances. Jess and Jaimi both thought it would be funny to retweet this and turn it into a "joke" about their sex life. There's no way Jess didn't realise how harmful it could be to post this on a public account that many abused women follow; evidently, her desire for engagement was more important. Just a few days after she posted this, Tate was charged with rape and human trafficking, and she and Jaimi went back to condemning him.
Lifestyle bragging
Jess and Jaimi regularly use social media to show off their expensive lifestyle. This includes a valuable house, two weddings, designer dogs, long haul holidays in luxurious hotels, and regular nights out drinking cocktails. They have an Instagram account @wandering_womb_travel for their regular luxury holidays and first class travel.
Most of Jess's audience are abuse survivors; people with mental health problems; and professionals working in mental health, who are often poorly paid. These are groups that are heavily impacted by the financial crisis, and Jess has made her money off their backs.
Nobody would actually care if she was just a bog-standard insta-hun; it’s the fact that she’s trying to use victims and their trauma to become some sort of minor-celebrity/influencer.
And posts like this during a cost-of-living crisis when many of your target audience are facing a choice to eat or heat their homes doesn’t make you “extra” - it just makes you tacky and incredibly crass.
Jess did this even before she and Jaimi got together, e.g. in 2018 she stated she and her then-husband were home educating and hiring private tutors because state schools were "failing" and sending a child there is "the easy way out." What does she expect poor working class parents - people from her own original background - to do?
Manipulating Amazon reviews
When Jess released the ITIM in March 2023, it received a handful of negative reviews on Amazon. Most of these made specific criticisms of the material, suggesting that the reviewer had read the book. There were also complaints of quality issues such as print errors and poor quality paper. Jess said that these reviews had been left by "a small, loud, defensive minority" who were personally targeting her and Jaimi. She openly asked her fans to "combat" this by leaving positive Amazon reviews. In other words, she tried to cheat the review system, and encouraged her followers to attack people criticising the book.
Within hours, ITIM had a number of new 5* reviews on Amazon. Most of them gave general praise, with no reference to any particular content within the book - suggesting that they'd been left by fans of Jess who were blindly defending her, whether they'd read the ITIM or not. Evidently, she doesn't mind fake reviews when they benefit her. One person who had made a verified purchase left a review with detailed criticisms of the material. Jess blocked the reviewer on social media and then had the review removed (multiple times!) as a supposed terms of service violation, claiming that it was a personal attack and the reviewer had not read the book. Meanwhile, one fan left a review solely to complain that others were "breaking the rules" by criticising Jess. Again, she doesn't seem to have a problem with abuse of the review system when it's in her favour.
If you are considering buying the ITIM, please read this independent review from Researchgate first.
When Jess released Underclass in May 2024, she again had at least one negative review removed as "fake", and asked her followers to leave positive reviews because she was being trolled with fake reviews. She said that since the book doesn't mention her getting married like the reviewer suggested, they clearly hadn't actually read it. But the book does discuss her experience of having a baby with an abusive partner who had asked her to marry him - so she's splitting hairs just to get an unfavourable review removed. It's very poor behaviour of her to make fun of someone's spelling, given that much of Underclass focuses on her being from a deprived community where people had few educational opportunities!
Clout-chasing and publicity-seeking
Jess often tries to use celebrities, and cases in the news, to draw attention to herself and increase sales. She will do anything to get a celebrity's attention - likely inspired by her "success" with Amber Heard (see below.) She has a fixation with celebrities and has published a series of articles on her website telling them how to cope with the "trauma" of fame, making out that she is an expert in working with world-famous people. She claims that when she was first published, numerous famous women got in touch with her to warn her that she would be a target for abuse and advise her on how to stay hidden. This seems unlikely given that she was not, and still isn't, a big name.
Her MO is to repeatedly post on social media about a famous woman who's been having mental health struggles or is known/suspected to have been abused. She will talk about how this woman was "failed" by society or the people around her; complain that no one is talking about it; and keep tagging the celebrity's official accounts. She has done this with Britney Spears, Meghan Markle, Megan Thee Stallion, and JoJo Siwa among others.
She also uses famous women as a "gotcha" against others - e.g. when she made this post complaining that British feminists don't talk about abuse of female African-American celebrities. (See wiki page 2 for more on Jess's crusade against "feminists.") The VAWG sector is largely charity/voluntary, and women work for very low wages or none at all to support other women who have been horrifically abused. They typically have huge case loads and work long hours which may well be why they aren't posting on social media about celebrities they may never even have heard of. For example Cassie, who was allegedly abused by her ex-boyfriend Diddy, is not well known in the UK.
Does she think British feminists and women working in the VAWG sector are forever obsessing about celebrities and clout chasing like she is? Why would British feminists be tweeting about R Kelly? Everything she writes is so self-aggrandising and detached from reality.
Jess used the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard libel trial for publicity and to further her narrative that mental illness doesn't really exist. She spoke in support of Amber, expressing the opinion that Amber did not have a personality disorder - despite Jess having repeatedly said that we shouldn't "distance diagnose" celebrities and public figures. She also stated it was wrong to judge Amber based on stereotypes of what a victim looks like, but did exactly that when talking about Johnny. See here and here for examples. She posted about the trial almost every day even after it became clear that she wasn't following it - not knowing who had given evidence or what they had said.
In December 2022, Jess and a group of other supporters met Amber in person. Jess made gloating posts on social media about how she and her friends were "brave", right all along, and the only ones to stand by Amber. She has repeatedly claimed that other feminists and women working in VAWG did not support Amber, which is clearly false. If Jess has told Amber that no one else believed or defended her, that would be very manipulative. Jess believes Amber to be an abused, vulnerable woman; so why has she so shamelessly used Amber for publicity?
Another example of Jess inappropriately using a news case for publicity was in February 2023 when Nicola Bulley, a missing woman, attracted a huge amount of public attention. The main theory around her disappearance was that she had fallen into a river while walking her dog. Jess tweeted that she and Jaimi didn't find this credible, yet the following day, she said it was wrong to speculate. You can't talk about how you're casually discussing the case with your wife but then tell others not to speculate! She even suggested she would contact police to share her theories. She had no connection to Nicola, and wasn't a witness to her disappearance - what did Jess think she could contribute to the investigation?
Subsequently, the Lancashire police were criticised for their handling of the case, which included emphasising in a press statement that Nicola was struggling with menopause and alcohol abuse. Jess posted a Twitter thread about how Nicola was being "pathologised" by the police. She implied Nicola had been murdered by her partner. You'd expect Jess to be careful of this, given how much she likes threatening to sue people for defamation. Again, this was after Nicola's family had repeatedly asked the public not to speculate on what happened, which Jess chose to ignore so she could make a point and insist she was right. She then continued to use Nicola for publicity by appearing on GB News to discuss the case.
Nicola's body was found in the river on 19th February 2023. Her family expressed anger at people who had tried to suggest that her partner was responsible for her disappearance, and a former Chief Superintendent of Lancashire Police condemned "so-called experts" for hindering the case. Jess didn't apologise or take down any of her tweets about Nicola. Instead, she promoted an article she'd written about the impact on Nicola's family. When she began receiving negative comments, Jess insisted she had never speculated about Nicola, just said that the investigation "felt off" and of course she was right.
Podcast
Jess and Jaimi host a podcast called "The Wandering Womb" (the title refers to historical beliefs about female hysteria.) It is marketed with the line "strong women, strong views, strong drinks, and strong language!" Each episode involves Jess and Jaimi getting drunk and talking about feminist issues. The drinking is supposed to be "fun" and part of the appeal, but often ends in them rambling incoherently. Jess likes to rant and swear, and comes across as threatening; this is something that she markets to her largely vulnerable audience. It's not about "tone policing", but being considerate of how the women she professes to help may feel when listening to her.
You can either have an "honest, unfiltered" podcast where you rant and swear and drink, or you can have a podcast where you present yourself as an expert giving your opinion in a professional capacity. Trying to do both comes across as disrespectful, unprofessional, and inappropriate.
A number of episodes contain offensive or unsuitable content, here are some examples:
"'I'm not like other girls' and other BS" - (from the beginning of the episode): Jess and Jaimi laughed about insulting a supermarket worker and telling her she "looked old" because she questioned Jaimi's age when buying alcohol and asked if Jaimi were Jess's daughter. They suggested the shop assistant was homophobic and said that most straight couples are at least 7-10 years apart in age but no one comments on it. In the UK, the average age difference between a married heterosexual couple is 2-3 years - ask any young woman with a much older male partner how many times people have assumed he was her father! Jess and Jaimi claim to unequivocally support disadvantaged women, but have no problem making ageist comments to someone in a minimum wage service job. Or demonstrating behaviour commonly seen from misogynistic men (trying to "humble" a woman by saying she's old, ugly, fat, etc.)
"Mountains of Internalised Misogyny" (around the 54:30 mark): In this episode, Jess and Jaimi made a number of offensive generalisations and stereotypes about lesbians. Among other things, they described other lesbians as promiscuous, sexually predatory, and bullying; Jess went so far as to suggest that she and Jaimi are the only monogamous lesbian couple she knows! She and Jaimi also gave their opinion that butch women are lazy with their appearance and are poorly emulating men. With attitudes like this, it is no surprise that Jess and Jaimi say they don't feel welcome in lesbian circles.
"Bad Sex Tips: The Sequel" (around the 08:12 mark): Jaimi talked about how a predator could use meditation or massage as a cover for sexual assault. Jess gave an example of seeing this happen in a comedy film; and described the scene in graphic detail. She laughed throughout and evidently found the idea very funny. It doesn't seem to have occurred to her that this happens in the real world, many of her target audience are survivors of sexual assault, and could have been distressed by listening to the episode.
"The Hatred of the 22-Year-Old Pilot": In this episode, Jess and Jaimi again constantly use misogynistic, ageist stereotypes of middle-aged and elderly women as "bitter", spiteful, jealous, and having less to contribute than young women.
Questions over fundraising
Crowdfunders
Jess used to share a lot of online crowdfunders to help people who were reportedly fleeing abuse or living in poverty. Here are some surviving examples: Young mum in poverty, Help a woman escape DV and finish her education. Most of these crowdfunders were purportedly for women who were living in poverty or fleeing from abusive partners. By nature of the request, Jess could not identify who the money went to, or provide proof of donation. Even if all these fundraising efforts were completely legitimate, it looks suspicious in context.
The Eaton Foundation
The Eaton Foundation (now known as TEF Mental Health and Wellbeing) is a men’s mental health charity that Jess and her ex-husband co-founded in 2014. She resigned in 2019 when she and her ex broke up. Shortly before leaving, she claimed to have raised over £700,000 in grant money for TEF since it was founded. However, its accounts for the preceding financial year don’t support this. The Eaton Foundation received between £60,000-£80,000 in grants in 2018 and again in 2019. Most of this money went towards salaries - likely including Jess's, even though she says she was a volunteer. TEF ran a mental health centre and promised a variety of services, but could only offer a weekly drop-in session and signposting users to other providers.
Jess says that when she left TEF, they had a lot of money left but hadn't used it. The accounts don't support this - again, 2018-19 was the relevant year. She could have simply been exaggerating about how much she raised for TEF, however, she announced it all over social media so she should expect to be held to account. You would think the funders, HMRC, and Charities Commission would be interested in the fact that TEF's accounts did not show the amount Jess said she'd raised.
MOCRA
Sammy Woodhouse, a survivor of the Rochdale grooming gangs, had the idea for a charity to support women who have had children resulting from rape. Jess became involved with the project and named the charity MOCRA (Mothers of Children Conceived in Rape and Abuse.) In spring 2021 she announced a board of trustees for MOCRA, promoted it on an episode of Woman's Hour, and launched a crowdfunder. The crowdfunder was closed early after raising £5,043 (around a quarter of the original target.) There were no further updates on MOCRA for around 18 months. No one who had donated to the project knew where their money went, including one person who donated £1000.
In October 2022 Jess announced she could not currently proceed with the project, and had donated the money to Rape Crisis. While it's normal to donate to a fundraiser with no "receipts" or updates, you would have expected to see them in a case like this where Jess was setting up a charity and was encouraging people that needed the service to donate to it. Sammy says that she agreed for the money to be donated to Rape Crisis, however Jess has claimed that she also had the written consent of all donors. This is clearly not true, as some of them stated on social media that they would not have agreed for their money to go to Rape Crisis.
Sammy Woodhouse expressed concern over the way Jess had handled the donation, and asked Jess to provide evidence of donating the money. Subsequently, Jess posted a screenshot showing that in June, she had donated £4990 of the £5040 raised during the fundraiser. She said that the £50 shortfall was spent on website hosting fees. This kept the donation under £5000, which would have required that MOCRA be registered as a charity. It appears that the difficulty in registering MOCRA was because the Charity Commission wanted more information about whether there were financial links between MOCRA and Victim Focus.
Some of the tweets over this have been deleted, but screenshots can be seen below.
Timeline of major events
2010 - Jess began studying an undergraduate degree in psychology at the Open University. She claims she "didn't finish high school" before starting her degree, and implies she was a single mother or wasn’t receiving help with her children. In fact she had passed GCSEs (considered finishing school in the UK, even if with a poor attendance record), and was married to her now ex-husband, whom she described as a supportive father.
2011 - Jess self-published Detoxing Taylor, an autobiographical novel about a young single mother escaping an abusive relationship. The only positive review on Goodreads was shared by Jess herself. Detoxing Taylor is no longer available for purchase.
2014 - Jess met her future wife Jaimi, who was 16 years of age (Jess was 23-24.) Jess says they met through “campaigning” but they did not know each other well and were not in regular contact until 2018.
2015 - TEF opened a mental health centre for men, however, it lacked funding and could not provide the services it had promised. (See "Questions over fundraising" above.) Jess has since tried to give the impression that she was the only person responsible for setting up and funding the centre.
Jess completed her undergraduate degree and began a PhD in psychology at the University of Birmingham.
2017 - Jess opened VictimFocus and became self-employed.
2018 - Jess became acquainted with three women whose stories of abuse she would later publish without their consent: Sally Ann, Rosie, and Carol.
She ran a campaign called "No More CSE Films", which increased her profile after some well known people and organisations supported it. "CSE Films" is Jess's name for graphic educational films intended to warn children/teenagers about the risk of grooming and sexual assault. They are used by schools, police, and social services and can be very traumatic, especially to young people who have already experienced sexual violence or grooming. Sally Ann had personal experience of this and contacted Jess to share her story. She gave permission to use it in a blog post, but nowhere else.
Jess made Jaimi a trustee of The Eaton Foundation. Jaimi was a 20-year-old woman with no educational or professional background in mental health. It’s hard to see what qualified her to be a trustee of a charity that provided mental health services for men, and was set up with older men in mind.
2019 - Jess completed her PhD. Shortly afterwards, she left her husband, publicly came out as a lesbian, and announced that she was in a relationship with Jaimi.
2020 - Jess hired Jaimi as Head of Research at VictimFocus - a senior, highly paid role involving people management. Jaimi was a fresh graduate with limited work experience, apart from spending some time as a private tutor. This is another example of Jess placing Jaimi in a role she was in no way qualified to fill. Jaimi’s mother was also hired to run the VF shop, and Jess and Jaimi co-founded another business called PoliticoFocus for Jaimi to run. PoliticoFocus closed in 2022.
Jess self-published Why Women Are Blamed for Everything, adapted from her thesis. The book contains Sally Ann’s and Carol’s personal stories used without their consent. Later in the year, Why Women Are Blamed for Everything was re-released through a traditional publisher.
Jess attempted to raise £40,000 towards translating VF resources into other languages. A copy of a fundraising email can be seen here. She also held a Facebook live to solicit donations. Ultimately, she closed the fundraiser with only around £2000 raised. She allegedly blamed "radical feminists" for the lack of donations, and would not commit to creating rewards for those who had donated.
2021 - Jess became involved with MOCRA and opened a fundraiser. It closed early after raising around a quarter of its target. There were then no further updates on the project, or what had happened to the money, for 18 months.
Jess was criticised for making ignorant comments on the docudrama King Richard, about Richard Williams, who coached his daughters Venus and Serena to worldwide tennis stardom. Jess felt that it was sexist to centre the film on him rather than Venus and Serena. In fact it mostly focuses on how Williams fought against systemic racism in tennis so that his daughters could play professionally. Venus and Serena were both Executive Producers of the film, which Jess evidently hadn't watched.
2022 - Jess released her second published book Sexy But Psycho. It featured Rosie’s story used without permission.
Sally Ann and Rosie both posted on social media about how Jess had published their stories without their knowledge or consent. Both were told by Jess’s publisher that, since their real names were not used, she did not need their permission to publish their experiences.
Jess repeatedly attacked Sally Ann and accused her of stalking, harassment, and doxxing. She used police and lawyers to try to threaten Sally Ann into silence. Jess later tried to do the same to the campaigner Rachel Williams, who had supported Sally Ann and Rosie.
The first thread about Jess appeared on Tattle. Jess contacted at least one poster privately to demand that her posts be taken down and made false complaints to police against multiple former VictimFocus employees who had posted on Tattle.
Sally Ann made a complaint to the British Psychological Society (BPS) about Jess. The BPS responded that they did not find Jess to have broken their guidelines in Sally Ann's case specifically. Jess released a statement claiming that this absolved her of all wrongdoing - disingenuously referring to her book Sexy But Psycho. (Sally Ann's story is featured in a different book.) The BPS did not say that they found Jess to have done nothing wrong, or that this verdict related to anyone's complaints other than Sally Ann's.
After 18 months of silence regarding MOCRA, Jess finally announced that she was unable to proceed with the project and had donated the money raised to Rape Crisis. Questions arose over her lack of transparency and the fact that the donation came in at just under £5000 - which would have required MOCRA to be registered with the Charities Commission.
Journalist Julian Vigo published a two-part article about Jess on Substack: part one, part two. Jess threatened legal action and claimed that Vigo is just a "blogger" writing "trash." In the second part of the article, Carol came forward as the third known person whose experiences Jess has published without consent.
2023 - Jess attempted to use missing woman Nicola Bulley for publicity; capitalising on the case with articles in the press and an appearance on GB News. See "Publicity-seeking" section above.
Jess released the Indicative Trauma Impact Manual (ITIM), a supposed “alternative” to the DSM and other diagnostic manuals. The ITIM is essentially a list of physical and emotional responses that Jess classes as trauma. At least one alleged peer reviewer was a friend of Jess whom she had recently taken on a night out (not proper peer review + conflict of interest.) Jess also tried to manipulate the Amazon review system, repeatedly getting a negative review from a verified purchaser removed.
Multiple people came forward saying that Jess had made false complaints about them to police or authorities. In one case she allegedly said that someone had been stalking her for more than a year when in reality they had never spoken to each other. In August 2023 the forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes said that Jess had made a malicious report against her to police. Shortly afterwards, Jess began posting vaguely worded conspiracy content on her social media, talking about cover-ups and people being silenced. She then said she was being targeted by a mysterious group that has seemingly killed other women.
Jess and Jaimi went on a "tour" of speaking engagements around Australia and New Zealand in August/September 2023.
Jess took credit for a WHO report on human rights abuses in mental healthcare, trying to suggest that it vindicated her. She was not credited anywhere in the report, and as usual, misrepresented its findings.
2024 - Jess published an attack on Sally Ann, accusing her of stalking and harassment and claiming that Sally Ann was served with a Stalking Protection Order. In fact, she was served with an interim order (due to the very serious nature of the allegations) while awaiting a court case to decide if the Stalking Protection Order should be granted. It was not, and the case was dropped. See wiki page 2.
Jess and Jaimi toured the UK to promote the ITIM.
Jess released two books: self-help book The Watcher Of Your Own Flame, and her extensively publicised memoir Underclass about her early life and experiences as a working class woman in academia.
Jess's ex-husband alleged (without naming her) that the mother of his children had made false accusations against him to police including possession of an illegal gun. See wiki page 3 for more on this.
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