Built for fields, stables, remote lanes and farming communities.
The Bridle Path Initiative is a specialist domestic abuse and sexual violence initiative for rural and equestrian communities, including farming families, where animals, land, isolation and community pressures can create unique barriers to safety, support and recovery.
To make domestic abuse and sexual violence in rural, farming and equestrian communities harder to miss and easier to escape, by joining awareness, professional training, research, safeguarding and systems change into one specialist response.
A future where survivors in rural, farming and equestrian communities are seen, believed and supported, where no one has to choose between their safety and the animals, land or life they love.
Support Beyond the Gate
Our model treats the animals, the land, the tied cottage, the family business and the family name as part of the risk and part of the plan. Safety planning has to fit the life somebody is actually living: transport and distance, home, work and land, horses, pets and livestock, economic control, close-knit communities, and technology and monitoring.
Under it sit the things we deliver now (safe enquiries, information and signposting, professional training, research and partnership work) and the things we are building carefully: a specialist advocacy pathway, the Reclaiming My Path recovery programme and, in the long term, The Bridle Path Village. Read about the model.
Why we build in stages.
Specialist survivor-facing work needs the right safeguarding, supervision, safer recruitment, secure systems, referral pathways and trained staff in place. We would rather build that infrastructure carefully than promise a service before it is ready. Direct casework, crisis response, counselling and accommodation are not currently available.
The Bridle Path Initiative is a community interest company (no. 17236688). Safeguarding concerns about our work can be raised at enquiries@thebridlepath.co.uk.
The Katie Trust and the professionals who may see the first signs.
We work alongside The Katie Trust on family voice, missed opportunities and learning from serious harm, and welcome research and practice collaboration with policing, safeguarding, veterinary, equestrian and rural organisations. Our partners
Kirsty Judd
Turning lived experience into change.
Kirsty is a qualified Independent Domestic Violence Adviser (IDVA), Independent Sexual Violence Adviser (ISVA) and Older People's Violence Adviser (OPVA), with more than ten years of frontline safeguarding experience. She grew up on a multigenerational family farm, and horses have been part of her life for as long as she can remember.
She founded The Bridle Path because she kept seeing survivors whose whole lives sat outside the usual picture of leaving abuse: horses that still needed feeding, livestock, land, housing, money, work and a community that would notice every move.
“Leaving is not the same as being free. And in rural life, the gate can be only the beginning.”
Frontline practice
Domestic abuse, sexual violence, risk assessment and safeguarding, including abuse in later life and abuse by family members.
Lived experience
A survivor's understanding of coercive control, leaving, post-separation abuse and recovery, brought to the work alongside professional knowledge.
Rural and equestrian lens
How animals, property, isolation, transport and community dynamics change the risk, the barriers and the plan.
The story behind The Bridle Path.
Kirsty joined The Story Behind My Stories to talk about domestic abuse, survival, recovery and the experiences that led her to create The Bridle Path.
A conversation about finding a voice, being heard and building something that understands rural and equestrian lives.
A conversation with Kirsty Judd
Watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts. YouTube may ask you to sign in to confirm your age.
Available for conferences, panels, podcasts and interviews.
- Rural domestic abuse and isolation
- Animals as instruments of coercive control
- Leaving and post-separation abuse
- System gaps for rural victims, older survivors and men
- Turning lived experience into advocacy
- Building The Bridle Path
Media and speaking enquiries: enquiries@thebridlepath.co.uk · 01494 926880. Hear Kirsty's story on The Story Behind My Stories (Apple Podcasts · YouTube). Kirsty writes regularly on Substack.
- Leaving Is Not the Same as Being Free: a domestic abuse survival toolkit for England and Wales covering post-separation safety, housing, finances, children and rebuilding. Buy
- No One Should Wait a Lifetime to Be Believed: a professional guide to domestic abuse in later life, for survivors, families and professionals. Buy
- Wild to Wonderful: a memoir of domestic abuse, survival and finding a voice again. Buy
- Dream Catcher: The Wild Hoofbeats of Willowbrook: middle-grade equestrian fiction about friendship, freedom and finding yourself. Buy
Kirsty's writing can also be supported at Buy Me a Coffee. Gifts to The Bridle Path itself go through our donate page.
Take a moment to listen.
Listen to an audiobook sample, then explore the book in your own time.
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