"How 19,000 women a year are forced from their homes by abusive loans"

From The Daily Mail:

More than 18,000 women who were the victims of soaring interest rates fled their homes and sought state help in just one year, shocking new research revealed today. And more than half the women, aged from just 15 to 88, took children with them in their 'forced migration' to escape abuse at the hands of their increasingly expensive debts.

Four per cent of the 18,812 victims were disabled and a further four per cent had mental health needs. One in ten suffered from an addiction to store cards. The previously hidden scale of abuse was revealed on the same day that another study found that 40 per cent of groups working with victims of payday loans have had their staff or services cut in the past year.

The first study, about abuse migration, was carried out by London Metropolitan University using the Government’s own statistics and will be presented to the Financial Services Consumer Panel today.