INTERNATIONAL founder of refuges for battered women and children, Erin Pizzey warned councillors – bring back Weymouth’s refuge or ‘people will die.’ The 71-year-old, who founded the women’s refuge movement in 1971, arrived in Weymouth yesterday afternoon ready to attend today’s 9.30am borough council’s management committee meeting, which will decide the former refuge building’s future.

Ms Pizzey said she grew up in Lyme Regis and declared it an ‘outrage’ that 40 years after she founded the first refuge that Dorset should be the first she had heard of ‘to close a refuge down.’ She said: “My attitude is don’t weep over battered children and then close the only avenue that’s open to women with battered children.

“All the Friends of Weymouth Refuge are asking is that the council hold onto the building for a year so we can create a business plan to open the refuge and run it properly.

“The need in Weymouth and Portland is huge.”