HOW IT STARTED….

Boy, this is such a tricky subject. I was in an abusive relationship from when I was 23 till I was 42. It was a nightmare. It is so easy for people to say ‘leave him’, but it’s just not that easy, especially when there’s kids involved. When I met him he was only 19, I was 23, a single mum with two young girls. He wasn’t an obvious abuser when I met him. He was an alcoholic (unbeknownst to me) which, over time, changed his personality. Don’t get me wrong, there were warning signs but at that time I didn’t recognise them as I hadn’t come across them before. But as the alcohol changed him, things got progressively worse even when he was sober.

It starts subtly at first. He was jealous of every male. In the beginning you think that’s because he loves you and is scared of losing you. He accused me of sleeping with everyone. If men looked at me I’d get into trouble. If I wore makeup it was for other men and I’d be accused of playing up. Yet he wanted me to look good. He was a biker and his mates’ opinions were very important to him. Yet if those mates looked at me the wrong way I’d be in strife. I was blamed for everyone else’s behaviour and one thing I’ve learnt is you can’t control other peoples’ actions, only your own, so I was always in trouble. I also realise now that he thought I was playing up because that’s what he was doing so he expected that I would too. Of course I didn’t find that out until well into the relationship when I caught a dose of crabs off him. He swore it was only the one and only time but he’d have to be mighty unlucky to catch them first time around.

A DRINKING PROBLEM

At first the really bad situations only happened when he binged. Eventually that was too often for cOmfort, most weekends. Him and his mates would go out and get obliterated. Then he’d come home in the wee hours of the morning and start on me. He was obnoxious to everyone when he was drunk and was forever getting into fights or arrested. I’d get phone calls from the police station or the hospital or wherever else he ended up. He got into arguments with most of his friends when he was plastered but they could walk away and I’d be left to cope with him. One of the first times I remember was when one of his friends and his girlfriend came over. We went out and C (my partner) drank heavily. As the night wore on he must have thought his friend liked me and he became nastier and nastier. This friend was more decent then most and could see what was happening. C wanted to fight him but his mate managed to calm him down. They came back home with us and hung around until C fell asleep. I then gave them a lift home. As I was backing out of the driveway (it was dawn by then) I saw C at the bedroom window. He mouthed something at me with a threatening look and wag of his finger. I thought he would be asleep by the time I got home because he’d drunk so much. But that wasn’t to be. When I got back he threw me around. He never actually punched or slapped me so he could say he’d never hit me, but he threw me around. And at some stage my face collected a door jamb and I must have been knocked out momentarily. When I came to my eye was hugely swollen, I had broken my cheek bone on the door jamb. My girls were at my mums place because we’d gone out the night before and now he wouldn’t let me get them because he knew my face was a mess and he didn’t want people to see me. So when I tried to get into my car and leave he punched out the drivers side window, popped the bonnet and took out a piece of the engine so the car wouldn’t start. Then he went inside and got his gun. I ran for the neighbours house. When he saw what I intended to do he calmed down and became normal and said he would let me go. He did. I didn’t tell my mum what had happened, I told her I’d tripped and fallen into the door jamb. Years later she told me she always knew. I don’t know why women lie about these things. I guess we’re ashamed. I had nowhere to go and I had two small children. There were many more frightening situations like that, too many to tell. Hours of having to sit in a chair while he called me every slut under the sun. Terrible situations that I don’t allow myself to think about anymore.

THE GIRLS TRIED TO PROTECT US

At one stage he went to jail for two months for drug supply. I almost left him then, I was going to go back to New Zealand. But the jail was right next to the airport and he was threatening to kill himself etc. His councilor said he just wanted to say goodbye to the girls. Of course when we got there he sweet talked me with lots of promises. You have to understand that I really loved this guy and when he was sober he was intellegent, funny, kind, talented and lovable. I really wanted to believe him. Silly me.

My kids were only one and two when we started living together. He never touched my girls either in violence or in any other way though he called them names and teased them. He sure was hard on my oldest though. She bore the brunt of it especially towards the end. She would get between us and try turn his anger onto her. At one stage she jumped on his back and yelled to her sister ‘Pass me the knife out of the drawer’. She would have stabbed him. That’s when I realised I had to get out or she’d end up dead or in jail. Sometimes C would get so mad at her he’d raise his fist like he was going to punch her in the head but he would always control himself.

About seven years into the relationship we had a child together, a boy. C, being Italian and a biker, wanted a tough boy. But he just scared him. My poor boy didn’t want to be tough. He loved his older sisters and they looked after him when me and C were fighting and protected him from it as much as possible.

LEAVING…

The control became worse and worse. I had no money of my own. I was working but all my money went on bills. I had to bring him receipts for everything, bread, milk petrol etc. He had to know where every cent went. He tried to sleep with most of my friends. That’s what abusers do, they want to isolate you, divide and conquer. By cracking onto my friends he drove a wedge between us by saying that they instigated it or whatever. Either that or the friends would keep away because it was uncomfortable for them.

Eventually when my son was two we left. He didn’t think we would so he didn’t make it too hard for me. But once he realised we were doing ok on our own he did everything he could to win me back. The C I had fallen in love with returned. When that didn’t work he got himself another girlfriend who was also a single mum with two girls. I was jealous. I thought he was treating her nice and that she was going to get the nice C so I decided to go back with him and try again, all I ever wanted was a normal family life. It was only later that I found out that he had already started behaving badly towards the new girlfriend. He wouldn’t have been a better partner for her, he would have blithely ruined another family. She doesn’t know how lucky she was she dodged that bullet.

ESCAPE

Big mistake for me though. This time he was going to make sure I couldn’t leave again. He kept me completely penniless. He bought me a new car but the loan was in his name so if I left I’d be without a car, not a good thing where we live. His behaviour became worse. Eventually we left when he was at work one day and stayed at a friends place for two weeks till we could find somewhere to live. A government department paid the bond for me. I cried for my grandmother and all the women before me who’d had no help available to help them escape. Their lives must have been hell.

CONTINUED ABUSE AFTER SEPERATION

But things didn’t improve. C would come to my house to see our son every weekend and sleep on the lounge. It was like we were still living together except that he didn’t come home during the week and I had control over my own money. But we were doing it hard with not much money coming in. He earned good money and would use it to bribe the kids into doing things with him and he would come out looking like the good guy. I could never do anything with them as I was always broke running a household on my own. He lied about his income and only paid $20 a month in child support. He then lost his licence for drink driving so he bought me a new car so that I could drive our son to his place, he wasn’t keen on catching the train or bus. He made a mistake though and put the rego in my name. The first argument we had he demanded I get out of the car and leave it parked at the train station (cos he couldn’t drive it). I drove us straight to the police station who informed him that as the rego was in my name he would have to take me to court to try get the car back. He knew he wouldn’t stand a chance as I’d let him keep the house and everything to get away from him. That soured things between us a bit. Around that time I met another man. He was a big, thick kind of guy but he had to be to stand up to C. Being Italian, the moment I was touched by another man I became dirty and he dropped any pretence at being nice.

FACING HIS DAD BY HIMSELF

He would try start fights with A (my new partner) and tell my son all sorts of things he was going to do to us. My son was eight by then. He got himself a Harley and would come pick my son up on it. My son hated it and said that C rode like a madman, overtaking dangerously and fast. He was also drinking and getting violent with his new girlfriend while my son was with him. That was terrible. At least when I was copping it he had his big sisters to hide behind but there he was on his own and terrified. He also said that C was drinking and driving with him in the car or on the bike. I decided to go to family court to try curb his behaviour. That was a BIG mistake.

FAMILY COURT

I couldn’t afford my own solicitor so I had to put up with legal aid. This meant I had a different solicitor every time I went to court. They wouldn’t know what was going on from one court day to the next so couldn’t argue my case properly. The judge was a female and for some reason took an instant dislike to me. I still don’t know why. My son wasn’t allowed to talk to me about what happened. If he tried and I told the judge she would accuse me of questioning him. My son was too young to be allowed to speak. Eventually she sent us to counseling. My poor boy told them he didn’t want to visit his dad anymore as he was scared of him. But they weren’t allowed to speak for him in court as they were meant to be impartial. They advised he write his dad a letter telling him how he felt. But C said he’d been put up to it and he wouldn’t listen until my son told him to his face. My son still loved him but was scared of him when he was drinking and he didn’t want to hurt his dad. Eventually he did tell him at a safe house with an armed guard standing by. It still made no difference.

BIAS JUDGE

The judge disqualified herself from our case eventually because she felt she was biased against me, no joke. That was the happiest day of my life. When you go to court you expect a judge to be fair. But that’s not always the case. The judge has preconceived ideas or may even just be having a bad day. And you are totally at their mercy. The new judge saw my ex for what he was instantly and ordered a court psycologist to do a summary on us. The psycologist also saw straight away what was happening and advised that my son not have to visit his dad until he was old enough to be able to leave by himself when the situation at his dad’s got out of control. By this time my son was 12 and we’d had four years of family court. My son had been to his headmaster, councilors and had told the department of child welfare and no-one had been able to help him. He had started showing behavioural problems at school and was having panic attacks. We were so relieved by the new rulling!

THE ACCIDENT….

Almost 6 months to the day of that ruling his father died on his motorbike. It was a Sunday, my son would have been with him if he’d still had visitation. I had known it was going to happen eventually and had tried to tell the first judge that. I hadn’t wanted to stop them visiting, I just wanted C to stop drinking and being violent around the boy. I had enabled visitation for the first 5 years of our seperation. It was only when he started being violent with his new girlfriend and drinking and driving with our son in the car that I had tried to put some protective measures in place. But even though it said in the court papers that he wasn’t allowed to drink around our son there was no way of enforcing it. We did our exchanges at police stations but they couldn’t breathalise him or anything and my son wasn’t allowed to tell me anything so the order may as well have been written on toilet paper.

For me things were actually worse when we seperated. If your partner is abusive or violent you have to let your children go for visitation without you being there to protect them. And don’t think that because of prior violence they’ll take that into consideration. I had had apprehended violence orders against him in the past. He had a police record as long as my arm, the police had been called out to our house numerous times and taken him away till he sobered up, but I wasn’t allowed to bring that up in court. Anyone could see by his past history that he was a violent alcoholic but none of it was allowed to be bought up in court. In my case visitation with our son and the court cases was just another way for him to keep a hold over us. It’s been nearly 5 years since he died and only now do I realise I was still being abused while we were seperated. I would get abusive phone calls at all hours of the day and night and he kept me constantly in courts.

AND NOW…

We’re getting better. My son is very protective of me, he saw what I went through trying to keep him safe. He is the kindest, most sensible, intellegent young man that I have ever met. And I’m not saying that just because I am biased, everyone who meets him says it. He has such an open face and lovely disposition. I know that wherever C is now he is who he was without alcohol and he understands I didn’t do any of it to hurt him, just to protect our boy. I am just so grateful it all ended well, this ending could have been so different and so tragic.