Not a survivor yet!

By Terri

I grew up in a very dysfunctional family. My father was a successful misogynistic career man who married the ever so beautiful but not very bright, emotionally damaged trophy wife.

I was the youngest of four, an accident from a dirty business weekend away with free flowing wine, as my father told in his speech at my wedding. My mother told me she cried for days when she found out she was pregnant with me.

I spent my childhood, if fact my whole life trying to get them to love me. I was never good enough. I was regularly punished for my older sibling’s behaviour and my avenues for interacting outside of the family became very limited and controlled.

Then into my life walks this man. He openly tells me he loves me, he was romantic, creative and passionate, everything I had hoped for. Once I was hooked and then trapped, the relationship began to change.

It started with controlling behaviour, put-downs and financial constraints. He was more likely to self-harm in front of me, blaming me for his actions than to hurt me. He progressed to destroying my belongings then to harming the pets. He once made me beg him (dog-like) not to snap the neck of my dog while he held him whimpering. I lived with coercive, psychological and financial abuse.

We had a 22-year relationship that produced four children, each for the purpose of creating his perfect family man image and for little else.

He was good with the older children when they were little, but as they grew and started to question his immature and dangerous behaviour, they too became the targets of his psychological abuse, that turn to physical abuse as teenagers. The physical abuse always happened when I was out but on returning I knew things were wrong. I stopped going out, I was trapped.

I left him many times, turning to my parents, family and friends. Each time I was told I was the problem, I was a drama queen. On the few occasions I went to friends for help one told me “If he hits you I don’t want to know” and the other some 15 years later, withdrew her friendship. My mother, on one of my attempted escapes, told me “Your old, you have four children, no one will ever want you again, there are worse things than staying with your husband”.

The last seven years of our marriage was a nightmare. He smoked heavily, drank heavily and started using bodybuilding supplements while keeping us terrified and financially poor. One day when the children were fighting non-stop, I made the mistake of asking for help. My husband became enraged, grabbing his 11-year-old and 8-year-old children by their throats. Lifting them up and choking them so they could not breathe. The younger went limp but the elder struggled, making his father even more enraged. I hit him in the stomach to get him to release them.

Desperate for help, I went to a psychologist for family counselling. She was the first person to use the words abusive man, confirming what I had long known. I was told, I could lose my children because of him. I went home, told him what was said and if he ever touched them again, we would leave him. Of course, he did and I did, never to return.

I’d like to say that’s the happy ending to my story and that we are thriving, but it got worse.

The family courts, regardless of the mountain of evidence against him, gave him back 17% custody of the younger two children, the older two chose to have nothing to do with him.

That was four years ago. Since then I have had my car, home and internet regularly vandalised, little to no child support and no help from the police with broken intervention orders. Instead, I get told to get over it, stop stewing on it and find him a girlfriend. My eldest daughter no longer speaks to me, blaming me for his continued abuse and my eldest son was removed because of his violent behaviour towards me and his younger siblings. I have nothing to do with my family anymore, as they called me a liar and support my ex-husband. I’m finding it hard to keep a job and my sanity.

My youngest daughter, now nearly 14 no longer wants to see her father and the youngest son, 8, won’t go without her. We are back into extremely dangerous territory with everyone sleeping in one room, scared of the revenge that we all know will take place at some time.

When is anyone going to care and help protect us?