The Apple and the Tree

By Gabrielle

There is the old saying, 'the apple doesn't fall far from the tree' . Even though I escaped my ex husband a long time ago, he continued his emotional abuse of me until the day he died 20 years later using my son as a 'messenger'. When he died I thought the nightmare had ended. The memories of having my head being bashed against a concrete wall, my son being thrown across the room when he was a baby, my daughter being sexually assaulted at 3 when on a court directed visit to his house, and the years of emotional abuse would now stop. This was not to be.

It was as if my ex husband wrote a book on 101 ways to hurt women who love you and my son is working his way through that book. He plays mental games and verbally abuses my 90 year old mother, his sister and myself. Withdrawing contact if we disagree with his behaviour and then returns with no apology when it suits. He insists his father was the good parent and I was the one in the wrong for leaving. He believes women drive men to hit them. It is the woman's fault.

He expects me to pick up the pieces of his failed relationships when he hits his girlfriends, which makes me feel like an accomplice in his crimes. But last year I decided I could not go on with this cycle of abuse. He had hit and kicked his pregnant partner and she turned to me for help. She didn't want to go to the police and after staying with me for a few weeks, she returned to him. When I tried to beg him to seek help, he said things to me that mortified me. His total disdain and disrespect for women was verbalised in a vitriolic attack over the phone. It was then I decided I could not and would not see him again. I now have twin grandchildren who are ten months old who I have never seen. I have friends who believe his stories of me being a bad mother and now a bad grandmother. I don't want to tell them the real reason I am not seeing them. Why? Because I am so ashamed that I have a son who abuses women. I am filled with sadness and grief that the nightmare continues.