The 16 days of action campaign team have been supported by real survivors of domestic abuse from within Defence to help spread awareness that this is something that affects our people, and to champion their voices in sharing their experiences so that people can understand through this first-hand insight. This story focuses on the non-physical side of abuse and captures much of what is meant by these less talked about, but no less serious, aspects of perpetrator behaviour.
In January 2020 I finally put an end to my abusive marriage and left my husband. Over the 7 years we were together I had been alienated from friends and family, emotionally manipulated through suicide threats, blackmailed with removal from our children, controlled by finances and threatened with violence. On 3 occasions the threat of violence had materialised into physical acts, each incident with his own excuse which shifted the blame to me.
My ex had complete control of my life. He had set up cameras outside the house, so that he could watch my activities when he was working away, he told me lies about my family so we stopped seeing them so much and I had been told numerous times that I was 'too thick' to manages finances so I needed to stay with him and given a strict budget to follow for feeding our family. I had to justify every penny I spent whilst he went out drinking and socialising with friends. He even took out a credit card in my name without my knowledge and put me £2,000 in debt. My days were spent tip toeing around him so as not to spark a hostile encounter. His happiness had to be prioritised over my own, and if I expressed that I was upset and wanted to leave the marriage, he would take my phone away from me so that I could not call my family for help and he would often threaten suicide. on numerous occasions when I threatened to leave, he would take the kids and disappear with them until I begged him to come home.
I was so unhappy that my sex drive completely disappeared, I was regularly coerced into sexual acts because it was 'my job' to satisfy him and that if I didn't he would use somebody else, my many 'no's and requests to stop were very often ignored. He was most likely to try to pressure me first thing in the morning, so I started leaving for work before he woke up, returning as late as I could and not going to bed until an hour after him, so that he was asleep.
When I left the marriage, he made good on his promise to remove the children from my care. He ran off with the children and served me with a non-molestation order that had been gained by lying to the courts. The months that followed were a blur. I had to leave the family home so that he could return with the children to get them back to school, leaving me homeless with no regular access to my much-loved children. As the court proceedings started for the child arrangements order I eventually found somewhere to rent and reached out to the National Centre for Domestic Violence who referred me to my local specialists; New Era.
My ex had been 'love bombing' me and begging me to come back. He had placed a tracker app on our son's phone and a tracker on my car to find out where I lived and had showed up without invitation. New Era supported me in raising complaints with the police which lead to my ex being arrested for coercive control in a relationship and stalking. The case is still ongoing, but since then there have been fewer incidents.
Over the last 2 years I have had some truly dark days; fighting in court, wading through the false accusations that he threw at me and learning how to run my own life again, but I often feel unworthy of the title 'survivor' due to the lack of bruises. Its only with reflection that I see the progress I have made over the last 2 years, and continue to make every day; I run my own home, my children are protected from further harm through a court order, I don't live my life in fear and most importantly I am safe. Domestic abuse does not always leave obvious physical scars, but it always leaves emotional scars.
