The domestic abuse story we couldn’t tell:

One of Australia’s most high-profile women and a mum-of-four is among millions of victims of bullying and psychological abuse in marriage. Now, for the first time, the woman – who must remain anonymous – talks to Juliet Rieden about her 12 years of fear a

high-profile woman reveals her pain

As a woman who thrived in a very masculine world, shattering glass ceilings en route, it comes as quite a shock to hear that the gentle, warm and today rather nervous and emotional Australian success story sitting opposite me in a Sydney cafe suffered 12 excruciating years of psychological domestic violence from a controlling, possessive husband.

“I’ve tried to pinpoint when it [the abuse] started,” she says quietly. “Because it all began fine and happy. I think it was after the birth of my last, my fourth baby, that things changed.”

She was working shifts as a healthcare professional, coming home to look after four children. “My experience is pretty typical, from what I’ve read. It’s about power, about exerting power over another individual. I never got to the bottom of whatever it was that drove my husband to exert that power. I was the main breadwinner in the relationship; so I don’t know if it was a feeling of having to get power somewhere over me.

“First of all – again this is typical – it was all about isolation. The first thing is they isolate you from your family, from your friends. There’s very much control over your social set and your social scene. My family was not allowed into my house. They would be made very unwelcome, as were my friends.”

It’s hard to comprehend how this smart, dynamic woman was reduced to a life of crippling fear; but as she relives those days it’s clear she was very scared indeed. Those close to her were concerned, she says, but “they also thought that I was complicit, I think … and so it caused tension with my sisters.”

Her older sister, who lived nearby, recalls how upsetting it was for the extended family – parents, siblings, nephews and nieces – to be suddenly cut from her sister’s life. “We were offended and perplexed, of course, but we tried not to make it more difficult for her. We were so sorry for her.”

Now in her 50s and in a new relationship, the victim doesn’t know why she didn’t tell her family the full story of what was going on behind closed doors at home. I suspect it was a combination of shame, embarrassment and wanting to pretend this wasn’t really happening at all.

“I had children; you want their life to be as happy as possible, so you try to make it happy,” she explains. “There was a punishment regime that would occur if I did see my family or went out with friends. There would be three weeks of anger and silence and I used to get sick in my stomach, having to go home every night knowing I would face this anger and silence. The whole treatment would be [aimed] at all of us. I’d try to make merry for the kids, saying ‘everything’s fine, Dad’s a bit cranky’, and that was always difficult.

“He never was physically harmful and when things were okay he was attentive. But if there was an issue – and it usually involved me wanting to break out of that very tightly controlled regime – this punishment would happen.”

“I was never that comfortable with him because his mood was so changeable,” says a close friend who was one of those permitted to visit. “I’ve got vivid memories of sitting at the kitchen bench and we’d be having a chat and he’d walk in and say ‘hi, how are you?’ to me and ignore his wife. She always brushed it off and we never really talked about it. But it was awful.”

Every now and then she’d summon the courage to broach the subject with friends, but she says it always backfired and she would end up blaming herself. “I’d say, ‘Something’s not right, this is not a good thing’. But people would say, ‘Oh, but he’s so wonderful, he does this, he does that, how can you complain?’ And I would think, ‘Yes, how can I?’”

Soon every day became torment. “It makes you feel anxious all the time, like you are walking on eggshells. You start to lie to avoid things happening.” Emotionally, she was falling apart. “You don’t like yourself because of the lying. You stop seeing people you love and need, you miss them, so you get sad and depressed. If I did go out with friends I’d get phone calls every 15 minutes: ‘Where are you, when are you coming back?’ So you just don’t do it because it’s so embarrassing.”

“If she defied him he’d make her suffer,” says another friend who was a witness to the abuse. “I’d go there and he’d be brooding. He wouldn’t talk to her. If she did things he didn’t like, he dismissed her. Of course she was upset and the children were very upset. He’d manipulate and be mean to them as well. And all the time they’d be trying to please him.”

You stop seeing people you love and need.”

The strength to leave

Leaving home seemed to be the only thing to do and one night she cracked. “I was very brave and packed up and went to my sister, with the kids, in Sydney. That was really hard. He felt it, too, and he promised he would try and go and get help. And he did for a while. Then he just slipped back. He got more and more jealous and possessive. But you stay for the kids. You want the kids to have their dad around them.”

Slowly her friends began to realise how much torment she was in. “Some of my lovely, closest friends used to try to help and when I finally did make the break, they were the ones who were

there, and of course my beautiful sisters and brothers. They just came back in a minute.”

“We were delighted, elated,” says her sister. “We just all wondered how it took her so long. I think it’s psychologically devastating what he put her through and she’s done very well to come through it. And he tried it [bullying] with the kids afterwards as well. He is a manipulative, selfobsessed control freak. He’s passive aggressive so would feign the victim. She stayed for the kids and it was terribly traumatic for her.”

She experienced her “light bulb” moment when she sought out a counsellor. “I got more and more confident in my work and I think I developed as an adult. I think I grew up, too. It was hard because one part of you is strong and makes decisions and is in a senior position, and then I’d go home and I’m relegated to being controlled and bullied.

“I remember going to a counsellor and the counsellor just saying: ‘I don’t think this relationship is healthy for you or the kids, and we should talk about separation.’ That was the light bulb for me … that I could do this, I could actually do it … and I did!

“My biggest fear now is that my children watched what we went through and that they think that is normal. That really worries me.”

Though relieved to be escaping, she soon discovered going it alone was tough too. “I had to hide money to get a bond and I had to find somewhere. I had to leave my whole house.

“Financially it’s very difficult to set yourself up independently of a partner. I was lucky, I had a good job and an income. But there’s a lot of shame about it, explaining to friends why you’re doing it. How am I going to tell the kids, how do I tell the school? The emotional strain is just enormous.”

The innocent victims

Leaving was a great first step but the ensuing marriage break-up was tortuous. Her husband involved the courts, making wild and erroneous claims that she was the abuser, not him, and custody of the kids became a battleground as he continually tried to prevent them from seeing their maternal cousins, aunts and uncles.

“It was terrible. For a while the kids spent a week with their father and a week with me.”

But with his wife not there, the children faced his ire. “When her nephew was dying of cancer, he had the kids that weekend. They begged him to let them go and spend time with their cousin who was dying and he wouldn’t let those kids go,” recalls another friend and witness.

“That was the sort of person he was. He was just horrible. He wasn’t only abusing her, he was abusing his children.”

As the incidents compounded, the children’s relationship with their father also broke down. He didn’t attend his daughter’s wedding a couple of years ago. “He was so angry with me and now he doesn’t speak to them at all. That’s his choice – he’s cut them out of his life. But I think they’re very sad and I’m sad about that,” says their mother.

But leaving was definitely the only option. “I think she’s freer,” says the friend, who took her in after she left the marital home. “I think she’s relaxed in her own skin more. She’s not as tense. I think she was always on her guard.”

At the time – 12 years ago – emotional and psychological abuse was not seen as domestic violence but now it’s fully recognised as such. “I liken it to when you’re in the water and it’s cold and then it gets tepid and finally it’s boiling and the person doesn’t realise,” says the victim’s close friend. “I do consider it domestic violence. Even the way I reacted as a friend trying to not make waves, that was wrong. He always tried to make her out to be dumb, puffing himself up and diminishing her so he looked better.”

The couple divorced a year or so after she left the marital home. When The Weekly spoke to her husband for this story, he recounted totally different memories of his relationship, saying they had a “very happy marriage” and he was the one who suffered abuse before, through lawyers, he tried to prevent us from publishing the story. Despite numerous witnesses refuting his claims, we have been forced to report this story anonymously to avoid legal issues.

There are women in situations of psychological terror all over Australia and this is now recognised as domestic abuse.

My children watched what we went through.”