ABUSE: The silent killer

Bess Manson reports on the horrific stories of battered women.

The abuse came in different forms – physical, sexual, mental. The suffering for many of the women who shared their horrific stories in a report released today became so acute that taking their own life seemed preferable to the daily abuse meted out by their partners.

The desperation of these women is captured in research from an online survey by Women’s Refuge looking at the relationship between women’s experiences of intimate partner violence and their self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and suicide events.

It paints a grim picture of the realities many victims face.

Here, three women share their experiences of abuse that nearly ended it all.

RACHEL*

The abuse was very secretive, never in front of anyone. I didn’t know about the different forms it was taking until months later when I learnt about the power and control wheel.

There were many elements of the wheel that were in place before it became physical. The psychological abuse was the worst, though, because it isolated me and broke my defences down.

Once he knew I wanted to leave him, he wanted me to ‘‘lose the plot’’ so he could get custody of our baby. He tried to convince everyone, including myself, that I was crazy and needed help.

He was planning to take our daughter from me, through his family and their lawyer. I didn’t trust the police, I didn’t have the language to describe what was happening. I was so confused and weakened.

He threatened me, saying, ‘‘I’ll put you in the ground, I’ll kill you’’. It was a Jekyll and Hyde existence, because I believed how lovely he was at the start.

He denied hitting me, pulling my hair, dragging me off the couch whilst pregnant, molesting me – he denied everything. A Family Court order was put in place which he has breached many times.

I believed that I could never escape this man. I believed that I was damaged goods and my children were better off without me. The trauma and grief were unbearable. I thought I would never get over what he had done to me and what he was trying to do to have control over me after I left him.

It got so bad I organised care for my children, then went to hang myself in the garage, but I couldn’t go through with it.

I had suffered violence growing up, but I was a Presbyterian minister’s daughter, so no-one believed me when I said I was being hit at home. I was misdiagnosed with only depression for a long time, when I actually had PTSD.

There needs to be more specific support dedicated to recovering from abuse trauma rather than trying to focus on depression, anxiety, eating disorders and the like. There are too many agencies and organisations to deal with as an individual and no communication between them.

SARAH*

My husband made me feel dumb, like I was mentally unstable. He made me feel like my friends and family didn’t care about me. He used our kids as weapons to control me.

He threw pots of boiling water at the wall in front of the kids, he punched the walls, and deliberately drove my car crazily to scare us.

He shoved me into door frames, pinned me down to the floor so I couldn’t move. He told me I should stay on my antidepressants because he preferred me medicated. He would take off with our daughter, my youngest, for hours with no changes of clothes, no nappies or bottles. She would come home distraught and he would blame me.

He isolated me from family and friends, and would go off his nut if he didn’t have adequate notice someone was coming over, so my family stopped seeing me altogether. [I tried] jumping off the overbridge but I got caught as I was climbing the barrier. I tried overdosing on antidepressants and pain meds, which only had me hugging the toilet for a few days.

I have no confidence, I’m still very highly stressed, I am anxious more now than ever before, I can’t go shopping for more than 30 minutes without needing to leave.

I’m constantly looking over my shoulder. I get mood swings that go to all new lows and highs. I can’t eat and, when I do, I get nauseous. I don’t sleep at night, only in the morning for two hours.

I have days where I can’t bring myself to get up so I call the preschool and school and say the kids are both sick so I can just tend to them and lie down for the day. I have little motivation and the housework really catches up on me now.

Any time someone raises their voice I cry almost instantaneously. I am too scared to meet new people or make friends in case they know him or they don’t like me, so I just isolate myself at home. I barely went anywhere until I started at the Work and Income course and the gym with a friend I met through the Women’s Refuge steps to freedom course years ago.

Professionals need to know about the relationship between suicide thoughts or attempts and abuse. They go hand in hand. The thought pattern about how useless we are never stops. No matter how hard we try.

Counselling doesn’t give us nearly enough time to even scrape the surface.

EMMA*

I was told daily that I was a useless wife, a bad person, that God would not hear me if I prayed to him and that, come Armageddon, I was going to die. He controlled the money and I would have to beg if I needed a new coat or dress.

Sometimes if he was in a rage he would throw things at me – books, a printer. I was once admitted to hospital with a serious condition and when the doctor told him that I could die he went into a rage because I was being ‘‘lazy’’.

I remember feeling like life was never going to get any better, and that I was a bad and worthless person. By the end of the marriage, I thought ‘‘I have to either get out, or kill myself’’ but I chose to get out, mainly because I had three children to care for – if I hadn’t had them, I think by that stage I would have gone ahead.

When I told him that I didn’t love him and I wanted to either

leave or kill myself, he told me I needed psychiatric treatment for not loving him.

After many years of feeling like I didn’t deserve any better, the thought of killing myself was a bit of a wakeup call. I thought, ‘‘Why would I let that bastard do this to me?’’

Initially, I just wanted to die, and felt hopeless as to how I was going to get out with three young children and look after myself (he had kind of programmed me to believe I could not), but then the suicidal thoughts started to make me angry.

Anger equals energy – and I left. It was very frightening. I was just at the end of my emotional reserves.

In hindsight, I have to feel proud of myself, because, although it seems such a simple

and straightforward thing to others looking in from the outside (why doesn’t she just leave?), it felt like an Herculean task.

After years of being told you are useless, stupid, ugly, bad, it’s hard to let go of that programming and tell yourself you can do it.

When you are that beaten down it is hard to sort out all the logistics of survival – where to live and how to afford it. It’s hard to believe you can do it.

* Not their real names

‘‘After years of being told you are useless, stupid, ugly, bad – it’s hard to let go of that programming and tell yourself you can do it.’’

Abuse victim