Helpless agony of knowing my daughter is being beaten by a husband she won’t leave
The Mail knows the identity of the author of this shattering confession. But we can’t reveal it — because her family’s in too much danger
DECEMBEr 19, 2003, was a Friday. I know this because it is a date etched deeply and painfully in my memory. My husband and I came home from a party to find the answerphone message that would change my life for ever.
‘Mum, please call. I’ve been attacked.’ It was my eldest daughter, then 29, speaking in a trembling whisper.
I frantically dialled her number and could scarcely take in what she told me: her husband had thrown her down the stairs in a drunken rage. She had phoned me after barricading herself in the bedroom with her two children.
But where was I? Five hundred miles away, living at the other end of the country. And I hadn’t even been at home to take her desperate call. Many is the time I have chastised myself for going out and for not living closer. Instead it fell to her mother-in-law to take away her son to sober up.
I didn’t sleep that night. I had difficulty imagining my son-in-law doing such a thing. They had seemed so happy. One thing I was certain of: that would be the end of their relationship.
Looking back, I could weep at my naivety. I still had everything to learn about abusive relationships and how they can rumble on for years while parents watch, helpless, from the sidelines.
Incredibly, 12 years on, my daughter is still living with her husband. There have been countless episodes of abuse, physical and verbal. On one occasion the police were involved.
Again and again she has vowed to leave only to be lured back, to my frustration and, above all, dread. In England and Wales, nearly 100 women are killed by their partner every year.
I knew things like this happened, but not to people like us. We are a closeknit family; educated people who resolve things by talking.
It was shocking to find that domestic violence goes on behind the most respectable of middle- class facades. Domestic violence isn’t the taboo topic it was and there are helplines and refuges for women who need them.
But I felt compelled to write this because the plight of an abused woman’s mother is rarely discussed.
MyDAughTEr is a grown woman. her life and that of her children has been ruined by violence, but only she can change that. And the more I nag her, the more I risk pushing her ever deeper into her attacker’s clutches.
Lucy, as I will call her, is the oldest of my three children. She and her brother and sister are close in age and in affection. She was a happy child, pretty and always singing. her ambition was to sing professionally.
She was 17 when I divorced her father and she coped as well as children can in such circumstances. When I remarried, she had no difficulty accepting my new husband.
She was 20 and living at home when she met Nick, a colleague at work. Mild-mannered, quietly spoken, he caused a ripple of approval in the family. Alarm bells should have rung after the birth of their first child, my first grandchild, five years later.
Overnight a kind of invisible fortress encircled Lucy. Visits were by appointment and the baby’s regime was laid down by Nick. As a rookie granny, I wasn’t sure of my ground. I backed off, deferred to Nick as the proud new father. I have often wondered if it would have made a difference if I had been a stronger presence, if I had been the kind of mother-inlaw who was not to be crossed.
When your child is being ill-treated you do a lot of soul-searching.
Nick and Lucy feathered their nest. They seemed OK, if a bit inward looking. They appeared to have few friends and with us they were polite, but not particularly warm. As a family we laugh a lot, but I never heard laughter in Lucy’s house. Did this sound alarm bells? If I’m honest, no, it didn’t.
It was another three years before that answer phone message. The next three days were surreal. Lucy didn’t want me to go to her house, so we talked on the phone. She assured me she had nothing worse than bruises and shock and begged me not to tell the family. I understood — sort of. her pride was bruised as well as her body.
She was adamant the incident was not reported to the police. I understood that, too; he was her husband and the father of her children. It was an aberration. It would never happen again. On the third day came the inconceivable yet inevitable reconciliation. Lucy assured me she and Nick had talked things over and she now understood she had been to blame for his momentary loss of self-control.
her crime? She had invited one of her siblings to Christmas dinner without seeking Nick’s permission. When I challenged this ridiculous excuse, I found myself wrongfooted. ‘ you don’t know him like I do,’ she screamed. ‘Anyway,’ she said, putting in the final boot, ‘you’re partly to blame; you’ve never made him feel welcome in the family.’
This was one of the most twisted corruptions of the facts I’d ever heard. My husband remembers me sinking to the floor, weeping tears of despair.
After that, things seemed to settle down. I say ‘seemed’ because I don’t know half of what went on. Information has leaked out little by little. A few words confided in a sister, a few
more confided in me, long after the event. What I know is that Nick took control of every aspect of Lucy’s life. She stopped seeing her friends. She was always short of money. Perhaps the saddest thing of all — she stopped singing, even to her children.
A year and a half later, Nick dragged Lucy round the house by her hair in front of my terrified granddaughters, then five and two.
She called the police and Nick was taken away to cool off while Lucy’s father drove her to the safety of her brother’s house. After three days, she went home of her own volition. Nick, she insisted, had been cautioned and turned over a new leaf.
Our phone conversation went pretty much as it had 18 months earlier: she had provoked the attack with some thoughtless comment. No one else understood Nick, they loved each other and it would never happen again.
It was a defining moment for me: no matter what I did, no matter how much I offered to help Lucy escape, the decision had to be hers.
Having had his card marked by the police, Nick changed his method from physical abuse to psychological warfare, chipping away at her confidence: she was a lousy mother and wife, she was stupid and incompetent.
There was no reasoning with her; she had constructed her own little universe: she and Nick versus the rest of the world.
If she wouldn’t help herself, what could I do? If I pressured Lucy to leave, I might alienate her irreparably. If I did nothing it might cost her life.
I bought two copies of Mary Susan Miller’s book No Visible Wounds: one for Lucy, one for me. I recommend it to any parent in this situation. We watched Sleeping With The Enemy, starring Julia Roberts as a battered wife, in the hope a fictional character might inspire her in a way I had failed to do. She looked at me as if to say: ‘Your point being?’
My other children and their father reassured me I had no reason for selfreproval, but the thought that I should be the one to save her haunted me. That’s what mothers do.
Life settled into a pattern. Occasionally Lucy would confide in one of us that there had been another ‘episode’ and this time she was leaving. Time and again she went back.
We saw it as the ‘ day three phenomenon’; she’d receive flowers and promises from Nick, and return.
Our family had less and less contact with Lucy. A year could pass without us seeing her. Family gatherings became tinderboxes. Nick would never attend, but would be waiting at home, with threats and a vicious tongue.
My granddaughters, now teenagers, were not permitted to visit me and their home was a place I dreaded. It smelled of fear. Their downcast eyes and cautious way of answering questions spoke volumes.
I was lucky in that I still had my son and my other daughter, and, by then, more grandchildren. With them I enjoyed a normal, happy life, but Lucy was always the spectre at the feast. I felt I had lost her.
Earlier this year we all attended a family funeral. This was the first time I had seen Lucy since her brother’s wedding five years ago and her appearance shocked me.
My beautiful daughter had become gaunt and dead-eyed. As we parted, I couldn’t stop my tears. ‘ What’s wrong?’ she asked.
I said: ‘I’m frightened that the next time I see you it will be you I’m burying.’ She said nothing, but there were tears in her eyes. My words must have touched her in a way nothing else had because a week later she emailed: ‘I know I have to get away. I just don’t know where to start.’
WEHAd been here so many times before. Her father, brother and sister, everyone was weary of the melodrama that always ended the same way, but when you are a mother you can never give up. I jumped on a train and stayed in a hotel nearby.
I went with Lucy to see a lawyer and to a counsellor with experience of abused women. I persuaded her to open up to her boss, GP and a couple of friends. She was reluctant, but did it and her friends’ response surprised her and heartened me: ‘do you really think we didn’t know?’
That was two months ago. She has taken the first practical steps to leave and may have done so by the end of the year. This is the most positive I have felt about Lucy’s future for a long time, but my pride in her is tempered with anxiety.
I’ve learned many things about abusers and one frightening fact is this: the most dangerous moment for an abused woman is when she breaks free.
Men like Nick insist on being in control. When anyone challenges that grip, their anger escalates. Some kill rather than let their victim escape. I keep the phone number of Lucy’s constabulary. Her sister is also on red alert.
Meanwhile, I torture myself: Why didn’t I spot Nick’s true nature? Should I have had it out with him face to face?
Or was I right to play the long game, hoping that Lucy would come to her senses?
I have days when I think I could not have done anything differently. I have days when I feel I have failed her.
Lucy may be in her 40s, but she is still my baby.
As I told her yesterday, I dream of the day I hear her sing again.