NO ESCAPE
When Kelly Rayner*, met her now exhusband at 18-yearsold, he controlled her from the very beginning.
As he was in the army, he told her they needed to get married within just two months of meeting before he was posted.
‘We met in November and were married in January.
‘He was then posted to Germany in April and I moved over in September once we had a living quarter.’
Once there, James* took full control of Kelly and would regularly threaten her.
‘He would get drunk and threaten to ‘send me home’ to my parents if I did something he didn’t like.
‘There was a bit of physical violence when he was drunk, and he would destroy my clothes.’
But it wasn’t just alcohol which made James controlling.
Forcing her to have sex, he would call her frigid if she declined.
‘He said if I loved him then I would do it.
‘Then, when he wanted a baby, he flushed all my pills down the toilet.’
Trapped in a foreign country, Kelly had nowhere to turn.
‘He belittled me in front of his friends and would flirt with other women in front of me, too.
‘He secluded me from all of my friends and family and was rude to them even when they were around. ‘One time, my mum snapped at him and told him to stop talking to me in such a disgraceful way, but he said I was his wife and he could do as he pleased. ‘Everyone was concerned for me, but I didn’t know what to do.’
After years of torment, Kelly took an overdose. ‘He would goad me with a leather belt and I just had enough of it.
‘For a few weeks after the overdose, he was totally different, but it soon went back to normal.
‘I was constantly on tenterhooks.’
In a bid to get James away from her, Kelly put on weight and stopped wearing makeup altogether.
‘If anything, he preferred it though.
‘When I did dress up, he would call me a slut and prostitute.’
In the end, Kelly left her husband, but admits it wasn’t until after that she realised she was being abused by him.
‘Looking back now, I can see exactly how controlling he was and how that control increased over the years, but I didn’t see it as abuse until I finally got out of the marriage.’