Patrick’s a superhero for battered women

‘We asked Mum to leave him but she wouldn’t go’ Mariah Carey has long had a reputation for being difficult and demanding.

With her beautiful fiveoctave voice and 200million record sales worldwide, no one found her infamous diva strops remotely surprising.

Then, last week she revealed that for 17 years she’s been hiding the fact that she suffers from bipolar disorder. Making us all feel just a little bit guilty for being so ready to judge.

Iwas so excited when I heard that Sir Patrick Stewart, star of screen and stage, was coming on Loose Women. I could barely contain myself and naturally assumed he’d be in to talk about his latest film or play.

So when I was told he was on to talk about his experience of domestic violence, I was astounded.

It turns out Patrick’s traumatic childhood was behind his decision to become a champion of the domestic violence charity Refuge.

Until he was five, his home life in a small Yorkshire town was happy.

His father Alf was posted abroad to fight in World War II a couple of months before Patrick was born. Then Alf returned – and suddenly everything changed.

“It had been idyllic living with my mother and brother,” X-Men star Sir Patrick told us on TV.

“Then an angry, disappointed and ill man came back and quickly our lives became quite difficult.”

Alf would drink heavily then take out his frustrations on wife Gladys.

“On Monday to Friday he was very conscientious,” Sir Patrick said. “He had a job and worked hard. But at weekends he drank heavily and became irrational. He was what you now call a weekend alcoholic.”

The arguments Alf started after coming home drunk would often leave Gladys bleeding on the floor. The police and ambulance service were regular visitors.

Patrick and his brother Trevor would lay awake, waiting for their father’s return, poised to break up the almost inevitable fight. “We would hear my dad coming home,” he said. “If he was singing we knew he was in a better mood, if he was silent, we worried.

“Sometimes we would sit on the stairs and when the shouting turned to raised fists we would step in.

“We learned to take the temperature of an argument, and that’s something no child should have to learn.”

SHAME

Young Patrick would put his body between his mother and father to try to protect his mum, and that would often stop the violence.

“He didn’t hit me or, as far as I know, my brother. But we were in an atmosphere of violence.”

Like many children trapped in this nightmare, Patrick felt deep shame about what went on at home and never spoke to anyone about it.

And when he finally worked up the courage to confide in his headmaster, he was accused of making it up. “My dad was very charismatic,” he explained. “He was a war hero, people liked him.”

Eventually the brothers grew old enough to confront their dad at the first hint of trouble.

“The violence stopped then,” he told us. “But my brother moved out when he was 17 and I left for acting school as a teenager. And then there was nobody to protect her.”

Patrick said he often thinks of his mother and what she suffered. “When we were older we tried to convince her to leave him, but she never would. That’s common for victims, to love the perpetrator.

“She got very little support. Back then, there were no places to go, no charities or helplines.”

Which is why he’s so firmly behind the work of Refuge. And the new climate that allows women to speak out about abuse – whether domestic or sexual.

And he is crystal clear that the blame stops with men. “I feel very strongly about this,” he said.

“It’s history, conditioning and the false ways that for generations men have been told to feel about themselves. There needs to be an adjustment.

“This is not a woman’s problem, it’s a man’s problem. They’re the ones who have to change their behaviour.”

And the first step in making changes – for abusers or the abused – is to seek help.

So if you want to talk to someone about domestic violence, please go to refuge.org.uk.