HUSBAND’S TERRIFYING ATTACKS Teach your daughters how to spot an abuser so they do not face years of terror like me
for in a healthy relationship. She said: “I’d have seen the signs and known it was wrong for him to isolate me from everyone, to manipulate me and take away my confidence.”
Now she is bringing up Douglass and her other son Alfie, nine, from a previous relationship, “teaching them it’s wrong to be disrespectful or lift your hand to anyone – male or female.”
Screaming
She said the Freedom Programme helped her identify the qualities of Mr Right when she met new boyfriend Jamie, who she has been dating for a year.
Understandably she was cautious when she met Jamie but said: “He made me feel special and safe – and safe is how you are meant to feel with the right person.” It is all a far cry from her horrific wedding day in 2012. After a whirlwind romance they married at a register office.
Then came the shocking incident. They were with two friends and a neighbour in a pub when Walford flipped and led her out the pub by the hair.
She said: “I thought he’d been so lovely until then. He was screaming in my face that we couldn’t consummate our marriage because I was so drunk. But it wasn’t true.
“Our guests saw him slap me and were shocked. The pub owner banned him from returning but he didn’t seem to care.”
Charlotte said friends and family were aware of the abuse and some tried to intervene but many were not as supportive. Once Walford gave Charlotte a black eye and told hospital nurses she had been hit in a nightclub.
She was scared to tell the truth, fearing his violent retribution. And she feared that if she reported him to the police, social services would take away her kids. The couple began dating after Walford asked for her number in the street. Charlotte, still vulnerable after chemo for Hodgkin’s lymphoma cancer, gave him a false nu number but he found her. Frien Friends and parents were not comfortable comf with Walford. Charlotte Ch said: “I was more in love with the idea of a getting g married and having h my own little family than I was with Spencer.” He assaulted her in public, bit her ear in a pub and regularly pushed her down the stairs of their home, bruising her ribs. “The rapes and sexual assaults were the worst,” said Charlotte, close to tears. “The fact my son Douglass was conceived during rape sickened me and I didn’t expect to bond with him. But I love him so much and he gave me the strength to carry on despite everything.” Four times during Walford’s attacks Charlotte’s friends called the police but she was too frightened to press charges. The turning point came in July 2015.
She said: “I was hanging the washing when I noticed the arms had been cut from my cardigan. He said he’d wiped his backside on it because there was no toilet roll. After all I’d been through it was that one thing that made me take action.”
In December 2015, at Northampton crown court, Walford admitted two counts of rape, two common assaults and assault causing actual bodily harm. He was jailed for 14 years – nine in prison and an extended licence period of five years.
Charlotte said the Freedom Programme helped her rebuild her life: “We can’t assume young women know what is healthy in a relationship. We need to help them spot the signs of an abuser. It could save many from the same ordeal as me.”