Be warned: this article will disturb and upset you, but it is vital you read it so Scotland can stop the psychological torment that many women are enduring today at the hands of brutal, abusive men
PAT is haunted, she says, by a violent incident from when her second child was still a small baby. She had called her husband while he was out one evening, asking him to come home to help her fix a household water leak. When he arrived home at 2am she was awake and breastfeeding. The first thing he did was punch her in the face while she was still holding the baby. He then went downstairs to get a Stanley blade to cut the carpet and trace the source of the leak, came back up, put the blade at her throat and dragged her down the stairs backwards. “He told me that I was nothing but a stupid, sad cow,” she says. “And that I created the leak to get him home.”
In the course of her marriage, Pat was not only punched, but knocked out, strangled, slapped around the ears so hard she could barely hear, dragged across the floor and kicked. She believes her husband tried to kill her three times. On one particularly terrifying occasion, she says, when she refused him sex, he punched her several times in the head, knocking her out cold, then continued to kick her in the face.
Yet, what lingers more than the physical abuse is the psychological torture, controlling behaviour and humiliation. “One time I got a bottle of gin as a present and I had a couple of drinks and fell asleep. He pulled the covers off, took my clothes off and took pictures of me, which he sent to me in the morning at my work. He said no wonder he doesn’t come near me, I’m alright from the neck up but I’m a fat cow.”
Though the bruises are gone, she says she still “lives with the mental torture”, a sentiment echoed by many victims of abuse. Until now psychological torment has not been legally recognised. But last week MSPs debated in the Scottish Parliament the new Domestic Abuse Bill, which plans to create a specific domestic abuse offence recognising such “controlling and coercive behaviour” and could make Scotland one of the first countries in the world to criminalise “partner psychological abuse”.
What is planned is pioneering legislation which encompasses both the horror of domestic physical violence and the interconnected torment of psychological abuse. Already in England there is a controlling and coercive behaviour offence, but it is narrow in scope. This particular law would be hugely symbolic. It would make clear, as Justice Secretary Michael Matheson said, while launching the draft bill at Edinburgh Women’s Aid, that “exerting total control over your partner’s every movement and action, forcing your partner to live in constant fear, is criminal and unacceptable in our society”.
Nearly 60,000 domestic abuse incidents were reported to Police Scotland in 2014-15, but it’s believed this is a vastly under-reported crime. One Scottish survey found that only a fifth of those who had experienced partner abuse in the previous 12 months had said police had been made aware of it. One of the problems, Matheson notes, is that such reporting has hitherto revolved around “incidents”, but domestic abuse is not like a housebreaking, where there is a single incident – it’s about a pattern of behaviour and multiple offences which the law has to reflect.
That physical abuse and controlling behaviour come as part of a pattern is something that has long been acknowledged by frontline organisations like Edinburgh Women’s Aid. Its chief executive Linda Rodgers notes that the majority of women coming to them have experienced some form of controlling or coercive behaviour. “For me the two are intrinsically connected.” The threat of physical abuse, she says, is often used to enforce the control. “I think it’s always important,” she says, “to recognise that the reason why that controlling and coercive behaviour is effective is because there is fear underneath it.”
Ways that this controlling behaviour manifests itself are varied, and include anything from controlling partners’ access to the toilet to stopping access to money. One woman who turned to Edinburgh Women’s Aid for help, Saadia, found the abuse began not long into her arranged
marriage, and while occasionally terrifyingly violent, was more frequently psychological. She recalls: “If I wore lipstick he would say, ‘ Do you think you’re beautiful? Is that why you’re wearing lipstick? You’re nothing special.’”
Frequently there are attempts to denigrate and crush the victim’s self-esteem. Pat, for instance, recalls: “He used to wash me after he’d battered me. He used to make me strip. He used to say, ‘You’re a sad little woman. You’re nothing. Nobody will want you. You’re damaged goods.’” Another victim, Anne, found her partner would control her by undermining her. “He would tell me that I was fat, that I was worthless. When you’re hearing that all the time, you believe it.”
Often the abused say that they were isolated from friends and family, or any support. Pat recalls that her husband decided they should move, while she was pregnant and caring for a toddler, to a house out of town, leaving her stranded, away from family and friends.
Victims are not solely female, though women are disproportionately affected: 79 per cent of domestic abuse reports feature women victims and male perpetrators. “If you look at the sites of abuse, they are often around cooking, cleaning, the way the woman dresses – things that are seen as traditional women’s roles and that the male as the head of the household has a right to influence,” says Rodgers. The impact of such mental abuse is devastating. As Saadia puts it: “In eight years my husband hit me about 10 times. The rest was psychological. It’s hard to explain how much of a long-term affect that has. ”
Rodgers hopes the legislation will send out a symbolic message that “this is what we recognise as domestic abuse in Scotland and we think it’s unacceptable”. Already public attitudes towards domestic psychological abuse have started to shift a little, prompted partly by the abuse plotline in The Archers radio soap. Rodgers is hopeful that the new Bill will form a step towards a “domestic abuse free Scotland”. She believes this is possible and can be facilitated not only by such legislation, but also by increased gender equality. “Violence against women is less in countries that are more gender equal. The more equality that we have in Scottish society the less likely it is that violence against women will exist. We need to keep our eye on that prize. We need to believe we are capable of that.”
SAADIA
BEFORE I got married I was very strong and happy-golucky. My father had brought me up to be really independent. I had a degree. I was a senior manager at a big company, very successful. The abuse began from the time I got married, an arranged marriage to the son of my dad’s best friend from Pakistan. He wasn’t physically abusive at first, but he did want to control me. If I was 15 minutes late home from work, he would say to me, “Right so it took you two minutes to walk to the car and 10 minutes to drive down the road. Why are you 15 minutes late?” I would just fob it off and say, ‘do you think I went clubbing?’
Later, I fell pregnant and he said he didn’t want children and wanted me to abort my child. But I refused. I was a very strong person. But all the time he chipped away at me. I started believing what he was saying. Then he became physically abusive . He threw a shoe at my head. Immediately he said he was sorry and that it was a mistake. But after that the violence became not regular, but acceptable. He would punch and hit me, then apologise. My work colleagues started asking, “What’s wrong with you? You’re so quiet now.” I used to start crying for no reason and couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t tell anyone what was happening.
It was through my work that it all came out. I had a big job as a senior manager and you have to be really firm and I was becoming subservient. Eventually my manager had a word with me and I broke down and told him everything. He was in shock. I was referred to a psychiatrist who put me in touch with Women’s Aid. I met a lovely lady there and the first thing she did was give me a hug and say, “Are you okay?” I burst out crying. She said, “You know you could leave your hus- band if you want to. You know you can phone the police.”
The next time he did hit me, I phoned them. When they came and took him away, it was an amazing feeling. I thought, “Oh, my children, they were crying in the corner when they saw my husband hitting me. I don’t want them to go through that anymore.” I’ve experienced both physical and psychological abuse. I don’t have the bruises any more. I don’t have the cut on my forehead, I don’t have the burn he did to me. But I’m not the person I was.
ANNE
FOR me it was both psychological and sexual abuse. It started when I was pregnant. The abuser raped me when I was six months pregnant. I disclosed it to my mum, and I kicked him out the house. But a few weeks later my mum took a stroke. Then I gave birth to my son and the abuser wheedled his way back in. I had lost the support of my mum because she was in a nursing home, and he knew that was a vulnerable time for me. I stupidly took him back and he psychologically abused me the whole time of my relationship. He tried to keep me isolated from friends and family. He would only let a few of my friends round, and then he would tell me that those friends were no good for me. So I became isolated. The control was making me feel worthless. He would tell me I was a bad mother, I was fat.
Then, at one point we split up, and we were going to get back together, and my daughter disclosed that he had been sexually abusing her. I thought this can’t continue. We contacted the police. Bail conditions were put in place, but he broke them and that’s when I had to go into refuge, because I didn’t feel safe in my own home with my children. I was in a Women’s Aid refuge for almost a year. While there I started to realise that the behaviour was not acceptable and that he had been abusing me from day one.
It was through my work that it all came out. I had a big job as a senior manager and you have to be really firm and I was becoming subservient. Eventually my manager had a word with me and I broke down and told him everything. He was in shock. I was referred to a psychiatrist who put me in touch with Women’s Aid