“He’s always really nice to my friends when they bump into him in the street and he’s polite to my family on the phone, so they don’t know what’s going on either. My family don’t live near us. He wanted us to move to a new area, so I don’t have much contact with them now. When I do speak to them on the phone, he’s always making signs for me to hurry up, so I’m sure they think I don’t want to talk to them.”
Key campaign: Domestic abuse
He wants to know where I am, who I’m with and what I’m doing every minute of the day.
“He wants to know where I am, who I’m with and what I’m doing every minute of the day. It makes me panic because I know what will happen when I got home, the threats and accusations, so I avoid going out as much as I can. It’s just not worth the hassle to try and go out. He says I’m selfish if I go out and that’s why he constantly texts and phones me. When I get back, he accuses me of being with other men.”
He found out I’d been talking about leaving him. Things got much worse after that.
“He doesn’t trust my friends since he found out I was thinking of leaving so I don’t see them much at all now. He went through my phone a few months ago and found out I’d been talking to a friend about leaving him. Things got much worse after that. He poured juice over me in front of the children and told them it was my fault for winding him up. [My daughter] was really upset and hasn’t been sleeping well since.”
He says I’m a bad mother and no one likes me anyway.
“He says I’m a bad mother and no one likes me anyway. He says he’d get the children taken off me because I can’t look after them properly and that no one will believe me if I tell them anything. He says I’m useless at helping the children with their homework because I’m so stupid. I never got any qualifications. The children can’t have sleepovers or friends to play as he says they’re too noisy. He once said that if I left him, he’d do anything to make sure I never saw them again but I’m not sure what he meant by this.”
I don’t have access to my own money anymore – he gives me what he thinks I need.
“Everything’s got to be done to his timetable, I need to pick him up after work and I need to be there five minutes before he comes out, so our car is the first thing he sees. His meals need to be ready at the same time every night and that’s really hard. I stopped working after I had our daughter and I don’t have access to my own money anymore – he gives me what he thinks I need, but I’m expected to buy stuff for them as well. My heart sinks every time the kids need shoes. He’s paranoid about the heating bills, so I’ve worked out exactly when the heating needs to come on to reach the temperature he wants. It’s a nightmare when the temperature changes though.”
If I do go out, he always has to drop me off and pick me up.
“If I do go out, he always has to drop me off and pick me up. He tells me I shouldn’t wear certain clothes because I look ridiculous. After I had the kids, he’d tell me I looked fat and ugly. He doesn’t like the kids socialising that much either, I was friendly with some of the other mums when [our son] was little but he put a stop to that once [our daughter] was born. He says it’s my fault [our son] has been in trouble at school recently because I don’t know how to raise him properly.”
He threatened to kill himself if I ever tried to take the children away.
“He says if I leave him, he’ll make sure he gets the house and the children and once he threatened to kill himself if I ever tried to take the children away from him.”