The male victims of domestic abuse - Herald Scotland | Life & Style | Real Lives

internethardman · 2011-05-31T17:02:45+00:00

The male victims of domestic abuse

MARISA DUFFY

23 May 2011 Two men's accounts of how love turned sour.

Jim's story

Jim was enjoying a night out after leaving the army 10 years ago when he struck up a conversation in a bar with a beautiful stranger. The meeting was to lead to a relationship which would leave him forever changed. Outwardly, he became part of a happy couple but at home he was the victim of domestic abuse which included his partner isolating him from his loved ones; controlling all his money; physically assaulting him; trashing his belongings and threatening his life.

With the fickle wisdom of hindsight, he believes that even in the heady rush of blooming romance, tiny warning flares were going off.

“It was fine to start with but early on in the relationship there were some difficulties but there were really good times and I loved her and vice versa. Tina was a beautiful woman and we fell head over heels in love,” says Jim, now 40.

Nine months after meeting, the couple from Fife moved in together and a few months later they got engaged. Jim adopted Tina’s two-year-old son Jack, she became pregnant with their first child and they got married within two years of meeting.

“It was far too early, but that was her pushing it. I should have been much more in control, but she justified all the reasons why we should live together and get engaged early.”

At first the couple were happy but Tina’s behaviour became increasingly aggressive.

“I could tell when it was about to start as the blood would drain from her face,” he says. “When she was violent, she would completely lose it. She would spit at me, throw things at me, damage property and physically assault me.

“The verbal abuse was just as damaging. She would belittle me, make me feel useless, call me fat, thick, stupid or say I was a bad father.”

After each violent episode, Tina would agree to visit a psychologist but she always broke her promise.

“She would be really apologetic. She would say that she would go and see the doctor and she would be so convincing.

“I’d always forgive her too quickly and too easily. I was getting used to it. I had my two kids to look after and make sure they were safe

“For all the bad times, I was always optimistic that we would move through it and we did. [After an incident] there wouldn’t be anything for months.It was just a normal family, loving relationship. We did a lot of things together, we got on well, it was quite harmonious. It wasn’t overly apparent that these behaviours were going to increase in frequency and intensity.”

But as Tina got further out of control the violence increased from every 3-4 months until it was a monthly event. Jim knew he had to act when she threw an electric deep fat fryer at him, only his jeans saved him from being badly burned by the hot oil.

He made contact with the social work department’s domestic violence unit and asked for support. “They sent a letter to my wife asking if she was OK and that was pretty much the end of it,” he says.

He felt betrayed – he had contacted them as the victim but that the only help they offered was to his abuser.

Throughout everything, it was the effect on the children which most concerned him. “Before our son Mark was born she would throw a lot of stuff at me and scream and attack me, not so much in the same room as our older boy Jack but within earshot.

“She would smash mirrors, throw the TV over, scratch me, hit me, scream and shout and threaten me with knives. Jack was two years old. He has difficulties now with managing his own behaviour.”

Outwardly life continued as normal. “She had a facade where if we were meeting people, she could talk and warm their hearts and make them feel like she was a nice warm person, but my family and close friends sometimes saw through the falseness.”

While friends privately had their reservations, they had no idea of the extent of the abuse.

His work - he had retrained as a teacher - became a refuge, although he sometimes had to call in sick if he had scratches to his face or arms, and fatigue was often an issue. “She would keep me up all night by threatening me. Other times, she would just argue, argue, argue until 3am.”

Things reached a crisis point in the weeks before Christmas 2004 when Jim discovered that Tina was having an affair. He confronted his wife and in response she took the two children and disappeared.

“I had no idea where she was. I was ill. I was off my work, I was on anti-depressants and sleeping tablets. I turned to alcohol as well, which isn’t like me at all.”

During this period, Tina returned to the rented flat they shared while Jim was out. “She scattered washing powder, fairy liquid, cereal, everything, over the walls, ripped the wallpaper off, smashed plates. I came home to this, the whole place completely demolished and all the kids’ Christmas presents gone.”

Distraught about his family’s whereabouts, Jim revealed the truth about his marriage to his loved ones. “It all came out. When she took the kids I was rock bottom. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t talk, I was constantly crying, I couldn’t function.”

“For 10 days I was tearing my hair out. I contacted the police, they didn’t want to hear anything and told me it was a civil matter. I called out of hours social work and kept calling until they managed to get contact with her and assured me that the kids were OK but this was nine days later.”

While social services tracked down Tina after he explained that he feared for her safety and that of his children, they would not give him any further information. He wonders if she told them he was violent towards her.

Following the disappearance, Tina moved into council accommodation with the two boys but the separation only served to exacerbate things. “She began making extreme threats to my life and the lives of my family saying she was going to smash the windows and kill me. She had people texting and phoning me and threatening me.”

She also denied him contact with his sons, forcing him to go to court to gain access which cost him £8000.

After a year, Tina’s relationship with her boyfriend ended and eventually Jim and Tina got back together and she and the boys moved into the house Jim had bought. He hoped it would be a new start. “Looking back, she wanted me because I had a house, not because she wanted to be with me. I think she did love me but I don’t think she wanted to remain committed to loving me. She wanted to play the field.”

His decision caused frustration amongst his loved ones. “I was going against everything my friends and family were saying. I was probably thinking too much about the kids and how I wanted them to grow up in a family unit.”

Two years later Jim discovered that Tina was having another affair and ended the relationship. This time he did not seek help from any outside agencies. “After my first experience with the social work, I felt that there was nobody that would listen or intervene. Any system that I did try and involve would end up not in my favour anyway because it is orientated to women.

“My experience with the social work and the domestic violence unit was terrible. It never supported me in any way.

“It wasn’t until we were separated and she sent threatening texts that the police appeared to take things a little more seriously. In the early days, when she had kicked me and punched me, they never recorded that as an incident, even when I wanted to press charges. When we were separated, she was given a warning. As far as I know, she has never had more than a warning.”

They are now separated but not divorced.

“She has periods of unreasonable behaviour but I have learned to control it more effectively. If she is screaming down the phone I will hang up. If she is texting me or harassing me I’ll report her to the police.”

He regrets that their sons, now aged 12 and 8, have been exposed to the situation.

“When the kids were younger she was able to manipulate them, to the extent that they were calling me “Bad Dad”. I’m a great dad and I do loads of things with them so that hit me hard. Now they see what she is like. If she says anything about me they will challenge it so she is learning that she has to be more civil.”

With the exception of his close friends and family, no one knows that Jim was a victim of domestic abuse. He believes that as a man, it is particularly difficult to talk about.

“Society makes that difficult because it isn’t recognised or accepted that this happens to men. That allows women to continue to do it to men without fear of any repercussions.”

internethardman · 2011-05-31T17:03:04+00:00

Paul's story

Paul met Sarah through a dating agency in 1994. The pair arranged to meet in Edinburgh one summer’s afternoon and spent hours drinking tea and chatting before enjoying a romantic stroll in Princes Street Gardens. Paul was elated when they agreed to meet again.

They got engaged the following year and married in 1996. However, even before the wedding Paul experienced flashes of violence. Once, as they stood outside a restaurant deciding where to eat, she became angry and started kicking him in full view of a row of taxis. On another occasion, when he was a guest at her parents’ house, she threatened to throw his overnight bag out of the upstairs window during a disagreement.

“There were one or two incidents which concerned me but she always brushed it off as PMT and said sorry,” says Paul, now 46.

Over the next decade, the couple went on to have four children and fell into the absorbing rhythm of family life. However, the dynamics of the relationship underwent an insidious change as Sarah became increasingly critical and bullying.

She coached the children to insult him and constantly belittled his job – an operations manager in a warehouse – and mocked a disability he had in his arm which he suffered following an accident at work years earlier. She would contort her wrist and call him “spastic”. Demeaning comments had become the norm and were punctuated by flare-ups where she would assault him with her fist or household objects – often in front of the children.

“My wife at one point came at me with a bread knife. The kids were having their lunch at the time. Another time, she came at me with a hair comb and gouged my arm.” This attack came after she ordered him to cut the grass. Sarah also threatened to have an affair “with a real man”, before apologising.

However, one night she left the house saying she was going to a girls’ night at a friend’s house and would get a taxi home. In the early hours, Paul heard an engine outside and looked out to see a car with his wife and the male driver locked in an embrace.

“She just came in and went to bed,” he says. “I was just kind of numb to it, because of what was happening.

“I really started to think about our marriage. I started to think that the stuff I was getting from her verbally and physically ... I just felt that it wasn’t a life actually. There were periods of normality and I think I fed off that. But when it went wrong you’d always question yourself and believe that you could make it better. But that is because if you are in love with a person, they say that love is blind.”

On half a dozen occasions he fled to his father’s house for up to a week after being attacked by his wife – but he kept going back. “You hear it so many times about women who are abused, but I went back. The letters and the phone calls started coming, all lovey-dovey, and I went back. It was more for the children and thinking of the good times.”

However, the niceties would swiftly dissipate. “She seemed to be able to switch it on and off. She would be remorseful for two minutes and then expect everything to be back to normal.”

As the situation worsened, Paul realised how vulnerable he was to false accusations. On two occasions, in the midst of an argument, Sarah dialled 999 and asked for the police, who turned up on the doorstep. The first time, she blamed their young son, saying he had been playing with the phone.

On the second occasion the police arrived to find Paul packing his suitcase; he told them that his wife had been tormenting him and he was leaving. She was taken away by police to give a statement about the incident.
While Paul never discovered what had been said, and no charges ever came from it, Sarah taunted him, saying she had reported him as being a “wife-beater” and that his neighbours and family would shun him.

Some time later an envelope dropped on the doormat which was to signal the beginning of the end of the relationship. It was addressed to Paul from the legal aid board and concerned a compensation claim for his accident at work. Sarah inspected the envelope and wrongly assumed he was starting divorce proceedings.

It unleashed a prolonged bout of abuse. This time, because of bruising Paul sustained, Sarah was charged with assault. On her arrest she had falsely alleged that her husband had pushed her, so both were detained overnight at the police station. “In the morning, the cell door was opened and I was told I was free to go. A WPC told me it was over and I could begin to put my life back together.”

After 14 years together, Paul moved out of the marital home. His wife’s bail conditions stated that she wasn’t to contact him. He saw his children every Sunday but the situation flared up a few months later on Christmas Day when Paul had been permitted 30 minutes to visit his four children.

As soon as Paul stepped into the house, his father-in-law pushed the door shut, trapping his sister between the door and the frame, shouting that she was not allowed in.

The following month, Sarah appeared in court for assault and was admonished. “I was absolutely shocked ... [I thought] “What is the point?” says Paul. “I can’t believe that a mother who is charged with assault still gets to stay in the matrimonial home. Whereas if the man is charged with that, he is out on his ear.”

The following year, the divorce went through and both were granted equal access to their children. Despite this, Paul no longer sees them because of the open hostility from his ex-wife.

The last sight Paul had of his children was on that Christmas morning 18 months ago. He clings to the hope that his wife will let him resume his visits.

Otherwise, he says he will wait for his children to be old enough to make their own decisions. In the meantime, he gathers the shards of his life together and tries to move on.

Names have been changed to protect the identities of the children involved.

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Title	The male victims of domestic abuse - Herald Scotland \| Life & Style \| Real Lives
Author	internethardman
Upvotes	3
Comments	2
Date	May 31, 2011 5:00 PM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/hocbt/the_male_victims_of_domestic_abuse_herald/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/the-male-victims-of-domestic-abuse-herald-scotland.1039247 https://theredarchive.com/post/1039247

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