I’ve had a bad week. I fell off the wagon in terms of drinking, comfort-eating and not exercising – but that came after the ‘bad-ness’ started (it was my reaction to it) and (yeah, I know!) made me feel worse, and thus, added to the bad. My ex (as ever) is leading me (and everyone else) a merry dance, making promises which I know he has no intention of keeping but we have to go along with it because that’s what the court will want to see – that we have given him the benefit of the doubt (apparently, that’s what my solicitor tells me). He’s been turning up at her office, harassing the reception staff, demanding to see her and sending her disparaging and untrue emails about me, saying things like: “…….TW will not have told you this but she has issues and it was these issues of hers that she denies having that caused all the problems in our marriage. I am saddened the marriage has ended but I have come to terms with the fact that (as the District Judge said when I attended court on the 1st) I must accept it now………..” NO SHIT SHERLOCK! So, because the District Judge says it’s over, it’s over, but when I said it’s over – well – that doesn’t count!

I, for my part, have been doing so well: adhering to the court schedule, doing my bit, being dignified, getting on with my life now and moving on, not reacting to his ‘crazy-making’ and basically getting over it – except this week. It just got to me. He promised me that if I left him he’d pursue me the rest of my life and he’d make sure there was no money left – and guess what? That is exactly where we are now. He has come good on his promises and it just seems so unfair to me that he should be ‘getting away with it’. I am having to get into debt to pay the solicitors bills because the way it works in this country is that you cannot just get divorced you have to have a final judgement order and to do that you have to either co-operate with each other or go the legal route. He (you can imagine) is not co-operating, neither does he have legal counsel which makes it even harder. By the time we get to the final hearing it will have cost me the best part of £20,000, which I am having to borrow because my savings ran out after £5,000. Also, there will be no financial settlement. He’s made sure of that as he is about to be made bankrupt. The thing is, if I don’t pay the legal bills, I could be vulnerable to him making a claim off me: I’m working, he’s not. I have money, he doesn’t! It’s so unfair. Oh, I know, that’s me keeping myself stuck in my victim mode – yeah! I get it okay! But sometimes it is hard to keep it going – especially when faced with such an enemy.

But you know what the worst of it is? Let me tell you, it’s not the money. It’s this: coming to the realisation that the past five years of my life – five years of hellish imprisonment – have been for nothing! That’s a real bitch of a realisation I am struggling to come to terms with right now. I did think, a year ago when I left my abusive husband, that one day I would make some sense of it and perhaps write a book about it specifically to help others in my situation. I started. I collected up all my material: journal entries, blog entries, diaries, over 350 abusive emails from him (and my replies – not to all but to a dozen or so none of which was abusive) and I wrote a chronology that charts how it all started (the abuse), how it escalated, how I felt about it, how others responded, how I escaped and so on. I even began to write sections but although it was cathartic it really wasn’t delivering what I wanted it to. It’s like it failed to talk to or make sense to anyone but me. It was like it was my bitch that no-one else would find interesting. I even sent an outline to a publishing agent and they wrote back and said they weren’t interested. But I kept on, writing and writing. See, that’s what I do – I’m a writer. Some people do Judo or Yoga or play sports, I write. That’s my therapy. But I was trying to make it mean something – the past five years of my life I mean – and in order to do that it would have to be something that others would want to read and that they would benefit from and I’m not there yet. What’s more, loads of people have told me not to write it because they are afraid he will sue me. Well, I know about libel (I’ve studied media law as part of my job) so I know enough to write a factual piece that cannot be disputed but still their negativity has done enough to put me off and now I am down and despondent because the whole thing, the whole five years, all that material is meaningless. It means nothing. It amounts to nothing.

Victim, victim, victim – yeah, yeah, yeah! I know. But this is my blog. This is where I vent. I’m just having a bad week, that’s all.

Today, I want to write about what it’s like to be the victim in an abusive relationship being accused of being a perpetrator of violence against one’s own perpetrator, about the guilty feelings and how that, in itself, silences any idea of complaining – to the authorities – to anyone! It has taken me a while to come to terms with my own violence in my abusive relationship but over time (being out of the situation) I have developed a healthy understanding and I feel ready to disclose without fear of accusation or retribution.

The guilt I felt about the anger and violence I discharged on my husband during our three-year marriage was a major cause of concern for me. I felt guilty for a long time and he knew it. He knew just how to make me react like a scared puppy whose owner arrives home to a littered house. The dog hasn’t done anything wrong (wasn’t his fault he was left too long) but because it can smell the irritation on its owner and interpret the angry facial expression, it adopts a guilty stance. That was me; every time he spat: “but you hit me too” I adopted that guilty puppy stance – because he was right – I had! But what I was too traumatised to acknowledge (and he wouldn’t admit) was the difference between the reason I did it and the reason he did it, which made the accusation of me being a perpetrator completely wrong and unjustified.

My husband claims I have attacked him numerous times during our marriage; that I subjected him to extreme violence and aggression, that I beat him, threw things at him, yelled and screamed abuse at him and so on. I have given him cause to make those accusations, but I have never attacked him.

He has subjected me to a sustained campaign of abuse, intimidation, manipulation, bullying, violence, aggression and so on. The first time I reported him to the Police, the officer asked me “have you hit him?” to which I replied “yes” because I had. He said that as far as the Police were concerned it would be very difficult, in that case, to ‘prove’ any crime against me by my husband because it would be his word against mine. He predicted a counter claim.

Firstly, please bear in mind that by this stage I had endured dozens of attacks, violence, bullying (and all the other aforementioned) from my husband before I even went to the Police in the first place. I do not say that to justify my actions but to paint a true picture of the situation. Also, whereas I hit my husband with open hands (and I am not a fighter nor trained in any form of combat, martial arts or self-defence), my husband used a weapon against me, a walking stick mostly. Does that make me any less guilty than him? Well, yes, I believe it does – and here’s why:

I didn’t ‘attack’ my husband as he claims. I did not use violence against him in a premeditated, intentionally harmful manner. I, either, used violence to defend myself against his violence towards me or in response to his intimidation, bullying, anger, manipulation etc., etc. There is a huge difference and it’s what makes one person the perpetrator and the other the victim, in my view. My husband’s actions (whatever motivation lay behind them) were designed to ‘do me in’, belittle me, undermine me, hurt me, control me, manipulate me, and so on. My actions were intended to stop the situation, stop him doing all those things to me, end the violence, stop the abuse. It was never about doing those things to him. I can honestly say, hand-on-heart, that I never attacked him with the sole intention of hurting him or harming him in any way. Therefore, I believe, I have never attacked him – full stop! I have got angry and yelled and screamed in the hope that it would show him that he could not treat me that way and shut him up but I have never actually set out to ‘do him in’ – even when it could have been called justifiable ‘revenge’. Even now, going through the divorce and separation of the business interests (during which, as you can imagine, he is still employing his tactics) none of my actions is motivated by any need, want or desire to do him in. All of my actions are designed, intentionally, to show him (and everyone else involved) that I will not be bullied, manipulated, undermined and so on and so forth. They are also intended to limit the damage that could be caused to both of us through his negligent pig-headedness.

I often wondered, when he had driven me almost to breaking point and I was standing in front of him, fists clenched, purple in the face from screaming, two inches away from his face, why he never showed any fear.

I would have, and I did when he did it to me – I tried to get away from him as quickly as I could. But he didn’t once try and run away from me. He told his parents that I scared him, but it didn’t make sense because you don’t hang around people who scare you – and he did. He’d stay right there and keep pushing – push, push, push, hoping that I’d really lose it and run him through with a knife or something so he would have something really serious he could accuse me of but I never did. He knew I never would and that’s why he wasn’t scared. He had nothing to be scared of because I wasn’t out to do him in – unlike him.

I have mentioned this before but the most predominant emotion I felt throughout the whole of my marriage was anger. I used to feel angry 90% of the time (the other 10% I felt depressed, which is the same – anger turned inwards, I have since read). He accused me of being out of control, said I was a thug and told his parents that I got angry with him and hit him. His father told me I had a problem with anger and should go and seek anger management counselling – so I did! So desperate was I to make our marriage work that I believed him. I was prepared, at the time, to do anything to make it work and so I arranged to go for counselling (even though I was of the view that it was my husband who had the anger problem).

I disclosed everything to the counsellor. I told him about our marriage and the problems we were having. I told him about my husband and myself and told him how much I loved him and wanted to make it work and that I hadn’t even realised I had a problem with anger until my father-in-law had mentioned it, whereupon I’d thought maybe he had a point.

Having listened to me talk about all this for a whole hour, the counsellor (who was standing to make around £600 out of me if I took the course), turned to me and said: “I don’t think you have an anger problem. From what you have told me, I think your anger is a justifiable response to unreasonable behaviour from your husband and that for the most part you have it under control.”

It was then I began to realise that if I wanted to move away from anger and violence, I had to move away from our marriage.

Having been separated from my husband for almost a year, I now know this to be true. I cannot think of one single time I have been angry or felt prolonged outrage since (except once or twice when I have had to deal with him).

When is violence justified?

I also do not feel guilty anymore about defending myself against his regime. I feel justified. I have often thought about the question: when is violence justified? I guess every head of state in world has asked themselves that self same question before declaring war on their neighbours.

Being a peaceful person at heart, I find it hard to justify any. I am certainly not a supporter of war or violence in any shape or form, but having lived through four years of an abusive relationship, I can understand why victims display violence and anger too. But I have also come to realise that, as with war, it doesn’t actually solve or achieve anything and in that sense it is not the answer. It doesn’t stop the abuse or violence from the perpetrator nor does it shut up their verbal attacks and emotional undermining. If anything, it feeds their campaign and it does this in three ways:

1) Whilst the victim is being angry and violent, they are giving their power away to the perpetrator and thus, unwittingly, putting them in a position of power and control (which is exactly what the perpetrator wants).

2) It feeds the perpetrator ammunition with which to sustain their campaign of accusation and undermining.

3) It gives the victim a sense of powerlessness and thus makes them feel bad about themselves, which ultimately undermines their confidence and self-esteem, which is already at a low ebb – again, what the perpetrator wants.

Most people I have talked to are of the opinion my actions were justified, that I had been pushed beyond the boundaries of self-restraint to a place where I had no option. Now, that may be so, but it doesn’t stop me from wishing I hadn’t done it, wishing I could have been more composed, able to ‘turn the other cheek’ and not have been pushed into a reaction. But I did and I was and so I have to live with that. But I take comfort from the fact that, for me, anger is not a problem merely an emotion.

So, Josef Fritzl (the Austrian who imprisoned his daughter in the cellar for 24 years, where he repeatedly raped and abused her and fathered seven children with her) has received a life sentence, which he will serve, largely, in a psychiatric hospital.

For me this case has been particularly sickening: it has been interesting hearing different people’s reactions to what is, I believe, an extreme example of a worldwide problem that people are so keen to sweep under the rug and pretend doesn’t exist. It does exist, it has existed since time immemorial and as we now live a world where it is getting more difficult to hide – this is our opportunity to get it out into the open to be banished – for good! We must stop hiding! We will not do that by closing the door and pretending it doesn’t exist. There will be people out there saying: “Ah, yes but that happened in a sleepy little town somewhere in Europe. It would never happen here.” Believe me, my friend, it does and it is.

In a BBC report, the closing quote from the Mayor of Amstetten (the town in Austria where Fritzl lived and this took place) is: “A dark chapter in the history of our town is now closed.” This suggests to me that the town is keen to not talk about it and shut it away, which whilst I so understand, I think is a real shame. In my view Amstetten should rally together to become “that town that rose up against abuse – you remember? The one where that Fritzl monster lived and where they set up a campaign to highlight abuse so it would never go undetected again.” What a positive, healing message that would be.

 

Chain of Abuse

There is a high-profile case currently going on in Austria in which a father is accused of imprisoning, raping and sexually abusing his daughter and murdering one of her children through neglect (a child which he himself fathered – sickening!!) . The case is expected to conclude tomorrow (Thursday 19th March 2009). It is alleged he kept the girl in a locked cellar in the house for over 20 years where he persistently raped and abused her. He is denying the charges of murder and imprisonment but has pleaded guilty to the others. His defence team are claiming he has a severe ‘personality disorder’, which I am guessing they hope lessens his guilt in some way. 

Firstly, before I get to the important bit, what strikes me is that ‘abuse’ in itself is still not identified nor categorised as a crime in most parts of the world. I am guessing, if one were to ask a law-maker, they would say “Well, abuse is hard to define. What constitutes abuse? You don’t want to end up with institutions full of rowdy teenagers who have been caught swearing at the teacher!” True, but persistent, premeditated, devious abuse that happens over a period of time can be defined, categorised and thus criminalised. So, why isn’t it? If it were, anyone in an abusive relationship would have grounds to make a case against their partner before it got to the point where an assault takes place. In my case, my abusive husband was prosecuted for common assault – but what about all the other stuff? The emotional abuse, the mental torture? What about that? It was wrong of him to hit me, society is agreed on that, but all that other stuff? Well, we’re not sure yet, I mean, good grief, if we outlaw that we’d end up having to be civil to each other and then how would we get by? How would politicians (who tactically use put-downs of the opposition to win votes and press editorial) cope. What about lawyers who use manipulation techniques to weaken the other side? What about sports? What about any opposing groups? I can imagine it is this kind of thinking that stops ‘abuse’ actually getting outlawed. And I can understand, that at that level of thinking, it is difficult to see it any other way. I personally feel that outlawing some of these more devious tactics is not a bad idea. I would rather listen to Barrack Obama talking animatedly about his vision, the strengths of his politics, a united peace movement and so on than to listen to any politician bang on about the weaknesses of the opposition. I would rather hear lawyers speak the truth and let justice be done than to deviate away from it to a catch in current law that enables them to get their guilty client off. 

And that brings me on to the second (but in my view more important point in this case) is the mention of ‘personality disorder’, which I believe (in the case mentioned earlier) is being used as an excuse for this man’s monstrous behaviour. The mindset is that this man has a severe personality disorder so he cannot possibly be responsible for his actions. Well, if that is true – who the hell is? His daughter? His community? Society? His Doctor? I believe this man was responsible, he knew exactly what he was doing and worse than that he believed he was entitled to do it – she is his daughter after all, the flesh of his loins and that equates to her being his possession to do with what he likes. Where have we heard that before? It has been part of global thinking since time immemorial, thankfully (usually) not as severe as in this case but it is there never-the-less as an undercurrent. 

I believe my husband had a personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder to be exact but if I had ever alluded to that (which I did not) he and his family would have vehemently denied it – until it came to a court case of course where he could plead it as an excuse for what he did to me. When it became a useful tool to him, then he would have admitted it. 

I have seen this happen so much, people labelling behaviours with some kind of disorder as a way of excusing them. My sister-in-law, for example, was convinced her son (my nephew) was dyslexic because he kept getting poor grades at school. I was convinced it was because he wasn’t getting the right guidance from his parents and teachers. He was very practical, good with his hands and dexterous and good with mechanical things but the school was an extremely academic institution, expecting pupils to excel in those subjects. Interestingly, since my nephew has left school (he is now 20), he has worked hard and become a thorough, professional and adept mechanic and is now earning a good wage. More importantly, he is happy in his work and life and (amazingly) he can spell very well as it turns out! I am sort of getting off the point here but I believe that we should be very careful firstly of appointing ‘labels’ to particular behaviours without first undergoing thorough tests and analysis. Secondly, we must stop allowing such ‘behaviours’ to be an excuse for justice not to reign and instead use the process of labelling these behaviours as a means by which the right course of treatment should be given to the people who have them. If this Austrian father is forced to undergo years of intensive therapy in the right corrective institution, I hope they ensure it is not a soft option to prison and that it actually does work. Sad thing is, he is at the end of his life and whatever time he has left will be short. His daughter, on the other hand, has been through her prison sentence – through no crime on her part – and will probably, as a result, never be able to live a normal and fulfilled life.