I endured five years in an abusive relationship before I left.
Financial, coercive, psychological, emotional and violent abuse – the latter even resuming immediately after I’d given birth.
But even though I consider myself ‘free’, six years later, the torment has not stopped. It has simply shifted onto someone else: My young son.
About 18 months ago, my eight-year-old began showing signs of trauma, leading up to and immediately following contact with his father.
His confidence was wafer thin. He started apologising profusely if he did the tiniest thing wrong no matter how much I said he didn’t have to.
Eventually, my son started opening up, both to me and his counsellor.
When in his father’s care, he was left home alone at five years old. He has been picked on and pranked by his father and his acquaintances. Picture this: Four adults in a house, and the only one they’re pulling pranks on is the youngest child, his father encouraging it all with winks of approval, all of which his son sees.
Videos have been made of my son asleep, as he happens to snore, which were then shared with a network of people, without his or my permission, in a desperate attempt to garner a cheap laugh.
When my son has tried to stand up for himself, he’s been met with almost identical verbal abuse to what I endured, including being told to: ‘Shut that f*****g mouth of yours’.
Hearing this immediately triggered my PTSD. I shifted into survival mode, frantically searching for ways to protect my defenceless, vulnerable child.
This Is Not Right
On November 25, 2024 Metro launched This Is Not Right, a year-long campaign to address the relentless epidemic of violence against women.
With the help of our partners at Women’s Aid, This Is Not Right aims to shine a light on the sheer scale of this national emergency.
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There is still an unfair belief, a caveat, to abusive behaviour: That the person being abused must in some way be to blame and contributed to that behaviour – that idea of, ‘Now, what did you do to make him do that?’.
But who’s at fault this time? Is it my son’s behaviour that drives his father to call him a ‘c**t’? Is it my son’s fault that his father never tells him that he loves him unless in public or an audience is present? That his father hides his best clothes when family visits, fearful that the attention will be taken away from his narcissist self?
Meanwhile, I am left devastated when my son says to me: ‘I don’t know why they are nice to each other, but they are not nice to me.’
For years, I’ve worried about my child’s safety when he’s with his father but shifting abuse onto children is something very few people seem to acknowledge, including the family courts.
When his father took my son to an adult party in a field, I thought, surely, the family court would see it for the neglect that it was.
After my son told me everything that had happened, I was frantic in the run-up to his next visit with his father. I spoke to the Met Police, I spoke to the NSPCC and to women’s charity Refuge – they all told me the same thing: Go back to court.
My solicitor, always diligent, guided me through the process and my child’s counsellor produced a 25-page report detailing the party and other incidents my son had recounted during therapy.
I went into the safeguarding hearing hoping for the best, trusting that the family court would act in my child’s best interests and take some steps to mitigate the safeguarding risk – one I had raised three times before.
I am left devastated when my son says to me: ‘I don’t know why they are nice to each other, but they are not nice to me’
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I was scolded like a child and told I had made the wrong application, and therefore the judge had not not read any of the material I supplied. I apologised profusely, trying not to anger the judge further.
Yet, he still passed judgement, claiming my son was probably just confused about being left home alone and had misunderstood the situation and wrote in the order that: ‘The mother wishes the child has a fulfilling time with the father’.
I wonder if he would have said the same if there had been a fire in the house that day.
My son’s father regularly taunts me about my application getting thrown out. He’s emboldened now, so we are just waiting for what’s going to happen next. I don’t believe he will stop until my child turns 16.
Learn more about Refuge
Refuge is the largest domestic abuse organisation in the UK. If you’re being abused, or are concerned about someone you know, Refuge can offer support.
Refuge helps thousands of survivors per day to overcome the many impacts of domestic abuse – from physical, to emotional, to financial –and works confidentially and individually with every survivor, tailoring a unique plan that meets her needs and helping her rebuild her life.
You can find out more about the charity here; and if you need help now, you can contact Refuge 24/7, for free, on 0808 2000 247.
The impact of domestic abuse lasts a lifetime. Abusers do not simply wake up one day and decide to stop. It remains an under-prosecuted crime and it doesn’t end when the terrible relationship finally ends.
There is no accountability for destroying the life of an intimate partner and without it, there is no pathway to rehabilitation. So whether you choose to go to court or not, the fight to keep children safe from abuse is ongoing.
It’s high time courts did more as my son and I are very far from being the only ones in this situation. One in four women are affected by domestic abuse in their lifetime, and this frequently means children are put at risk.
As well as the risk to children’s immediate safety, we’re raising a generation of children who will carry domestic abuse trauma as a hallmark of their childhood.
This is trauma that can manifest in so many ways when they become adults, including having dysfunctional families of their own as well as more serious issues like crime and addiction, which can lead to imprisonment and even death.
This is what family courts are ultimately turning a blind eye to.
There needs to be fundamental change in family courts. One immediate change I’d like to see is to cost orders, where the court decides which party should pay the legal costs of the other. It’s too easy for abusive parents to bring frivolous proceedings as a way of trying to cause more harm.
Judges also need to be accountable for the decisions they make. Not only is domestic abuse a gender-based crime, research also indicates that court judgements can be gendered and disproportionately disadvantage women.
Domestic abuse has stolen a large part of my life and it’s now stealing my son’s.
When something goes wrong, despite my efforts to protect him, it will be my child who is left to suffer the consequences.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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