My mum supports victims of domestic abuse – but she has a dark secret

I was 10 years old when I stopped talking to my dad.

It was 2012 and we’d just learned that my sister had fallen pregnant at 16.

My father’s response was to kick my sister out, and beat my mum.

This wasn’t the first time he’d been violent. But something inside of 10-year-old me snapped. What had been a relatively happy childhood – with occasional caravan holidays, playing in the street with friends without a care – turned sour.

I’d like to say that things got better – that bridges were mended, apologies made and forgiveness given.

In reality, I’m 21 and I haven’t had any real relationship with my mum in over three years, and all because of my father and the PTSD he has left me with.

In the weeks after my sister’s pregnancy announcement, I spent a lot of time visiting her in the emergency temporary accommodation. Meanwhile my mum lied to my dad about where I was (the park with friends was the usual ruse).

When my dad asked me where I’d been, I would ignore him. If he asked again, I would swear or shout and he’d chase me to my room where there was a lock on the door – on the outside.

At this point, it’s reasonable to question where social services were.

Unfortunately, this happened in the early 2010s, otherwise known as the ‘austerity years’ and budget cuts meant I lost my social worker (assigned after my sister’s pregnancy and dad’s violent outburst). Social services needed criminal convictions if they were going to keep you under their remit.

With my circumstances no longer monitored, I felt alone and helpless. My door got locked more frequently and I feared going home. 

In the three years that followed, my mum attempted to leave my dad a few times and I would find myself sofa surfing, yet I always ended up back behind the locked bedroom door.

Things were so up and down that I started to have anxiety attacks – sometimes so bad that I would pass out in school – always worried about what I would go home to. Bulimia and sleepless nights followed.

It wasn’t like domestic abuse was a foreign concept to my mum. Her day job was to support victims.

I even remember talking with her the day after England lost a match in the 2010 World Cup – research shows that reports of domestic abuse rise by 38% when the team loses – and she was exhausted. Work had been hectic.

Part of me admired her strength: she would go to work day-in-day-out to help survivors, all the while keeping her own situation under wraps. Yet, the other part of me couldn’t forgive her.

I saw her as an enabler to my dad’s behaviour. I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t just leave; as far as I was concerned, she was an accomplice to my dad’s behaviour. 

Sometimes, they’d go on holiday together while I stayed at home alone. Other times, my family would all join in on Christmas, birthday or wedding celebrations. I’d sit in my room or just leave the house for a few days, staying on whoever’s sofa was available. 

I resented my mum more than my dad at this time. I knew he was just a bad person, but my mum wasn’t – so why was she letting this go on?

Now, I know things aren’t that black and white. Escaping a domestic abuser isn’t easy. And if any one of my dad’s arrests – there were a few throughout the years for domestic violence, pub fights, and even once for kidnapping my sister – had led to a conviction it wouldn’t have been this way. 

But there were no charges. We were all too afraid to give police statements, and the police were too under-resourced to investigate.

Eventually, at 14, my mum left my dad. He had threatened to murder me with a knife and a rock as our neighbours looked on, and Mum was advised by the police that social services get back involved. She didn’t want to lose her children, so she found the strength to leave.

We were given high priority status for social housing, and moved into a new-build a few towns over. Finally, I felt safe going home. For the first time in years, I slept well. I had less anxiety attacks; I spent more time with friends and my bulimia symptoms eased up.

I was so relieved. It felt like my nightmare was finally coming to an end, like I could close what had been a sorry chapter of my life for good. I might have a normal life. I just wanted the chance to be a carefree teenager.

Sadly, I was mistaken. 

A few months after we’d moved, my dad broke into our new house in a rage. He thought my mum had a new partner and so left fist-sized holes in the walls smeared with blood. 

I had been at work during the incident but when I came home, I started hyperventilating in my room and eventually passed out. When I woke hours later, my heart was still palpitating. My safe haven was now just another place I felt anxious to return to. 

A couple of weeks later, my mum moved back in with my dad.

I felt utterly defeated. I argued with my mum – I assumed she was resigned to the thought that she could never escape my dad. I told her that if she went back, I wouldn’t follow her, and that’s exactly what happened.

I would live mostly alone in the house that Mum had secured for us for the next three years. I was 15.

Though mum mostly covered the essentials, I chipped in every now and then for food shopping and bills by working.

I never took a weekend off work. I was afraid it would all come crashing down, and I needed a back-up plan for when it did.

It was only once I turned 18 that I was able to leave my council house for university. It was then that I decided: I didn’t want my life to continue like this.

I knew that speaking to Mum would mean I could never escape, because she couldn’t get out from Dad. I now haven’t seen my mum, only exchanged a few words on WhatsApp, since going to uni.

I talk to the rest of my family – siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles – but not as much as I’d like. They, mostly, still speak to my dad. I don’t think it’s smooth sailing, with regular turmoil and fallouts, but I make a point of not asking. I’m still trying to just move on.

And when I have, on the infrequent occasion, replied to one of Mum’s messages asking how I am, all the problems I have faced return. 

Anxiety attacks, bulimia, nightly sleep paralysis, and the most intense depression imaginable – it all comes rushing back to the surface.

In 2023, in the first of my NHS talking therapies sessions, I told my therapist about this. He then asked me to fill out a questionnaire.

Unaware what it was measuring at the time, I did so without a second thought. As it turned out though, it was a clinical PTSD test.

The cut-off score for PTSD was something like 30. I scored 65. 

After that, it all made sense. When all those feelings of anxiety and fear returned when I replied to my mum. Or when the sleepless nights returned following a pretty mundane chat with my sister about my hometown. Everything clicked into place.

I was unknowingly reliving those repressed moments of fear every time. 

My therapist talked me through coping mechanisms, and referred me for something called EMDR therapy, which I’ve only heard good things about. I haven’t had any yet, though, as I’m of course one of millions languishing on NHS waitlists. 

It also helped me accept that I’d made the right decision in leaving that life behind me. I’ve learned how to just enjoy life. I can go out, and not fear going home. I can have silly conversations about nothing important, and not constantly be thinking – what could go wrong. 

My grades have improved, and through all the paid work, I have relative security. Nobody who is beholden to an abuser holds the keys to my future – I do. That is a massive relief.

Still, I worry about my mum. Worry that, one day, my dad’s violent streak will see her killed. 

I’m scared I will never have a relationship with her again.

But I’m even more petrified that, should we be able to rebuild our connection, that I’ll find myself back in the shoes of that scared child – desperate for someone to help yet now cursed with the knowledge that nobody is coming to save them.

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