Domestic abuse doesn’t always leave a visible scar.
A Gympie woman, Trish*, said she suffered for years at the hands of a cold and emotionless husband, who took all her money and never showed the slightest sign of affection to her or their children.
He was charming and generous to the outside world – everyone’s friend.
But behind closed doors, he was cold, severe, and dismissive, said Trish.
And because he never raised a hand against her, Trish said she felt there was nothing anyone could do.
“I thought there was something wrong with me,” she said.
“He would put a hand around my throat and smother my mouth while he was having his way with me.
“And while he was choking me out, and I was nearly passing out, the children were beating on the door and screaming for me.”
“It was sickening but I put up with it because I thought I was being a good wife.”
After reading a story by Today journalist Angela Norval, Trish was inspired to reach out and tell her story, to let other women in relationships like hers know that being treated the way she was is abuse and shouldn’t be tolerated.
Trish said her ex-husband would take her pay packet from her each week and all she was left with to feed and clothe herself and the children was the government child allowance.
“But he’d eat the food too, so he was taking food out of our children’s mouths – food he wasn’t prepared to pay for,” she said.
She said a wake-up call came when her 11-year-old daughter asked “Why do you let dad do this to us?”.
She didn’t know where to go – both of her parents had died and her older sister didn’t understand why she was unhappy in her marriage.
“I wasn’t game to tell my doctor – he was his doctor too.
“But after what my daughter said, I wanted out.
“I told him I wanted a divorce but he said he didn’t want to pay for it and I didn’t have any money.
“We got into a row one night and the police were called, but they just turned around and left because he hadn’t hit me so he wasn’t breaking any laws.”
She said she tried to talk to a women’s shelter but because she wasn’t being physically abused she was left to suffer in silence.
Finally, she took out a Domestic Violence Order (DVO) against him, but that was no deterrent, with Trish recalling several times he breached it.
“He would just break in the door and I’d wake up and he’d be raping me while I slept,” she said.
She got a deadlock for the back door and took to locking her bedroom door, but the constant anxiety took its toll and she had a breakdown.
“When I heard myself say it out loud to a psychologist, it was a shock – I fell into a deep, dark hole – I had to be hospitalised,” she said.
She hopes that anyone who reads her story should know that the new coercive control laws mean other women, trapped as she was, don’t have to feel that way any longer and she encourages them to seek the help that she couldn’t get before the new laws were passed.
*Trish’s name has been changed to protect her identity.
