Taking back our lives

Attacked, afraid, abused but not alone: twice as many disabled women in the UK experience domestic abuse compared to non-disabled women. It’s time to start talking about it. Cathy Reay meets four women that never imagined they would be made to be afraid to stay at home

Research published by the charity Women’s Aid last year uncovered the reality that disabled women are twice as likely to be on the receiving end of domestic abuse and that, furthermore, their disabilities are a vulnerability abusers manipulate in their attack. For Holly, who has cerebral palsy, walking away from her abuser, from her family life, wasn’t exactly easy. She and three other women have chosen to tell Disability Now about their experience of domestic abuse not because they want sympathy, but because they now realise how crucial it was that they sought and found a way out. Here are their stories.

HOLLY
For 12 of our 15 years of marriage my husband made me feel like I couldn’t do anything right.

He wouldn’t let me spend time with my children except to feed them. He always bullied me in a disablist way.

Two years ago I found out he was having an affair with a friend of mine. I found texts on his phone that described me as a “bitch”. It devastated me but I loved him desperately and wanted to make it work.

He started pushing me over around furniture so I would fall over it. He came to the house once and jumped me while I was in the shower. I consented to having sex with him but at the same time I knew he was only doing it because he had physical power over me, I couldn’t have said no if I wanted to. I felt used. I got so upset that he used my disability to his advantage however he wanted, to jump on me, undermine me in front of the children, hurt me.

I went up to him on one occasion to put my arms around him and he just walked across the room, dragging me across the floor. Another time he pushed me against the conservatory wall, holding onto me by my neck, and said “it won’t take much to kill you, I’ll just break your neck, I don’t care”.

Meanwhile, one of our neighbours started coming round, being handy with housework, then one day he suddenly forced himself on me. The man was a friend of my husband’s and helped him to fabricate an affair between us so that my husband would get child custody. Luckily he didn’t.

I fled to Refuge with the children and it has come out my way but it has taken three years. The children and I are still healing. It was difficult at first to find a disability-accessible refuge that would take me and the kids but I’m glad we left and it’s finally over.

SASHA
We started going out together when we were teenagers; things were fine for a long time, although I thought he could be a little possessive sometimes when I was on the phone to friends.

When I got pregnant he seemed happy about it but his behaviour got worse. He started slamming things whenever I was on the phone. He made it hard to have friends.

My arthritis got worse during the pregnancy and he started doing things to inconvenience or trouble me as my health declined. For example, he knew I couldn’t stand fish, so he would cook it and I’d get physically sick. I felt trapped, I had no say in anything. He would find reasons for me not to leave the house; he wouldn’t even let me pay for a taxi to take myself to the shops.

The more I pulled away the worse it got. When I was five months pregnant I had a doctor’s appointment and on my return I went upstairs to lie down. He came home and dragged me out of bed, yelling at me “where have you been?…who with?” He was intimidating; he never laid a finger on me but managed to frighten me. He’d later say “but I never hit you” as if that made everything okay.

By then I’d started reading stuff on the internet and identified our relationship as abusive, and I knew I had to end it. I called Women’s Aid for advice on how to escape.

I got a hostel arranged through the council, which is where I had my baby. It was miserable. But I came from an abusive background and I was damned if I was going to have a daughter grow up in that environment.

It isn’t just partners that abuse. Children can find it hard to grasp why and how their mums are physically, mentally and/or emotionally different, why they’re not like the other dutiful mums waiting in the playground. They may be bullied by the other kids in the playground, they may feel neglected or overworked at home. But whatever the reason, mums Tina and Jasminda found that it is easy for their kids to become abusive and very distressing if they do.

JASMINDA
After my husband died I realised I couldn’t stand up for myself in front of my verbally abusive son anymore. He constantly called me names like “pussyhole” or “cunt”, told me I have no friends and that I’m a druggie for taking prescribed morphine.

I was grieving and felt far more vulnerable to my son physically attacking me after my husband wasn’t around. I became withdrawn and whenever he confronted me I would go to a friend’s house or just leave the room.

I couldn’t talk to my son, he never thought he had a problem, it was always me. He knew I was vulnerable and would go in for the kill with things I was sensitive about.

I go to a daycare centre and eventually I just broke down in front of them. The manager told me it had to stop. I joined a vulnerable adults group at the Ealing Centre for Independent Living, who helped me start court proceedings against my son as he refused to leave the house.

My son failed to turn up to court so his eviction notice was served to him. Since then he’s visited me a couple of times and he’s admitted that he needed that to happen and that he needed to see the outside world.

Disabled people are very vulnerable but there is help out there and we should seek it. You might feel you’re going to be lonely but it’s better to be lonely than to be scared in your own home. I felt isolated but now I feel free.

TINA
It all started after I had a heart attack. She saw that I was weak; the mum that she used to watch go to work every day wasn’t as strong as she used to be. It’s as if she resents the weakness, she wanted a strong mum, physically and emotionally, and suddenly she didn’t have one.

Whenever she didn’t get her own way she started to break things, smash stuff up, and push me around. She once called me from home, threatening that unless I returned immediately she would smash everything in the house. When I walked in I nearly dropped dead: CDs, laptop, plates, everything was shattered.

I felt threatened; I had to get out for my own safety. I called the police but I felt too bad to press charges. She was so apologetic, she cried and said she was sorry a million times, but no matter how genuine that is sometimes all she sees is red.

A few days later she threw an ornament at a wall. She has punched me twice, outside the front door and once outside her grandmother’s house. At her grandmother’s she had me by my hair and I just turned to her and said: “Why are you doing this?”

At 16 my daughter is stronger than me, and that is really frightening when she’s so temperamental. But I forgive her every time because I feel sorry for her. I’m conflicted by my love for her and my need to feel safe in my own home.

Nowadays I won’t show any weakness. Whenever she attacks I simply tell her I can have her removed from the house, that I can stop her from coming over. She lives with her grandmother now and visits me on weekends. It’s hard but it’s necessary, I’m stronger now because she’s not with me.

• All names have been changed. If you would like further information or advice on coping with domestic abuse visit womensaid.org.uk or call 0808 2000 247.