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Hidden victims of lockdown: ‘Mum attacked me and dragged me to the floor. Drinking made her mood swings worse’

Ordeal: Ray, 18, fled the family home with his sister. Now he is looking for a part-time job to help make ends meet: NIGEL HOWARD ©
Ordeal: Ray, 18, fled the family home with his sister. Now he is looking for a part-time job to help make ends meet: NIGEL HOWARD ©

It was when lockdown was first announced that 18-year-old Ray began to panic. The south London student had barely been coping with his mother’s drunken tirades, spending as much time out of the home as possible, but lockdown would mean there would be no escape.

As the eldest of four siblings, the youngest aged nine, he felt the burden of making sure they would be all right.

“At first I tried to manage lockdown by keeping myself busy and redecorating my room,” he said. “We were used to my mother drinking heavily, but as lockdown progressed, she went from shouting and becoming abusive every weekend to every night.

"Sometimes she would start drinking at 8am and it would be shouting and screaming for five days in a row.

“At night I’d be trying to sleep and she would kick off again, calling me horrible names, mostly targeting me rather than my siblings. I could not sleep and it became very stressful and draining.”

The marital relationship between Ray’s parents had deteriorated years before and although his father slept in an upstairs bedroom of their council house, with his mother bedding down in the living room, his father took a stand-offish approach.

“Dad was still going to work during lockdown and when he got home he would say things like, ‘Oh, it’s just her being stupid’ or ‘I’m tired, I don’t want to hear it’. We had lived with my mum’s abuse for years and it had become normalised. The earliest time I can remember was when I was five and I realised she had been drinking because she tried to walk through our closed plastic sidedoor several times.”

As Ray talked, nervously zipping and unzipping his tracksuit top, he said he was reluctant to bad-mouth his mother. “She is my mother,” he said. “I never bonded with my dad and until a few years ago, mum and I were close. That’s why it hurts so much.”

Ray comes across as gentle and quietly spoken. “I feel for her,” he said. “She came here to study, had four children but she never properly regained her life and she has suffered from anxiety. She had counselling. But I blame dad because he never got her the help she needed for her mental health.”

Ray said he desperately tried to stop his mother drinking by hiding her supply or pouring it down the drain. “I did it because I still care about her but it only made her more angry. She would attack me and drag me to the floor by pulling my clothes. Her mood swings got worse. She calls me a ‘slut’ and an ‘arsehole’ and she would talk in a heightened high-pitched voice mocking how I spoke. I started to feel I just don’t know her anymore.”

The Evening Standard is shining a light on the hidden victims of the coronavirus lockdown (AFP via Getty Images)
The Evening Standard is shining a light on the hidden victims of the coronavirus lockdown (AFP via Getty Images)

There were times in the past four years when Ray turned to the authorities for help. “In year 11, when I was 15, there was an incident where she attacked me and scratched my neck and drew blood. When I got to school, I reported what had happened. The school called her and she told them, ‘It was a simple misunderstanding’ and they dropped it. I didn’t understand how they could have let it go so easily when there was blood on my top.”

Later, as things deteriorated, Ray called in the police. “Things had got really intense and the police came but they spoke to my parents first and I heard them laughing together downstairs. An officer came upstairs and told me, ‘Well, my mum had mental health issues when I was younger too, but I just had to get on with it’. After that I didn’t call the police because she was basically telling me to deal with it.”

But during lockdown it became impossible. “Mum was drinking every day and because she slept in the living room, which was our access to the kitchen, we sometimes couldn’t get food. She would get aggressive and block the oven and stop me cooking. So we were stuck upstairs, scared to go down. My sister and I would support each other. If one of us was being shouted at, we would be quiet because we knew that if we tried to retaliate, she would just go on for longer, but we were there for each other. It seemed that my mother no longer feared repercussions for her actions because she knew I wouldn’t again call the police. She would walk around the house like she was so powerful and I felt so powerless.”

For children like Ray, trapped in an abusive household with no escape, the stress can become unbearable — as if you are “in a state of emergency”, said one children’s charity.

During the first seven weeks of lockdown, more than 10,000 calls were received by the National Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Children helpline — a rise of 10 per cent compared with pre-lockdown. Barnado’s, the children’s charity, reported a 44 per cent rise in children needing foster care between March 1 and April 23, with 2,349 referrals — up from 1,629 in the same period in 2019.

A Barnado’s spokesman said that “vulnerable children who have experienced neglect or abuse are in a state of emergency as they wait to be placed with foster families.” Anna Edmundson, of the NSPCC, said children were the “hidden victims of the crisis”. But Ray, having been failed by the authorities, did not call anyone and instead took his fate into his own hands.

A few weeks ago, suffering heart palpitations and feeling “exhausted and constantly tearful”, he and his sister fled the family home and went to live with his sister’s friend. He also started an online fundraising page to raise money to rehouse himself and his siblings. He was inspired by a report which showed someone in a similar situation who had managed to raise enough funds to escape their abusive parents.

He was anxious about being separated from his younger siblings, he said, but also reassured that social services were now making regular unannounced checks. He worried for their safety but also that they might be taken into care. “They tell me they are doing fine at the moment,” he said.

Ray is still shaken by the impact of lockdown. He looks forward, he said, to returning to his studies and getting a part-time job. “Once a friend came round and saw one of my mother’s episodes and she was so shocked she burst into tears. I feel pleased I have effectively said to my parents that it is not acceptable for my mother’s abusive behaviour to be normalised. Our future is unclear, but I have promised myself one thing — I will be better than them.”

Names have been changed.

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