Yahoo News ‘Please don’t call the police, mummy. He said he’d kill you if you call the police’
It was at the beginning of May when Maria, a care home nurse and mother of three sons, reached breaking point.
The coronavirus had meant that neither she nor her husband could leave the flat for work or pick up their children from school and a verbally abusive relationship she had tolerated for years boiled over.
Over a period of eight weeks, Maria’s husband turned physically abusive and threatened to kill her.
“For years my husband had screamed abuse at me and called me ‘useless’, ‘stupid’ and ‘fat’ in front of our sons, but in March, he waited until the children were out walking with a family friend to attack me,” said Maria.
“My husband has this terrible anger that he has taken out on me and that day he came after me. He kicked me and he kept kicking until I fell down the stairs. I had bruising and pain all down my back and right leg, but it was lockdown so going to hospital was out of the question.”
Maria, who is in her forties, threatened to call the police, but he mocked her. “Go on, call them,” he taunted. “You are wasting your time, they won’t help you, they won’t even come.”
Later her youngest son cried and begged her: “Please mummy, daddy said to me that if you call the police, he’s gonna show you, he’s gonna kill you. Please don’t call the police on him, I don’t want you to die.”
Maria was desperate. The “charming man” she had fallen in love with was a distant memory. They had been sleeping in different rooms since October — he was on the downstairs sofa. “Every night I would cry and pray, ‘Please God, get me out of here, if you don’t, something terrible will happen.’ I had this voice in my head telling me, ‘Run to safety now.’ I was thinking, where can I go? The idea of calling the council suddenly popped into my head.”
My son had let him in and he started pushing me. He was out of control and screaming: ‘I’m gonna mess you up’
Maria’s cry for help was one of thousands received by councils and refuges during lockdown. Domestic abuse charities, such as Hestia, recorded a 32 per cent surge in women victims of domestic violence seeking to access their refuges compared with the same period in 2019.
The charity Refuge saw a 66 per cent rise in calls to their helpline and a 950 per cent rise in visits to the helpline website, where women can request a safe time to be contacted. Lockdown had removed both the normal escape routes and the ability to access essential support services. In the first three weeks of restrictions, 14 women and two children were killed in the UK as a result of domestic abuse, an average of five a week, more than double the normal rate, according to the charity Advance.
Yet for many women, this call for help is just the beginning of what can be a long process — and not all abused women decide to leave in the end. In Maria’s case, the council responded by sending someone to change the locks that same day but again, her husband taunted her and their crying sons that he would “show her his other side” if she “dared” not to give him a new key.
Several times since March she had called a refuge helpline, trying to whisper so her husband would not hear — and they had outlined her options and said, “We can help, but it’s up to you to decide if you want to leave.
The women at the refuge were so kind…within three days I felt like a different person
Maria agonised. She had selflessly wanted her sons to have the benefit of a father. Besides, she didn’t want to give up her council flat — her preference was for him to leave. But deep down she knew there was only one way to end this.
Her opportunity came when her husband announced he had an appointment and told their older son to make sure to “let him in with the new key” when he returned “or else there would be war”. As soon as he was gone, Maria told her sons they were going out “for a treat”. Her oldest refused to go. She swept up the two younger boys and fled.
“I took them to Asda and we bought food,” she said. “While I was there, I was crying, torn, thinking I can’t leave my oldest son. So I went back. As I got home, I frantically locked the door with the new key. Almost immediately, the council social worker called me. ‘How are you?’ she asked.
“I went into the back garden to talk privately but my oldest son panicked and started shouting, ‘Mummy, is that the police, don’t call the police.’ He grabbed my phone and I followed him into the house and got it back and that’s when I saw him.
“My son had let him in and he started pushing me. He was out of control and screaming, ‘You think you can lock me out, I gonna mess you up.’ He pushed me out of the back door and banged it shut on me and I fell on the ground in fear of what might happen next. The social worker was shouting down the phone, ‘Are you OK, Maria?’ And that’s when everything happened.”
Maria called 999 and next thing she recalls the police were at the front door. “They took my husband away. That night I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking, this is my chance to run but where can I go?”
The next day the police called Maria to say they had released her husband to stay with his cousin and that he had been told to stay away. “I thought, his cousin lives seven minutes away! I have to go.” Maria called the refuge line and said she had to leave “NOW”. They phoned Hestia who called back to say they could offer her a room that night. “When will you be here?” they asked. “I said, ‘Give me 40 minutes.’ I called a cab, gathered up some clothes in bin bags, grabbed my boys and we left.”
Now, not for the first time in our interview, Maria sobbed. It was several minutes before she could speak again. “The women at the refuge were so kind,” she said. “I found warmth. I found peace. Within three days, I felt like a completely different person.”
Maria has filed for divorce. The plan, she said, is that the council will move her and the boys to a secret location and the children will start new schools.
In the eight weeks she has been in the refuge, she has had time to reflect. “Lockdown was the worst experience but it was also the best because it made me finally act. Now I can start over in a new part of London and find a new job. I feel strong. My children are so relieved to be out of the war. You should see their faces — they are shining. They say, “Mummy, it’s so wonderful to see you happy”.
Names have been changed.
