For many years I have been working with women who have experienced abuse and coercive control. I have also experienced it. But I am still very often shocked and appalled by the harrowing accounts of what my ladies have suffered. Most people in our society are normal human beings, with normal opinions on what is right and what is wrong. For the vast majority of us it is unfathomable that some individuals would intentionally spend their time, thoughts and energy devising ways to destroy those who they are closest to.

For myself and my ladies, this is also the case. We are normal people who have experienced something so unimaginable happening to us, that we have constantly come up against friends, relatives, support service workers like the police, social work, lawyers, judges etc, etc, who also cannot imagine that the behaviour we experience can be credible, and so they search for what they think is the rational explanation for the situation. They cannot imagine the true extent of the sick behaviour that is in fact the reality, and it is in the literal sense incredible.

So, the victim is not fully supported, good professional help is not given, the courts let the perpetrators away with it all and at best hand out punishments that are a disgusting insult to those they are supposed to protect and justify. We try and explain to people what it actually looks like in a day-to-day life, but if you have not experienced it yourself, you will definitely struggle to understand this stuff.

In an attempt to bring some sort of understanding to the normal well-adjusted people out there, we have put together a collection of our experiences. This is not a story from start to finish of the abuse suffered, but short snippets of events and situations that will hopefully give an insight onto what it is truly like to be in an abusive relationship.
All of these stories are from the ladies I work with, and I give you my personal assurance that they are all every bit as severe as they describe.
Fiona McGrath
(Domestic abuse advocate)