I am looking for honest advice because I feel completely torn between what has happened, what is still happening, and what to do next. It is long, but everything connects and I want to explain it properly.
When I was 18, I was raped by someone else. I was very drunk, it was my virginity, and the man involved convinced himself I was going to be his girlfriend. I did report it to the police, but I was young and ashamed, and I decided not to continue with the case. It has stayed with me ever since, and I have carried a lot of guilt and confusion about what consent really meant back then.
In 2021 I met my ex partner. He love bombed me from the start with constant affection, intensity, and promises of stability. He moved in quickly. I knew he used cocaine, but I did not realise how dependent he was until later. I regret all of this because I had a 10 year old son, and I work every day to try to repair the damage.
When I fell pregnant, I asked him to stop using drugs, but by then the pattern was already there. I am not listing everything he did, but he would disappear for hours or days, leaving me sick with worry. When I was 36 weeks pregnant, he left me sitting in a car in the middle of nowhere while he carried on drinking and trying to cheat on me somewhere nearby. It was humiliating and frightening, and it showed me exactly where I stood in his life. There was always heavy drinking, drug use, cheating, disappearing, and lying about where he had been. I wish I had left then, but I stayed. I was not strong at the time, I kept hoping he would change. I am strong now. The final straw came much later, when he stopped getting up for work for the second week in a row and I realised I could not live like that any longer.
If I questioned him, he turned everything back on me. He gaslighted constantly, rewriting events and accusing me of being controlling until I doubted myself. He was often aggressive in tone and behaviour, slamming things, shouting, and pacing, but I told myself it was not abuse because he did not hit me.
There is also a recorded argument that shows how the relationship worked. One night he disappeared after saying things that made me think he might harm himself. He had apparently tried to take an opioid overdose about a year earlier, so I was genuinely frightened that he might do it again. I looked at the phone bill and saw calls between my number and another number that I strongly suspected belonged to the friend he often spent time with. I messaged that number to check if he was safe. Later, he used that one act to accuse me of being controlling and invading his privacy. In the transcript I am calm and explaining that I was scared for him. He is defensive, angry, and ends with an ultimatum, saying it is his way or he is gone. It is a clear example of how he twisted care into control to maintain power.
In October 2023, while we were still together, he came home from work high on cocaine. We had vaginal sex, which I only agreed to because I wanted to avoid a fight. Then he tried to have anal sex. I said no. He carried on anyway. I was on my front, frozen and crying. He did not notice or did not care. The next day I told him what he had done. He looked blank and said he did not remember. Since then he has convinced himself it never happened and that I made it up.
After that, things got worse. He stayed out all night, cheated, came home high, and lied constantly. I lived in permanent anxiety.
In mid 2024, he got drunk, punched something, and grabbed me by the throat. There were no bruises, but it terrified me. I told the police about it last week as part of a wider report about coercive control. When I spoke to them, I was mainly reporting the ongoing abuse and harassment by email, but I included the rape, the emotional abuse, the gaslighting, and the throat grabbing as part of the full picture.
We have a three year old daughter. Contact is supervised by my mum. I will not allow unsupervised access because my daughter is too young to explain if something goes wrong, and he has shown repeatedly that he cannot put her welfare first. This is not about bitterness, it is about safeguarding. He said he wished she had died of SIDs at 6 months old, said he’d shut her in a room and walk away if she was screaming, left her in my care when I had a hole in my mouth and fever to go out drinking. Refused to come home to help me even though I was desperate.
Since the split the abusive patterns have continued.
• He has used financial coercion, withholding child maintenance and saying he will not pay unless I agree to unsupervised contact.
• He has tried to control mediation, refusing to tell me which mediator he is using until after his appointment.
• He has broken boundaries, introducing our daughter to his new partner behind our backs by sneaking off while my mum’s back was turned.
• He sends long, contradictory, and coercive emails, which the police now have copies of. He deliberately tries to paint me as unreasonable, I refuse to engage with some of them and have been asking for a mediator and he wouldn’t agree to it.
He has also accused me in emails of everything he has done himself. He calls me manipulative, controlling, coercive, and abusive. It is complete projection. He rewrites events to make himself the victim, and the tone of his messages mirrors the behaviour I experienced throughout the relationship. He even brought up a single moment when I was changing our daughter’s nappy and she was screaming. I essentially went to tap her, but basically smacked her. I didn’t mean to, it wasn’t reactionary at all - it was just a “how do I crack her out of screaming so poo doesn’t roll off the bed” moment. It was one of those stressful parenting moments that we all regret and learn from, but he has used it to paint me as abusive while ignoring his own behaviour.
He already has another child he does not see, and now his new partner is pregnant within months of him leaving. I am horrified because I can see the same cycle starting again, the charm, the chaos, the control, the abandonment.
I also have a screenshot from another woman saying she woke up with him on top of her. I am not saying it is the same as what happened to me, but it concerned me because it suggests a pattern of him ignoring consent and boundaries.
I am now working with IDAS and the police are aware of everything, including the rape, the later assault, and the coercive and financial abuse. They have been supportive and have asked whether I want to pursue the rape charge. I cannot remember the exact date, only that it was around October 2023, but they said that does not stop them investigating. I have also given them messages showing that I spoke about it earlier this year, including to his sister.
My biggest fear is that it will look like retaliation, because this is happening while I am also protecting my daughter and refusing unsupervised contact. But it is not revenge. It has taken me months to process everything. I was numb and confused for a long time, but now I feel a duty to act, both for myself and to protect others from what I can see happening again.
What I need advice on:
• Has anyone pursued a rape case like this, with little physical evidence, and was it worth it?
• How can I best protect my daughter if he tries to push for unsupervised contact or takes it to court?
• And how do you stop doubting yourself when the abuser keeps flipping the story and painting you as the problem?
I just want to do what is right and keep my daughter safe. Actually not just my daughter, future women. I know his sister has a photo of when he even punched her!
Thank you for reading.