Dad beat mum up and I'm not sure what to do

[LS112]

Just looking for some advice. Sorry for the length.

A month ago my parents had been drinking and got into a fight. I'm not sure of the exact circumstances and I don't really care because I make a point of staying out of their arguments.

What I do know is my mum was left with a broken nose, which he did with a glass bottle, a burst lip, burns on her skin from where he stubbed a cigarette out on her, and bruises all over which made it hard for her to move for a few days. He also strangled her, spat in her face and verbally abused her.

My dad has no injuries. My mum said she just tried to defend herself the whole time and he overpowered her. Regardless of whether or not that's true, there's no excuse for inflicting those injuries on your wife (or anybody!) and I'm disgusted by my dad's actions.

I'm the only person my mother has told and she's made me swear not to tell anyone, even my partner. She's lied to everyone else about how she got her injuries.

And this is where I need advice... It's been a month now and I haven't spoken to my dad at all since before it happened. I just don't know what to say and I hate confrontation, but I don't want to act like everything is fine and like I'm not horrified by what he's done. I don't want to carry on like nothing has happened or let him think his behaviour is acceptable, but I don't want to lose my relationship with him either. He's made no attempt to contact me either. My mum says he's avoiding me because he 'thinks I hate him'. I don't see my family much because I don't live that close, but on the 2 occasions I've visited, he's faked illness so he wouldn't have to see me.

My parents are trying to patch things up between them, and in a few days they will be visiting me. I have no idea how to act around him, or what to say about it, if anything. I don't want to make things more difficult, but I don't know how I can just play happy families knowing what he did. Any advice?

Thus isn't just he beat her up, this was a serious and brutal sustained violent attack.

I'd have to assume it's not th first time and your mother is a victim of significant domestic abuse.

Your focus needs to be on her, to get her to speak to women's aid, to get to a refuge

One day he will kill her. Or he will leave her with such serious disabilities it will sicken everyone.

For her sake try to get her help. Your mum told you for a reason, I suspect to try to protect herself, and to get help.

"The priority is to make sure she's safe and I have a feeling whatever the outcome of the visit (or if it doesn't happen) he will take it out on her."

I agree. It's easy to see which of us have lived this and which of us haven't.

I think that telling your partner is very important.
Is there an option to confront your father about the injuries without letting on the source of your information.

Call the police and report him! That's what you should do.

OP, why don't you see her again (alone) and ask her to just talk to someone on the phone? Police can't do anything if the mother won't report. The OP can't make her mother leave him. The only one who can do anything is the mother. She needs to want to leave, the OP needs to be prepared to help her do that.

www.nationaldomesticviolencehelpline.org.uk/

Hi, what an awful situation.
A drunken slap around the face during an argument is one thing but the extent of what he did, he knew what he was doing.
I know this might be hard to hear but I’ve been in your situation and your mums.
An abusive partner is extremely difficult to leave, they threaten you ‘don’t tell anyone or else’ make you feel worthless ‘no-one else will have you’ It’s usually threats against loved ones that keep abused women in those situations.
Can you get your mum on her own and call women’s aid with her? Invite her round, lock the doors, have the police on speed dial and try to help? It’s a really awful, awful situation and I hope you and your mum get through it

I think you should let your mum visit and ask her not to go back to him.

IDontEatFriedTurtle Fri 27-Jul-18 14:32:22

There's a weird thing that happens when you make the first move in this situation.

After you have spoke to him once, it will eat you up, but there's this weird feeling. Like, we've already moved on. I can't just suddenly bring it up or get angry now. You then have to wait for the next time he beats the shit out of your mother to feel like you're in the right stop speaking to him or to have ago at him.

Don't do that to yourself.

Also this

If you confront him, he cries/sad face /says will never happen again/ can't believe he did it/will get help/never drinking again/ says your Mum kept arguing/ winding him up/ going through a bad patch/ very stressed/ whatever.
Then you will have had this conversation. Whether you keep low contact or not after that, it is unlikely you will bring it up again (without risk backlash for your Mum) and you will be the only other one that knows and has to go around with it niggling at you.

I wouldn't want that conversation to take you back to playing "happy families".

The thing is she's told the op for a reason. Maybe as a way to frighten her husband into not doing it again, maybe she needed to tell someone and couldn't keep it a secret any more what her life was. Maybe she thought her daughter would help.

Whatever the reason, there is one. And this isn't a first time assault. This man has physically assaulted his wife brutally many times before.

It's simply escalating the mother needs help before he kills her.

I imagine it's hard to read people saying your dad is a monster.

You can act out of love for both of your parents and still stand up to say something is wrong. To put it bluntly, if your dad does something terrible to your mum then the future looks bleak for him too. You don't have to hate him to understand that neither of them should be living in a situation where this can happen to your mum and then be passed off as no big deal.

I'm guessing there's been many a beating before now, but that this one is the worst and it's shocked both you and your mother with the severity of it.

Could you just speak to someone in womens aid on how to best help your mum to keep safe? They won't force her to leave, they understand how hard that can be for abused women, but they will give her (and you) a lot of support and helpful advice.

These situations are so difficult, encourage your mum to look at the support available, even if she doesn’t want to do anything today she has the knowledge to help keep herself safe in the future.
There is support for male perpetrators of domestic abuse to help them change their behaviour, maybe you could just send a link to your Dad and see if he is willing to address his behaviour, here are the details
respect phone line 08088024040
www.respectphoneline.org.uk

My dad used to hit my mum when I was a child. I had no power to stop him.
There is no way I'd let him touch my mother now I'm adult.

OP did you know that Amnesty published research a few years ago that pointed out that on average it takes 35 attacks before women acknowledge that they are in a violent relationship and report it.

35 beatings, burnings, ,broken noses, lost teeth' ,cracked jaws, broken ribs, bruised stomachs,, ripped out hair, black eyes, strangulations, broken fingers, dislocated shoulders.

Now I don't know if that was the first time your mum has been attacked, or the fifth, or the twentieth, but I do know that if she had been attacked by a random stranger in the street you would not be asking the stranger into your home for tea and polite conversation.

Your mum does not need to be attacked again and again until she does something about it, with your support that can be the final time she has to be beaten, burned and strangled by a violent,out of control man who unfortunately happens to be your dad.

I absolutely in no way believe this is the first time he has abused your mother. I would bet everything I own they haven't had a relationship lasting long enough for them to have a grown up daughter and this has just happened for the very first time.

This is just the first time he's scared her enough she's confided in someone.

Cross-posted with Viques. That post is part of the reason I believe what is in my post though.

It is also possible to contact Social Services and tell them your mum is a vulnerable adult.
It is so wrong that the relatives of women in these situations can not do much. We can report to various organisations but until the women leaves the abuser of her own choice all we can do it stand ready and watch carefully.
It is hard to accept that a husband and father could do this but he did, I have seen 4 generations of a family affecting by an abusive male. My biggest regret is that I did not deal with the situation with a lot of strong interventions.
Please keep talking about this to your mum and try to find out if she will leave and give her a safe place to stay.

This isn’t just some petty argument where you feel like you can’t take sides. This sounds like a brutal and sustained attack and your dad sounds like a dangerous man. I doubt this is the first time.

I don’t think I would have my dad round after that.

It sounds like you need to give your mum as much support as possible and encourage her to go to the police. She needs to end this relationship before he does something even worse...

There are a few things I’d be doing:

Tell dp immediately but ask him to keep quiet. You might need his help if it all kicks off

Contact 101 for a “quiet word”. Ask them not to contact your dm but they might be able to put some sort of alert of the address

He would be absolutely fucking dead to me. I would never, ever speak to him again

Contact women’s aid for advice - talking it through with experts can’t hurt

Make plans with your mum to meet/speak regularly. She needs your support.

It's selfish of your mother to tell you this and make you carry the burden, but it may be her first step in looking for help so you have to try. The reality is that you probably can't actually do anything, your father is in control and it's unlikely you will persuade your mother to leave him. Do your best but try not to feel responsible. The usual pattern is that they agree to get help and then do nothing.

I would cancel the visit. It's not going to end well - if you do happy families you suffer, if you don't your mother suffers.

I cannot imagine how difficult this is for you. And yes, it is possible to simultaneously still love your dad, whilst being completely sickened by what he did to your mum. But he could have killed her. Next time he might well kill her. Not only would that mean the loss of your mother, but it would also result in your father being in jail, probably for a significant amount of time. I am sure you don't want either outcome. Intervening now, even calling the police now, is actually in BOTH their best interests.

Your poor mother. This doesn’t sound like a “drunken fight” it sounds like a beating and your mother saying it was a fight is her way of squaring it with herself as she seems to want to patch things up. She must be terrified of him. But I guess she’s more afraid of the unknown- her life as a single woman without someone who could have very possibly been abusing her for years.

Please don’t make up with your Dad. He doesn’t deserve any support and more to the point it will just instill a belief that what he’s done is somehow excusable. Instead make sure your mum knows she has your full support if and when she ever leaves, and keep encouraging her to contact women’s aid. Tell her they can give her advice to keep herself safe. In turn if she does contact them they can reinforce that she should leave him.

I appreciate it's hard to see your Dad as anything other than your Dad.

You care about him and don't want to see him as one of them types. But the sad truth is someone who does these things is not a nice person. There is no valid reason to break someone's nose with a bottle (though it may be understandable if someone was punching you in the face or something). There is no excuse to burn someone with cigarettes. There's no reason to strangle someone.

He wanted to hurt and humiliate your Mum. He didn't care at that moment if she was in pain or even dead. That's not a loving husband. That's not even a mean husband. That's a dangerous husband.

Your poor Mum would've been petrified, afraid she was going to die - she fears next time it will be the day she dies.

Your fathers behaviour is not your responsibility but I hope you feel your mothers safety is.

I couldn't have someone so vile in my house because I want my house to be a safe place for me and my family.

I do appreciate that it's not so easy to just cut contact but honestly seeing him would make me feel sick.

I would tell my partner though as it's his right to know what type of person is coming into their house.

I'd signpost your Mum to the resources mentioned upthread and be frank about how worried you are.

I'd also male your home available to her if she wants to get away from him.

I hope your Mum gets away from your Dad and that you can support her.

In this case, being selfish is a very good thing.

Could you show your mum this thread?
To someone who has very likely endured abuse for years it is easy to minimise and normalise the violence, to pass it off as a “ drunken fight”
She needs to know it is not normal and that there needn’t be a next time.

mum was left with a broken nose, which he did with a glass bottle,
a burst lip
burns on her skin from where he stubbed a cigarette out on her
bruises all over which made it hard for her to move for a few days
He also strangled her
spat in her face
verbally abused her

I don't want to lose my relationship with him

Why the fuck would you want a relationship with a vicious thug like this?