A question about how abusive people view their victims after they leave?

[Fightingback16]

I’ve approached this subject before on a thread. I asked whether abusers know they are abusive. I was kind of content with the answer that they don’t, they think a different way to “normal” people. Now I’m not sure what I’m working with.

I’m looking at a potential court case over custody. I was thinking about how he views me now. Does he view me as the same women who I was when we were together. Does he have no idea what’s happening or why I’m not cooperating? Does he see himself still as the victim?

Or, does he know that I know he abused me, is he hoping and relying on the fact that I’m too damaged to act now? I’m making dam sure I’m not too damaged at all!!!

I’m just wondering a little on how he thinks in order to work out how to tackle this. I kind of need to know thy enemy.

He will think you are in the wrong and he will paint you as a crazy bitch who is stealing his child to anyone who will listen. He might throw in a suicide threat for good measure, saying you have driven him to it.

Has he actually started court proceedings or is he just using it as a threat?

My ex threatened to tell the court what a crazy bitch I was. It scared me for ages and then one day I snapped and told him to go ahead and unsurprisingly he never did it.

I really wish I know ew what I now know about abusers and their tactics back then. You've done fantastically getting away from him, keep reaching out for support to get you through this.

I bet you do have PTSD

I know I did.

I had to recover from 7 years of gaslighting but I couldn't start healing until I'd fought him in court.

I would recommend a whole load of books that really helped me, but right now, just focus on things that de-stress you. A run. Walks. Art! As therapy! With clay? Hypnosis.

Also, interrupt the worrying ''what if'' narrative with the ''Then what'' response. So you worry about what happens if you end up in court.
Welll then you will deal with that. Then you will be prepared. Then you will have a response to that. Then you will be brave enough to go to court.

If you're worried he'll portray you as mad, respond to that with a brief denial. Not mad, just afraid.

you had the right to leave a relationship with a very ''difficult'' man who made you afraid (courts hate it when you take it upon yourself to ''diagnose'' abuse. But you have the right to say that you found him difficult and you are afraid.

You can't do any more now then let your solicitor send the letter.

You will be OK @Fightingback16
Stay with your mum.
Look after your little girl.

You need to look after yourself too. Please check out Meredith Miller Inner Integration on youtube. All of the youtubers I suggested up thread are great. They really get it.

Michelle Lee Nieves even has a clip about how to present your arguments in court against a narc.

But don't worry about that now. You have delegated this to your solicitor who has responded.

You need to be as boring as possible now! That's your task.

He might be a bully to people in the street but I don't think he's going to do very well trying to argue his case in court...
I'm not picturing him was being particularly well-spoken or articulate 🤔
And he seems to have somewhat of the old 'previous'?

Thanks that’s really very helpful. I was married 11 years. I say married what I really mean is held hostage and tortured. I have C-PTSD. Great...a little more complicated!

People keep telling me about healing, I also responded to them that I can’t really heal when it’s very much not over.

No I hear you.

When I left my x, unfortunately, I was only geographically free. It took another 2-3 years before I was emotionally free and then and only then could the healing begin.

You said in your earlier post that you didn't care about yourself, just your squishy little girl.

Well stop that now! You should care about you. Change that script. You do care about you. You might be aware that it's going to be a while before you can really make progress on any sort of roadmap to healing but even in the meantime you can do a lot to try and keep the anxiety at bay.

There is a lot on youtube thankfully.

You were in freeze for the 11 years you were with him, and now you're in flight mode. but it's all still about survival.

I went through this as well. It ends. It ends when they lose interest in the fight. Make the fight as BORING as possible.

I don't know if you have responded directly to him after the solicitor's letter but if you haven't, DONT. and if you have, oh well, he enjoyed that, but don't do it again!

Instead of that old mindset of trying to get him to see your POV, get the new mindset of trying to BORE HIM RIGID.

He won’t do very well at all. I am lucky that he isn’t one of those very articulate abusers. Just a straight up bully and mentally very disturbed. He trapped me by raping me many many years ago. Forced me to get pregnant which I didn’t keep because he was a horrible stoned and drunk man. I was very naive and formed a trauma bond very quickly. I had forgotten all of this until about 6 months ago. I forgot I had an abortion until he told me in a msg I was a murdering b**h. Anyway that was a long time ago now but raw still.

I haven’t spoken direct since Dec. I had a bit of breakdown when my memories came back. I don’t want to speak direct to him.

You poor thing. You have been through so much.

I'm going to say good night now but please listen to the calming binaural beats overnight. I am surprised by the effect they can have on my mood.

You have delegated this to your solicitor. Your are safe now. Your daughter is safe now. You have less to fear from a court than he does.

You deserve to care about yourself and your own future.

When you're ready, come back to mumsnet and ask about CBT. I haven't had it myself but I think I picked up some of the tricks in the last few years.

That is so sad

Stay strong please
Do not let him get to you

He should be in jail

I haven’t spoken direct since Dec. I had a bit of breakdown when my memories came back. I don’t want to speak direct to him.

WELL done on the no contact!

It might be more pertinent in how he views himself and as a Dad. That is what he will be wanting to show the court?

I would just assume that he will not be admitting to any failing as a father, even if he admits any wrongdoing to you do not assume that he will feel that this in any way reflects on his ability to parent and share parenting.

So with whatever you know about him, how do YOU feel your daughter is most happy stable and protected. Is it with a very simple arrangement that is monitored and starts off small? Is it with you as resident parent and providing majority care? Would you feel that he needs supervised visits only until he can prove himself?

Be confident in what you feel gives your DD most emotional stability. She needs you and you need to be in the most confident least stressed position possible. I’d go from what you need and stand pretty firm. Get a good solicitor and be clear about reasons for what you feel is best for her.

There is a Cafcass/women's aid report on DA. Probs worth reading that as in the sample of 216 child arrangement cases, 133 had allegations of DA... with a total of 580+ allegations made split almost 60/40 against men... Only 5 cases actually came back as being factually true. It's unlikely he won't get contact, unless there is a evidence logged with a GP/Police or CAFCASS discover it. Courts see far too much 'tit for tat' so they are cynical.

Source of that report was Womens Aid who work with the courts a lot. Dated 2017 but still relevant.

I would plan to get him to agree to something like a programme or aim for supervised, rather than denying it entirely. You'll have a better shot.

Just a disclaimer before I get shot: not minimising your situation at all. Just setting your expectations of the likely outcome at the right level, so you can make a plan on how to handle him in the future.

Op, there is something I find worrying in your posts, you seem very assured that he is stupid at won’t perform well at court.

Never asume someone is stupid, that gives them a lot of advantages. Asume he is clever and be prepared to deal with any accusation.

Don’t assume he will portrait himself bad in court, abusers are at his best in there as unlike you, they are not traumatised by the other’s behaviour so it is easy for them to lie to dismiss their views because they don’t think they can possibly be wrong or they can possibly be caught.

Also, if he takes his solicitor to court he is not even allowed to speak himself, it will be the solicitor doing all the talking and the solicitor, I can assure you, won’t lose it or side with you because he is paid to side with your ex even if he is guilty to boot.

I would say, prepare your case in case he takes it to court but you may get better results getting boring as hell or avoiding giving him something to compete against. It doesn’t seem that is fair, you want to be vindicated but that vindication can come at a very high emotional and financial cost when the guarantees to be only one clear “winner” are practically inexistent. Proving you are right may be far more damaging than most people realise, so only enter into that battle if you and your DD are at real risk, otherwise be boring and in time he will leave you both alone. In my case, what really helped to stop him was not the years we spent in court but a big radio silence which also included cutting off people who were keeping him informed about my movements (most only wanted to help but Jesus, they couldn’t understand how a “she is ok”, or a “fathers are always important” was enough to keep him motivated to hunt me down)

In the case of my friend we were completely shocked at what came out of her exes mouth when she read the CAFCASS report. He was younger than her and his version of events were that she had basically groomed him. It was only by chance that we found credible evidence that his timeline was just a tad exaggerated. Don't underestimate the intelligence of anyone. Even if its the ability to lie.
Luckily for her he could not keep the facade up in court and reverted to type by unleashing a tirade of abuse at her in court.

Mention the micro dick in court and he might show his true colours?

I got out before things got too bad and fortunately didn't live Together. So my situation may not be directly relevant.

All courts are different but I actually had a good experience, Ex was told to wind his neck in and behave after asking for 50% contact, only ever spending minimal time with Dd before this point. . I put forward the arrangement I was happy with and the court agreed. When you go to court be reasonable with your demands (unless you think he is a risk to your DC). We started in a contact centre so I didn't need to see him, moved to a public place. Now he comes to my front door, never inside it. IKeep recording everything and communicate through texts on a separate phone if he's likely to be an arse. I haven't engaged with him now for 10 years, we don't coparent I see him as a glorified babysitter. The only information we'd pass back and forth is whether Dds had any medication or been ill. I will grudgingly sit next to him at school events and sports matches but that is purely for Dds benefit and its taken the best part of a decade to get there.
It's a bit odd now as Dd is older and Skypes him, which feels quite invasive but he is her dad, and despite being a terrible boyfriend seems to be doing OK on the dad front.

He still throws his toys out the prame because he has to pay me £40 Child Maintenance a week so I go through the CSA or whatever it is now to put a middleman between us. Money reared it's ugly head Gain recently as he was furloughed and I earn far more than him so should pay him for his couple of days with DD.

You know I haven’t even really thought about the type of contact I’d like. None would be the best outcome, but probably unrealistic. That’s my next step.

I don’t even know how to approach it in my brain because he WILL cause harm to dd. He has no intention of being a parent. One of his last msgs to me was I’m going to make sure my child turns out like me and not you you stupid f***g women. The contact stopped because dd ended up in an ambulance. She has a serious allergy. He didn’t care. The house was a disgusting mess, old food everywhere. I was going over and cleaning it, trying to keep the contact going for her sake. I’d send her with packed lunches but he didn’t give them. Every time with him she would come back sick. It was shit, I took videos and sent him of her sick. Begging for him to tell me what he fed her.
He’d say I already sent her sick, I gave her food which triggered her allergy and sent her to him. She took those packed lunches to pre school no problems, he sent them back full anyway. I couldn’t reason with him at all. I told him that every time he had her I’d be up for nights with dd nursing her back to health. She was suffering so badly. It was triggering my M.E which he so kindly gave me. He was bloody loving it. How do I find out a contact I’m happy with when I don’t want any

I’m not sure how he would cope with court. After I left he went a bit mad over me and court. First if I applied he would kill himself, then he would make me suffer, he couldn’t wait to stand up and tell them I’m a murderer etc etc. He seemed scared about it. There really isn’t anything he can say about me. I’ve done everything I could, especially for dd.

I’m pretty sure that because he buys her the most stupidly large and expensive toys he is Disney dad.

You need to start documenting all that, get your child to the GP every time they come back from contact with a reaction and ensure the GP enters in her file, that contact with dad took place just before or when your DD showed symptoms.

And you really need to think what you want out of court. You first decide what is that and then go and fight for that, you cannot go with all your grievance and no objective in mind, the judge would entertain a Jeremy Kyle back and forth argument when time is so precious, family court hearings are not unlimited and if they perceive you as a time waster, you can even be forbidden to go back to court for a determined time.

Plan wisely, be factual, get good reliable evidence and keep unemotional about it. That’s how you win in court unfortunately.

And yes I have all these threats in msgs. I have msgs where he admits threatening me but it was because I didn’t love him enough, he sent me a lot very damning msgs. I never baited or replied or told him how I felt in return, it seemed to make him worse. He wanted to draw me in but I’m happy with how I behaved. I’d always reply, it’s not about me and you it’s about dd.
That would really piss him off!

I will definitely have a plan. My solicitor said if he applies I’ll be in and we will go through the whole thing. Yes I took her to a&e and the gp every time.

There has been no contact since mid Dec. And she has been happy and healthy, no reactions, no go visits!