Domestic Violence and how to safely disclose this :(

[Buscake]

Not sure where to put this to be honest. My world has fallen apart and I am trying so hard to be honest with all services.

I am currently being woken up by professionals who are helping me realise that I have been in a coercive and abusive relationship for over 23years (police, children’s services, schools, CAMHS etc). My ex was forcibly removed from the home and there is a non-mol in place. There is one historic disclosure of physical abuse from one child and documented PA to another child last year which resulted in a CPP.

I am trying to be completely honest with the social worker but am so scared of the implications. I have accidentally disclosed marital rape, by not realising the implications of what I was saying while doing a DASH referral. I have disclosed past physical abuse (pre children) by mitigating this by saying that I had retaliated and that he always held this over me as proof that I am abusive. Today she asked me if he had ever hit me and I was silent. She said she took this silence as a yes. I said ‘not recently’ and she said this was also a yes. I am worried that my reluctance to be open (I have literally never ever told anyone this. Ever. I can barely admit this to myself) will taint her view of me as being honest and open. I am also terrified of this information reaching him, which I expect it may via the LADO (for his job).

we are being discussed at marac this week. The SW said the DASH score meant this would happen automatically, but made a point of saying that she would have recommended discussion at marac anyway due to her level of professional concern.

what can I do to be more trustworthy? I don’t want to jeopardise this relationship with the SW: she can see what he is truly like because he is being dreadful and abusive to her too. My ex has told everyone (including the professional network) that I am insane - I have cPTSD and this is something I am open about.

Surely the bigger risk though is you hide information which then comes out and you lose those children? Or you hide it and because the authorities didn’t have the full picture, dad gets unsupervised access with youngest and he is seriously harmed? Literally nothing else matters, the job doesn’t matter, more than the health and safety of your children. If you genuinely can’t see that then you can’t keep them safe.

I understand Be guided by what professionals tell and advise you, they are best placed to say what the greatest risks are and how you can protect against them. Trust their advice.

When you say you can’t tell friends, do you have any close friends you trust who aren’t also his friends? Are there reasons other than shame for your not telling them? (I understand why you might feel shame, not that you deserve to)

I can see that. I know that you are right - it is very difficult matching the two ‘me’s up right now. In my professional and personal life I would be saying the same as you, but I can’t seem to stop putting reasons in the way of not being completely open with CS. Ultimately I am scared this will lead to him killing me, that is an honest fear. And I am scared of any potential counter claims from him - he has already weaponised my MH against me and this is a field he works in. I feel incredibly trapped.

Thank you for your understanding. This is a waking nightmare for me, I literally cannot believe what is happening to me.

it is shame re my friends. I work with abused women every day and I still did not see this. The SW told me that she could see I was in a controlled relationship and gave me examples from past observations. It is absolutely breaking me.

i have spent my entire life loving him, prioritising him etc and now to tell them that he was physically, sexually, emotionally and financially abusive. It is so utterly humiliating and also makes me feel like I have never been honest with anyone. Because I didn’t see this at all, I just stupidly believed him when he said this was a wake up call, or the last time etc etc. my friends will think I’m a fucking idiot because I think I am a fucking idiot.

What is your housing situation, are you able to move or discuss with professionals if they would recommend this so that he doesn’t know where you live? I assume he knows where you work and where the children are in school? Are there protections in place in case he turns up?

The way you feel is evidence of his abuse. You are trained to respond in this way, to feel it as shame, to protect him, to minimise in the hope that his reaction will be smaller. Everything about this demonstrates the abuse you’ve suffered.

You need to let go. Step away from the programme that has you containing him and protecting him as a strategy to make him less dangerous.

The new strategy is to make sure the authorities understand how dangerous he is so they can sufficiently protect you aAnd your dc.

I have a mortgaged house. Two of my children have EHCPs so moving would not be practicable for us or for their emotional stability. There is a non-mol in place which prevents him from being near me/children/house/schools/my work

Thank you. You’re right I am used to containing him and managing him. He has a diagnosis of bipolar disorder (currently manic) and this has increasingly been left to me to sort out. I feel like I need to be deprogrammed from him - I haven’t spoken to/heard from him in over a month but his voice is firmly in my head at every stage. I am reading as much as I can to try to ‘catch up’ on what I am going through but it is all too much to take. The marac stuff has terrified me - we had to disappear over the chrisTmas period

Despite the non-mol order though he can still physically turn up - have you asked advice from professionals about how you can be protected should this happen? Eg ring doorbell, CCTV outside your home covering entrances, are your work notified what should happen if he turns up, the same with school? Again I’m sure professionals would be on this but just to check if you are worried he could seriously hurt you and DC and he could be unpredictable.

Yes they have advised re cameras (which I have), locks, exit bags, schools and work are aware. They have said that if he wants to kill me he will persevere but that I need to find ways to slow him down so that the police can come. Utterly unbelievable conversation

I think you need to take a deep breath here. Your body must be stuck in an horrendous fight/flight/freeze mode and it’s hard to think straight or sleep properly in those circumstances.

I think you need to have someone with you, if the process allows, who’s there to be on your side that you can trust. Is there any talk in this process about you being allowed to have legal support? Someone who is not a decision maker in the process but has knowledge of the intricacies of it, who can therefore tell with sound knowledge what the risks are here for you and your children. A defence lawyer for example.

The past is the past and cannot be undone. The focus needs to be on your and your children’s future. How to get safe and stay safe and then do as much as “repair work” as possible for you all. The professionals know how hard it is to leave. Nobody has walked a mile in your shoes and you need to be as kind to yourself as you possibly can. You need to tell them that your priority is the children, that you feel staying with you is the best for them and you will listen to all and any advice on how to keep them safe and help them do “repair work” for what has happened.

I grew up in a violent and scary home as a child in the 80s. Serious mental health issues were at the root of it - which meant my parent did come back home after being in hospital for months which definitely wasn’t easy. My other parent struggled with the pressure of it all and behaved in ways that definitely would be deemed emotional abuse nowadays. They would refuse to talk to me for days at a time for example. So my advice is that you cannot undo what is done but you can love your children to the best of your ability every single day. Get them professional support. Use the regret and shame you mention to kickstart you all onto this new path. Then leave those feelings behind in past too and stay in the present and enjoy it. Truly enjoy it with them.

I'm just going to reply to a series of things you've said, sorry if this is long

"he is potentially going to be struck off or suspended from his professional accountable body if I am open - he works with adults not children."

You're not responsible for this - if he IS struck off or suspended then that is because of HIS choices about how he behaved. Regulated professionals are regulated because the public place trust in them - if he is a nurse or a lawyer then he is seeing people at their most vulnerable. Manipulative, coercive individuals who get their way with the use or threat of violence have no place in a regulated profession.

He can make some choices of his own now: if he were to engage with a perpetrators' programme and really show insight and ability to change then he is much less likely to be struck off. You can't change his past behaviour and nor can he, and he is now the only one with control over whether the past has a knock on effect on his career for the future.

"stupid question - does it matter that he hasn’t directly hurt me since they were babies?"

It's not a stupid question and I'm sure he'll have implied or outright said that you'd be mad to suggest he's an abuser if he has stopped hitting you. It doesn't matter. He only has to get physical on rare occasions for the fear of it to control your behaviour constantly, so it still counts as coercive control. Especially when it seems he is still physically abusive but has transferred this to the children.

" I am overcome with shame and humiliation, I know I shouldn’t be but I am."

Channel Gisele Pelicot - print it out and stick it on your mirror if you need to, "it is time for shame to change sides."

"My youngest has complex needs, including LD and I expect his dad will be allowed contact with him at some point."

I would not be sure of that at all. You have a SW who thinks he is a credible threat. Even supervised contact with a child with LD might be ruled out as too risky and as not a long term and sustainable option.

"I am worried that they will think I am a bad mother for not leaving sooner. He was violent to me and then he was violent to them. This knowledge is killing me. But I worry that this demonstrates that I am a bad mother. I don’t want to hide anything but equally I don’t want to be too honest and get him in more trouble than needed. Especially when it is his word against mine - who does this actually help??"

They will think he is a bad father, for being violent to you and then to them. You are working to protect them, despite having been conditioned to obedience to your ex. That is hard to do and it is the absolute exemplar of putting their needs before your own. You seem to be giving yourself a harder time than your coercive controlling "credible threat" of an ex - you shouldn't be.

You're also not the social worker here, you are not the Guardian, you are not the judge. You don't get to decide what is the right amount of trouble for him to be in. Your sole job is to give them the facts. They can then assess the facts against his level of insight, cooperation, his background (eg was he in care / from a domestically abusive household that has normalised this behaviour), his ability and willingness to change, his attitudes towards women, etc etc etc. All of that hangs in the balance and all of that is solely up to him. He can choose cooperation and insight or he can choose abusing the social worker, and those choices may lead to different outcomes on the same facts.

As to who it helps - well. If he miraculously gains some insight, participates effectively in a perpetrators' programme, and revolutionises his attitudes to relationships then it helps him and any woman he gets involved with in future. If he doesn't, then it helps any future woman he might get involved with as she can access a Clare's Law request, it helps your children to get protection from him, it helps your children to delineate how seriously unacceptable this behaviour is in a relationship, it helps you to have the external validation that you're not mad and this really did happen, it helps the wider public who will not have to worry that their nurse (or whatever he is) might be a coercive controller, and it helps the public interest in ensuring, if only in this one instance, that violent abusive men do not get to be violent abusers with impunity.

Oh love I know you feel shame and like you should have known but your story is (horribly) not at all unique and neither is the shame you feel, many many people with backgrounds in child protection and associated careers have been in abusive relationships - it is one thing to know in theory all the signs and what it is like but another entirely to be in the situation itself. You are not a fucking idiot and I bet you would never call anyone else in this situation. I would never judge anyone in that situation and any true friend of yours would not either. If generally you think of them as kind, nonjudgmental, supportive and trustworthy friends then I would think about whether you would like their support. I know the priority is keeping you and your children safe, though, so it does depend how much you can trust them to 100% protect your interests and not share anything with him or his family.

A small percentage of people with severe mental illness can be aggressive or violent (when manic or delusional for example). But that should likely stop when out of the active “episode” and if they never leave that state, with or without medication, then I would be astonished if they could hold down a steady job. It is also possible to have a serious mental illness and also be abusive.

your words are powerful, thank you. The idea of not being able to undo what has been done makes a lot of sense to me. That is definitely what I am trying to do by attempting to retract disclosures etc. I recognise that I am still in denial about all of this, esp when professionals are telling me he could kill me, and my thoughts are about protecting his job. I totally see on paper that this is insane. My kids are getting all the support they need, truly. The SW is happy with everything I am doing re parenting. I am just aware that I am struggling to be completely honest and this then produces anxiety about what to disclose when and to whom.

it doesn’t help that the rest of our shared friends, his family etc, are all buying into his bullshit about me being cruel and controlling re the children. I am following CS and legal advice. Plus, they don’t know the hell I am going though during this waking up/discovery phase. I honestly can’t express how much it is ripping my mind apart.

This reply means a huge amount to me. Thank you for taking the time to go through and for being so patient setting this out for me. I do hear you. It is so hard to marry up what I know vs how I feel. And the terror of his reaction and what he may do is outweighing everything for me. He’s a psychologist. That is part of what is fucking
my head up so badly. DV workers have said I was a case for him and it makes me feel physically sick. The SW said that the levels of manipulation are horrific and that she can understand why I am so disempowered and why it took so long for me to leave him. And I still feel like a complete failure for not realising this on my own.

for the kids too, I don’t want all this ‘out there’ I have failed them so badly I cannot stop the guilt and the shame and just wish I had seen what I was living in. I can’t believe I fooled myself for so long.

Of course you feel conflicted @Buscake , this man has spent years abusing and controlling you and your DC and no one can shrug that off just like that. It's going to take time, therapy and some peace before you can start to feel anything like normal. It's become second nature to blame yourself because that's exactly what he wanted, he's a sick and dangerous man and your one job now is to protect yourself and your DC, nothing else matters. Whatever consequences he suffers he has brought on himself, not your fault, his fault.
It must be very painful to be asked to remember all his ill treatment and naturally you shy away from those memories but the more you can tell the authorities the better.
You haven't been a bad Mother @Buscake and these people don't want to take your DC away from you, they see that you've been so worn down by your Husband that you had no fight left. Let them fight for you. I hope you and your DC will finally find some peace and happiness

Hi OP, firstly, you've done amazingly well to get away and stay away.

I just wanted to say, I research domestic abuse and still ended up in an abusive relationship. It really can happen to anyone, and this is not your fault or any reflection on you. I'm sure my ex has tried to paint me as mentally unstable, but I choose to ignore this as much as possible. It's a common retaliation technique and professionals will see it every day. I too felt ashamed to tell anyone as I thought they'd think 'how did she not know'. In fact, everyone has been so supportive and understanding, and these fears were my own projections based on years of mental abuse, rather than fact.

My ex-partner was also suspended and subject to a safeguarding investigation due to his job. In the end, he was not dismissed but has been subject to restrictions and monitoring, I believe. I found this so, so difficult too, and I initially broke down at the thought of being responsible for him potentially losing his job, but in the end, I gained enough confidence and strength to know I had to do this for myself and for others. This is all on HIM, not you. If he hadn't done anything, there wouldn't be anything for you to tell.

Take your time sharing, professionals will know how hard this is, and how you're constantly fighting against his voice in your head. In the end, I found that once I'd started talking, I couldn't stop. Everything came out all at once.

I hope things happen as calmly as possible for you, you've got this.

Sorry for my ignorance but I’m really confused. You’re being told by professionals that you’re at risk of being murdered by your husband, inclusive of social workers, police and so on, but there have been no repercussions for him in his job role working with what are presumably vulnerable adults?

Zero implications so far. The LADO is aware and his accountable professional body are only just starting the fitness to practice investigation from the CPP last year. I expect this may change, but in the meantime this is the reality.

OP you are so clear and articulate in what you're writing here. Everything you say makes complete sense and feels totally real and understandable. I'm sure that when you speak to the professionals around you, they are getting it too. I totally salute your courage. Please keep trying to believe in yourself and keep going forward. You are doing so well.

Thank you for your compassion. And I am sorry this happened to you too. I feel under so much pressure to disclose immediately and I just clam up, I can’t say the words. I just can’t do it. Because that will not be able to be undone. And I am so scared. I know it’s on him, I know these are/were his choices. And I am used to mitigating this by blaming his MH needs, pressures of work, pressures of disabled children, financial pressure of being the high earner etc. it feels false not to use those excuses now, even though I know they are excuses not reasons.

Thank you, this is actually amazing to hear. Because I don’t feel clear or articulate at all. I feel a mess with no clear way forward and I can’t see how this ends yet. I’m right at the start of it and everyone is telling me it’s going to get nastier and harder and I just wish it would all go away. Thank you for your kindness 🖤

I completely understand. For me, it was always his high pressured job, a misunderstanding, my fault. It took months for me to begin to believe this was not true. Safeguarding procedures were first discussed in Nov 2023 and I didn't feel able to support them by giving evidence until July 2024. I spent that time literally asking professionals for reassurance on everything, repeatedly. Eventually I found holding it in was worse than saying it, but that took time. It sounds like your SW understands. Could you try writing some things down if they feel too hard to say? That's how I started out.

I should also say, it took me a long time to trust myself and to trust other professionals because he was a mental health professional himself. I think when they are in a role like that it can mess your head up even more, they know how to twist things so you don't know which way is up. So go easy on yourself if you're finding this hard, it takes time to believe you can trust anyone again x