I left my abuser before the first lockdown but still fear for my safety – I feel let down by the courts
People often assume that the abuse stops when you leave, but if you have children together, that just isn’t the case, explains an anonymous writer
I left my abuser only a few months before the first lockdown started. I packed two bags, one for me and one for my young daughter, and I left while my partner was at work.
We’d been together for two years at that point, and things had started off great. He asked me to move in with him a month after our first date and we were spending all our time together. After six months, I was pregnant with our daughter. Around this time, I started to realise he had a very short temper, which he’d lose if I did something the wrong way, such as folding his clothes or cleaning.
Things got steadily worse after our daughter arrived. The birth was traumatic and I had to have an emergency C-section, but I was still expected to do everything around the home and ended up seriously hurting myself. He was adamant that we didn’t need any outside help. He said our family and friends were “interfering” and discouraged them from visiting. If I invited my mum or my sister to come over without his permission, he’d make them feel so uncomfortable that they’d leave.