Behind Closed Doors BBC Scotland Investigates

Dear Santa. This year I would like to get a Furbie, a remote control

car, a robot puppy, a bike. Dear Santa. I have been good, so I would

like to get a Lego set, a scooter, an iPod Touch, a wooden tool kit, an

art set. From Jamie to Santa. Monday 16th December, 2013. Dear Santa.

This year I want my mum and dad to stop fighting and shouting all the

time. This is the story of domestic abuse,

of violence going on in households across Scotland, every day, of every

week in the year. The stories in this film are spoken by actors. They

come from statements and interviews recorded over a two-year period with

victims of domestic abuse whose identities need to be protected.

They describe behaviour that is unpredictable, erratic, calculating,

and sometimes, extremely violent. He seemed like such a charismatic

guy. Laid-back, easy to talk to, great in company. I was so desperate

to be loved and have a family and this relationship I dream dolls. I

felt ashamed at my inability to do normal things. I felt I got

everything wrong. Once a sock got jammed in the washing machine. It

started to leak and I did not know what to do. He came through and just

started screaming in my face on how I had ruined everything. It was the

sheer force of his anger that shocked me. I would always try and

be there for him, even when he stayed out all night and came home

the following day still drunk. He told me he was going to marry me,

how much he loved me. I lapped it up, it is what I wanted to hear. I

started to meet up with him for coffee. It was OK. He told me how

much he loved me and stuff like that. He was like a real Jekyll and

Hyde. I mean he was all right when it was just like me and him, but

with anybody else coming in he was no, he wasn't having it. If I tried

to do anything on my own or with pals or other members of the family

he'd just go really mad, slamming doors and storming about. I mean,

when you watch the television and you would see all the adverts for

domestic abuse, and you used to think to yourself, "God, that must

be unbelievable" and you just kind of blank it. I never in my life did

I think I would go through that never, nah. No me.

I was 16 when I met him, he was a lot older and after about a year my

first was born. When I look back things were never great, I knew when

I met him he took hash but then it got much more serious. His moods

were all over the place. He did nothing in the house or spent any

time with me or the baby. Every weekend, the house was always full

of his pals, drinking, getting out of their faces and being loud. It

didn't make any difference the baby was upstairs asleep. When he wakened

with the noise, he'd shout at me to get upstairs to stop him screaming.

He never told his pals to leave or keep the noise down. I remember

sitting at the top of the stairs with the baby in my arms, sobbing

and feeling miserable, hoping that they'd all just leave. At the

beginning it was all really good and nice but then right out of the blue

it changed. No more Mr Nice Guy. I'd just come home with his second

child. He looked at me and told me I was fat, ugly and repulsive, I felt

two inches tall. Sometimes I would be stunned by his reaction to

certain things. He'd just explode. Both got good jobs, bought a house

together, very settled. Then I got pregnant and that was when it really

started. Basically he was absolutely horrified. He'd just flipped out and

he would start sort off smashing things and start screaming. He was

like a Sergeant Major in the army doing parade drill, I mean really,

really loud right in your face, two inches away from your face, and

other times his voice would go really high and it would be like a

two-year-old having a tantrum. He was very jealous. We hardly ever

went out, he didn't want to socialise with other people. He was

always going on about what I was wearing. He would tell me what to

wear. It couldn't be too tight, too flashy or too colourful. I wasn't

allowed to speak to anyone. The first thing he would ask me when he

came back from work, was who had a spoken to. He was always asking if

anyone had said anything about him. I felt so alone, like I was in

prison. We'd not long been married and were out at a club with friends.

Everyone was in great spirits. My husband comes back from the bar,

sits beside me, pulls me in close and whispers in my ear. I thought he

was going to say something sexy but instead he puts his fingers into my

ribs and says, "I could put a knife in you, right there". I just could

not believe what I'd heard. I asked "what did you say"? And he just

looks at me with a smirk and says, "nothing, what are you talking

about"? I was so shocked that I stayed at my sister's house that

night. When he called the next day, he completely denied he'd said

anything at all and said I was a psycho and had imagined it. I was so

desperate to believe that it was a mistake, so committed to not having

a failed marriage after such a short time, and he was so relentless in

his denial, that I went back. I had 15 years of obsessive sexual

jealousy. I had mistresses round every corner, you know. My clothes

drawers were emptied and inspected, my underwear was inspected for

evidence, my female friends at work, she was always screaming abuse about

how I was screwing them and doing this to them and that to them. Being

accused of things I'd never done. The other thing was that she would

say to me, "you don't look at your daughters the way a father should".

Now you know the implication there. I would have taken a bullet for my

kids, I love my kids beyond reason, that was worse than all the

violence. The vilest, you know, cruellest thing she could possibly

say. It was the silence. Sometimes he

wouldn't speak to me for days at a time, he would barely be in the

house, wouldn't answer his phone. It was just being on your own all the

time, I just felt so lonely. When I was pregnant with our second child I

used to work out where he would be at what time and try and intercept

his journey. How sad is that? A pregnant woman with her toddler in

the pram running around town trying to find her partner just so he would

spend some time with her just so she wouldn't be alone all the time. That

was how desperate I was, that was how much control he had over me. I'd

known him for ages. He had a reputation for being able to look

after himself. I knew what he was, that he was a violent man. Violence

and fighting was part of our life as well so it's not that you don't know

any different. But the alarm bells started to ring when he got jailed

for fighting, I knew it must have been serious. But I can stand my own

ground, don't get me wrong, you know I'm not any angel. When he got out,

everything just went out of control. He's the only person I know that has

obsessive compulsive disorder and doesn't do anything in the house,

didn't do any of the cleaning. He used to hide stuff, "you've not

cleaned underneath the bed for two weeks, I know because that plate's

been sitting there for two weeks because I put that plate there". And

then he's given me another beating for that.

He constantly told me that if he wasn't controlling himself things

would be a lot, lot worse, and you know I should give him a lot of

credit for controlling his anger with me. I tried not to do anything

that would annoy him. But you know he had these expectations of my

behaviour and I was always, just always failing, so I ended up

feeling really bad about myself. And he, he agreed with that, he was

constantly saying to me, "you've got to try. I'm trying, I'm trying to

control myself, you're not even trying". And I was constantly

failing, you know I could never do it. Once he got violent, he had me

under his thumb because you just never knew when it was going to

happen. If I went out on my own, he'd just bombard me with text

messages, "where are you? Who you with? You better get back soon,

bitch". To feel that fear before he comes in, it's horrible to have that

knot in your stomach the whole time, on edge, not knowing what to expect.

Once he went on and on about his craving for sundried tomatoes and

how you could get them fresh from the deli. I remember taking my wee

lad in with me to get them and spending time making this lovely

meal to welcome him home. When I dished it out he just looked at me

with this sinister icy glare and I knew what was coming. He took a

mouthful and just spat it back out, shouting that he, "(BLEEP) hated

sun-dried tomatoes" and that I had ruined the meal. He got up and left

shouting that he'd get better food at a take-away. I'm sat there at the

table, angry, frustrated and hurt with my infant son in tears,

confused and afraid. I realise now he set me up like this all the time.

When my daughter was born, he never turned up at the hospital and that

will never leave me. When I got home with the baby he was in his bed and

the place was in a mess, a complete tip. I had to gut the house after

just getting home with a new baby, not to mention just having giving

birth. Things got worse. He just wanted his family around so he could

make me look bad to them so I always got the blame when things went

wrong. Having two kids, a drug-dependent partner and no money,

things ran out. I had to borrow from his mum while he made out he was

perfect. I got really depressed. I remember

going up to my mum's one day, the kids went in and I just lay down on

the trampoline in the back garden. Staring at the sky and wondering how

I was going to get out of this mess. I hadn't even got my coat off and my

bag was thrown down on the floor. He dragged me into the bedroom and shut

the door. The blinds were down. He threw me backwards onto the bed. He

had his hands round my neck there and he just basically started

punching me about. That went on all afternoon. I knew I really had to

get out of there. Then he says, "the only way you'll get out of here

alive is if I have some assurances that you're coming back". What else

could I say but yes. So he opened the door and I was like, "oh my

God". I couldnae walk, my legs were just jelly and shaking inside

uncontrollably. But I thought, "no I cannae let him see that I'm like

that, I have to get away from here". II still get the flashbacks. The

fear is, I mean it just fills you with anxiety. Even now when I get

into my car I still put the light on just to make sure there's nobody in

the back. He would go into a rage when we drove anywhere. He was often

tense setting off and soon enough would snap at something I said. He

was shouting and screaming and flailing around and punching the

roof and dashboard and punching me, whether he was driving or I was. I

remember the panic rising in my throat and beginning to scream, but

smothering the scream so it came out as a small cry. I'd be pleading with

him to stop the car, please, please, please. It was like a parody of a

crazy man. Only it wasn't a parody. The children would be crying in the

back. Or, as they got older, silent and white-faced and meeting my eyes

with blank stares. I'll kill myself if he doesn't kill

me, I thought, no, that's it, no more violence, now I've got to

protect me and my son. I have to leave. He'd come in drunk, calling

me a cow then he'd hit me. So, so many nights and I'm thinking, "why

me"? He wouldn't accept that we were finished. One day I saw him standing

in the garden watching me. Staring, not moving, just staring straight at

me. It was really scary. I've woken up on many occasions with his hands

round my throat telling me he was going to choke me. You know I've had

elbows in my face where I've been lying in my bed and he's just went

"whack" like that for no reason at all, just watching the telly "whack"

like that. "What was that for"? "Because I felt like it, you're

kissing me off". I couldn't get out of it basically, if I had left I

don't think I would have been here. There's been many, many occasions

where, I mean he's a drunk as well and he's quite a violent drunk at

times, he's actually plotted how he would dispose of me. "I could just

bury you in the concrete and nobody could find you". Well for him this

was just a passing comment but I believed him you know because he was

a very violent man. She would sort of rain punches down and she would

you know get two fistfuls of my hair and she'd get my ears and you know

as if she was trying to wrench them out of their sockets. I didn't have

fear of being physically damaged seriously you know, it was more, it

was more a feeling of just being completely lost in this nightmare

you know from which there was no escape because I couldn't bear to

leave my children behind, you know. Of which there was no escape. I

could not bear to leave my kids. Often in the middle of an episode,

if I wasn?t being totally submissive, he'd scream at me, "you

make me want to put my head through that window and end it all". He'd

threaten to do this if I didn?t say sorry and totally grovel trying to

calm him down. This is hard to explain. He?d learned that

threatening me would result in the police getting involved and he would

have lost me as his victim. But threatening himself, meant he could

totally control me in exactly the same way with no repercussions for

him. I left him because I couldn't hide

the abuse from my kids any longer. One morning we'd been arguing in

bed. He told me he was going to punch me in my (BLEEP) face if I

didn't tell him the truth. The truth about what? I didn't know because

whatever I said was a lie anyway. But it was hard to leave. This

monster was also a man some of the time, a Jekyll and Hyde character,

good cop, bad cop. It was very confusing and by that stage I had

become a shell of a person. I felt like I was just an outline of a

person, an outline that would be erased too.

We were together for 15 years and the truth is that the abuse started

after about six months. But who could I tell? I was trying to bring

up a family. I wasn't allowed contact with my family, I had no

friends when I came up here. And who would have believed me if I told

them that I had been chased with a hammer, or that he said he wanted to

kill me, or that he tried to strangle me? We left him last year

and the relationship is definitely over but he won't accept it. He used

to see the children elsewhere but that changed and he started coming

here. It wasn't too bad at first. I didn't want to rock the boat and say

he couldn't, but its awful now. Her behaviour was so extreme but it

was difficult to walk away. She was violent but she was also ill. I knew

that, and I would be walking away from someone who needed me. And I

was the only one that was getting this treatment because she never

abused the children. So I thought, "what'll happen if I'm not here"?

Because in a sense I seemed to be drawing the fire. What would happen

to this rage that was inside her? Would it be redirected at one of my

daughters? I had that fear and I knew that it would be difficult

enough to leave my kids. I knew that I was in an abusive

marriage and I had to get out of it. But I couldn't see how to get from A

to B. I was desperate, unhappy, confused, scared and... He did

everything that he could to try and prevent it you know, including just

deliberately using force and scaring me and threatening me. I was scared

that he would do something really stupid, and I had to trust that that

would not happen. I had to overcome that fear because if I didn't then

there was no way anything was ever going to change.

In the time that you have watched this programme, at least three

people across Scotland have reported incidents of domestic abuse to the

police. One could be your relative, your friend, your neighbour? or

perhaps it might be you.