This Is Why Women Don’t Speak Up About Abuse

It is nearly 3am as I write this. I’ve been in bed for hours, but I can’t sleep. My mind is too busy, going over and over a series of events which happened almost four years ago. I spent today, a Sunday, not focused on my daughter, but going over old emails with my lawyers, divorce documents, contemporaneous accounts of abuse that I’d written years ago, trying to tell myself that yes, it did happen as I remember. No, I am not going mad.

This is what gaslighting does to you.

Last week, my ex-husband published a statement in which he admitted almost everything I had accused him of in my original blog. But, there was one big addition, he justified it all by making up allegations about me, that I was a perpetrator of violence, that he was acting in self-defence, this is despite the fact that I have never been questioned, arrested, charged or cautioned. Despite the fact that my divorce was granted on his unreasonable behaviour. Despite the fact that he was the one who accepted a caution f…