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 for common assault, that in no court document, or in the course of our divorce has he ever raised a single allegation of that nature against me. I wrote in my original blog that he claimed to be a victim of domestic abuse when in fact he was the perpetrator. And he did it again.

But this time he gaslit me on a grander scale rather than just inside our family unit, or to the people in our town, he published this to tens of thousands of his followers, who then turned on me, convinced what he was saying was the truth. They unwittingly became party to this gaslighting.

Every time I looked at social media I saw people saying ‘there are two sides to every story’ and I wanted to scream because that is only the case when both parties are telling the truth.

But one party is not, one party has never told the truth, as I have proven, as he has admitted. And yet I am still defending myself, I still get sent witch gifs, or Pinocchio gifs by his fans. Incredibly, I am still the accused.

This weekend I decided to engage with these people, to understand better why they will justify the abuse of women. I felt brave for explaining calmly to them, for example, that the photograph I have of eight fingerprints on me shows them at the front of my neck, which means he was behind me when he put both hands around my throat — rather than his assertion (to paraphrase) that I ‘made him to do it’ because I was coming at him ‘aggressively’, ‘spitting’ and calling him a ‘non-man.’ I was actually in the bathroom, with my back to the door that was closed between us when he burst inside. They weren’t interested. In fact, I was accused of ‘bullying’ for engaging, accused of trying to ‘control the narrative’.

Facts don’t matter. I am reminded over and over by these people that what I say is just ‘hearsay’ even when I detail all the evidence I had to submit to lawyers to publish in the first place. Despite all the evidence, his admission, a police caution, it remains a ‘he said, she said’ because they still want to like his records. And when they run out of things to call me, they tell me that this is unfair on my daughter, the insinuation being that I’m a bad mother, they say I’m airing my dirty laundry in public, and dismiss me as ‘irrational’. These are all well-trodden ways of shutting women down. It’s no wonder most don’t speak up in the first place.

One fan who accused me of lying had actually retweeted this on their timeline

But by the time these fans are finished, I’m obsessively checking old court documents and accounts because they’re so sure that I’m lying, that I physically need to assure myself I’m not by looking at it all again. And I can’t tell you how re-traumatising that is, because whatever happened physically pales in comparison to the emotional abuse he put me through, gaslighting me into thinking I was paranoid when really he was having affairs here, there and everywhere. Distorting our every day so he could get away with his cheating. That kind of emotional abuse leaves a greater mark than anything physical. And it’s ongoing but this time, the loyal fans have joined in. Why would I choose to put myself through this if it didn’t happen?

You may remember what happened to JK Rowling when she admitted to being the victim of domestic violence — The Sun splashed on the perpetrator’s story.

Look at what Amber Heard has had to endure from Johnny Depp fans.

Amber Heard outside court after Johnny Depp lost his libel trial against The Sun for calling him a wifebeater

The fact is we hate women talking about domestic abuse. The ugly truth of it is this, we don’t want to see it, we’d rather look away, if we like listening to someone’s records that’s more important than what they’re doing within the walls of their family home, who they’re hurting behind closed doors. It’s a ‘personal matter’. In the 1950s yes, but in 2022, really? Do people not realise society would be better for everyone — both men and women, and especially children — if we just called it out.

Imagine if my ex had simply just apologised instead of taking the opportunity to make up events and sling some more mud my way? People love someone who is genuinely remorseful, it’s how we know they’ll definitely change. And most of us believe people are capable of change. We want to believe people are capable of change. I didn’t want his career to be destroyed, but neither could I stand by and watch him hurt other people. Buy his records, go to his gigs, it’s nothing to do with me, but don’t tell me you know better than me what went on inside my home.

It’s embarrassing to have to share these very personal details of my life in public. I would rather I had nothing to say, no events to recount. If he had been a plumber I wouldn’t have fans to contend with. Better still, he could have just behaved better.

Since my original post was published I have been contacted by other women who have suffered similarly to me. They are desperate to speak out, some of them were married to musicians, they watch fans fawn over their exes knowing what they’re really capable of, but they perhaps will have second thoughts now considering that they’ve been watching everything I’ve been going through. So perhaps the fans will still be able to listen to their records in ignorant bliss, telling themselves the women are lying.

That seems to be what people want, after all.