[ad_1]
- Eleanor Lawrie
- BBC reporter
Some people may be happy to take unpaid leave, but for Victoria this is the beginning of a nightmare.
“I still remember the fear in my stomach when I drove home from work on the last day, thinking, ‘How long can I go?'”
Before the new corona pandemic turned the world upside down, Victoria had been abused by her partner for many years. When Britain went into lockdown in March, her life became more difficult. There are victims of domestic violence all over the world. The United Nations is a “shadow pandemic”, which is a matter of concern for the 100 women at the BBC this year. For every three months of extension of the blockade, approximately 15 million new women around the world will be victims of violence by their partners.
“Even if it sits there all the time, I can block it.”
In memory, Victoria’s partner always wanted to control her every move. He will call her 10, 20, 30 times a day. Once he was upstairs and the phone went silent, he sent a friend of his mother to check on his situation.
Before the outbreak, he was already preparing to leave. Take a punitive night shift to save money to buy your own apartment. But when one of the children was hospitalized, his plan failed. At the time, Victoria’s partner had isolated her from her friends and family. The couple are locked under the same roof 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They can’t even go shopping or exercise, because children’s health problems mean that family members need to be around to protect them at all times.
There is a garden at home, but Victoria’s partner refuses to let them go to the garden. He told them that even if they were exposed to fresh air away from others, they could still be infected with the new coronavirus. So Victoria tried to spend a lot of time taking online courses. Still, he sat next to her while she studied and then reviewed her records online. The pressure became so unbearable that Victoria considered suicide. He would lie in bed at night, trying to find a way to get the children to safety first.
“I’m thinking that I will have to kill myself because I can’t spend the rest of my life like this and I don’t see any way out.”
But she found that learning to knit helps her relax and re-focus. Many people start to develop new hobbies due to boredom. But for Victoria, it opened a new line of life.
She started doing things for the off-the-wall world all day long: making clothes for her friend’s newborn; also making bags for her daughters, once they can get in touch with the outside world.
“Even if he sits there all the time, or is behind me, I can forget my situation and protect him. This is one of the only things I can keep.” But as my partner’s unpaid leave was extended to 7 September and September, the situation at home began to spiral out of control.
He is already an alcoholic and spends up to £ 500 a month on alcohol. And alcoholism brings constant threats of violence. He placed a baseball bat by the front door, a truncheon on the stairs, and left knives in the house. Victoria knew she could use them. He had told him before that if he tried to leave, he would cut his throat.
In the UK, a survey published by Women’s Aid Group in August showed that around two-thirds of women living in situations of domestic violence said their suffering worsened during the first UK confinement earlier this year.
One of Victoria’s children finally triggered her determination to escape.
She texted a confidential mental health support service. She then managed to escape the house and live with a family member who supported her. “She (daughter) has had enough of the way he controls everyone, and we’ve always been scared,” Victoria said.
Under the new corona epidemic, a generation of women faces a crisis of domestic violence
“Daughter gave me a pair of your shoes”
It is not clear what information Victoria’s daughter told the mental health service, but the police visited the family and verified her health. Victoria’s partner responded by drinking heavily, and she and the children hid upstairs. In the wee hours of the morning, he entered Victoria’s bedroom and attempted to steal her mobile phone, demanding to know what her daughter had been talking about.
When Victoria refused to hand over the phone, he punched her in the face. He called another daughter, who called the police, and they quickly woke up the boy and fled the house together. It was already half past one in the morning. Victoria didn’t have enough time to get clothes. She left in shorts and a tank top, and a pair of shoes that couldn’t walk normally. The daughter handed him a pair of flip flops and they walked together into the night.
“Of the motherBathrobeIt’s the only thing I’m sure to bring with me“
Victoria and her children sought asylum at a relative’s home while police arrested her partner. The next morning, he went home while he was in custody.
She quickly grabbed something: children’s toys and her crochet hook. She also picked up the bathrobe, which was a gift from her mother. Before Victoria’s mother died of cancer, Victoria’s partner prevented her from visiting her mother for two years. A year after his mother’s death, he claimed that he had the same cancer. “The attention is not on him, he knows that saying this will make me unhappy,” he said.
Victoria was very grateful that she had thought to keep this memory of her mother because she never came home. She contacted the Organization for Aid to Women, and a few days later she and her children moved to a shelter. The first weeks were difficult. The children reacted a lot to the loud noises and the closing of the door, Victoria had difficulty falling asleep, imagining that her partner was standing by the door.
But little by little they began to feel really safe. “There is no constant harassment over the phone or text messages, and there is no threat of kicking the door in the middle of the night. It’s very relaxing. It’s like breathing,” he said.
“See the rainbow after the rain”
Although the shelter offers a safe haven from the outside world, it is not immune from the epidemic. Victoria said she was grateful to be welcomed. However, repeated blockages mean that some families are still unable to start a new life, reducing opportunities for other families to seek help.
Refuge, the charity that operates the helpline, said that one night in the early days of the shutdown, the number of comments on the helpline nationwide increased by 120% and, in the last month, demand has steadily increased.
When everyone in the Victoria shelter was diagnosed with the new coronavirus, these women re-isolated themselves. For many, this brought back the traumatic memory of being trapped with the abuser.
“The life of isolation was really tormented at first because it brought me back to ‘there’ where I was not allowed to do this or that,” Victoria said. “But after a few days, it wasn’t so bad. I thought, ‘Around me there are people who care about you, I can go to the garden and I’ll be free in a few weeks.’” Although the shelter gave Victoria a safe haven She has not been able to communicate much with the outside world.For her own safety, the shelter asked her to change her phone number and keep the new address confidential, but she can inform her friends and family that she is safe.
So when he received a card from an old friend through a third party, he was very surprised. The front of the card says: “There will be a rainbow after the rain.”
Victoria hopes to shed fear with her family, return to society, and start a new life. The shelter made them feel normal life again.
“I don’t know where we’ll go, but everything we need is already there. And it feels good and comfortable, and now it feels like home.” Many people worry that the pandemic means something will happen this Christmas. Different, but for Victoria, this is the best change. She has taught other women how to crochet and they are making Christmas decorations to send to their families. Even though it is November, she has bought all the presents and there is a Christmas tree in the children’s room.
Victoria said: “Christmas will be wonderful – you can eat whatever you want and do whatever you want to do. I’m looking forward to it.”
To protect privacy, Victoria is a pseudonym.
