Speaker 1: You're listening to a Muma Mea podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land and waters.
Speaker 2: This podcast is recorded on. This episode deals with serious
Speaker 2: themes including domestic violence, coercive control, and suicide. Listener discretion
Speaker 2: is advised and there are links to support services in
Speaker 2: the show notes. We always hear how great a relationship
Speaker 2: is when it begins. Why else would it right? There's butterflies,
Speaker 2: late night, staying up talking, a sense of belonging, desire
Speaker 2: and comfort, having that one person to plan life with
Speaker 2: who's just desperate to have you around all the time.
Speaker 1: Live in each other's pockets. And that's what James really liked.
Speaker 1: He liked to be very close, always knew what I
Speaker 1: was doing, and always be right there. It was when
Speaker 1: I was away that he would become quite nervous and unhinged.
Speaker 1: But when we were together, and we would spend all
Speaker 1: of this time together, and I was pregnant and were
Speaker 1: always forced to stay home, he loved it. He loved me,
Speaker 1: He loved the belly. He loved the idea of becoming
Speaker 1: a dad and having a little girl.
Speaker 2: But what about when that desperation becomes too much and
Speaker 2: starts looking and feeling more like control, and then that
Speaker 2: control becomes worrying, scary, and even dangerous.
Speaker 1: I saw smoke starting to come under the door and
Speaker 1: fill up the theater room, and my reaction was, We're
Speaker 1: going to die. He's going to burn the house down,
Speaker 1: and we're all going to be in it.
Speaker 2: I'm Georgia Love and this is everyone has an ex
Speaker 2: Come with me as we dive into a collection of
Speaker 2: unconventional stories about relationships past through the eyes and the
Speaker 2: hearts of the very people who lived them. Meet Sky,
Speaker 2: the twenty five year old single mum of a gorgeous
Speaker 2: little four year old girl at the time our story begins,
Speaker 2: and it begins with a meetcute with a guy called
Speaker 2: James when Sky was moving into a new office and.
Speaker 1: I was really upset about having to move out to
Speaker 1: this new office. And I was lucky that one of
Speaker 1: my best friends worked with me and we were moving
Speaker 1: out to this office together, so that made it seem
Speaker 1: a little bit better. And the day that we moved
Speaker 1: out to the office, I bumped into James in the
Speaker 1: car park and I thought, Oh, he's stunning. Where has
Speaker 1: this man come from. I've never seen anyone like that
Speaker 1: in my life. And after that it was kind of
Speaker 1: He would walk back and past my desk and he
Speaker 1: worked in a different department, so we didn't speak. We
Speaker 1: didn't have anything to do with each other at work.
Speaker 1: But one day one of my girlfriends said to me,
Speaker 1: when we're having lunch, oh, I dare you to add
Speaker 1: him on Facebook? And so goes the world of social media.
Speaker 1: These days, you can just find someone and add them
Speaker 1: on Facebook, and it's this avenue, this way into somebody's life.
Speaker 1: And so I did. I added him and at five
Speaker 1: oho two that night, I was driving home and he
Speaker 1: had messaged me straightaway as soon as work had finished.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't think we've formally met, is what I think,
Speaker 1: he said to me. And we spoke a little bit
Speaker 1: on and off for a couple of weeks, but nothing
Speaker 1: too intense. Bit of banter back and forth on your
Speaker 1: direct messager at work, a bit of talking a coffee
Speaker 1: here and there, but nothing really that was escalating until
Speaker 1: that point that he said, let's go for dinner, let's
Speaker 1: do something outside of work. And I had arranged for
Speaker 1: my auntie to look after my daughter so that I
Speaker 1: could go and see him, and then I'd had to
Speaker 1: go down south that day and i'd come back and
Speaker 1: I wasn't feeling very well. So instead of going out
Speaker 1: for dinner like he had planned, I said, I'll just
Speaker 1: come over and see you if you like, rather than
Speaker 1: going out for this dinner, because I'm really not feeling out.
Speaker 1: The kids have been crazy all day, and I just
Speaker 1: need to chill. But I still want to take the
Speaker 1: opportunity to see you. So I went to his house.
Speaker 1: We just ordered pizza. We were just watching I think
Speaker 1: we watched Focus, which is my favorite movie, and I
Speaker 1: ordered a supreme pizza. I remember it coming with anchovies,
Speaker 1: and I hate anthobies, but I ate them anyway, because
Speaker 1: I didn't just seem like I was pulling ingredients off
Speaker 1: of my pizza. I went home at a fairly reasonable time,
Speaker 1: about eleven o'clock. Nothing crazy happened. We kissed, but that
Speaker 1: was really it. But we were basically inseparable from there.
Speaker 1: Nearly every night we would spend it together, either he
Speaker 1: would come to my house or I would go there,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of blossomed from there. He is
Speaker 1: four years older than me. He is big, musty, bit
Speaker 1: of a body builder. He's got a gorgeous face, he
Speaker 1: has really beautiful eyes. He was just magnetic in his personality,
Speaker 1: and the way that he was drawn to me almost
Speaker 1: made me reciprocate that towards him. He was very sort
Speaker 1: of connected to me and put a lot of effort
Speaker 1: into building that in the early days, and seemed very
Speaker 1: mature and very invested, not like other people that I
Speaker 1: had experienced previously. I hadn't really had a serious relationship
Speaker 1: since my ex partner that I had separated with two
Speaker 1: or three years prior, and I just sort of dated
Speaker 1: here and there, but everyone seemed very immature, very lacking
Speaker 1: in comparison to this man who really seemed to have
Speaker 1: his life together and the reflection of someone that you
Speaker 1: would want to build a future with rather than just
Speaker 1: someone for the here and now to kind of give
Speaker 1: that dopamine boost. We fell in love, as people do.
Speaker 1: We would spend every weekend taking the dogs to the
Speaker 1: beach with my daughter. We would go to the gym together,
Speaker 1: we would go to work together. Because we had that
Speaker 1: connection and that ease of just being able to go
Speaker 1: everywhere together. It was really it just fit. It fit
Speaker 1: together so well. My lease then came up on my
Speaker 1: property about four months in and we made the decision
Speaker 1: that rather than me getting another rental, I would move
Speaker 1: in with him. So at that time, my daughter and
Speaker 1: I both moved into his house with him and his
Speaker 1: two dogs and my one dog and his two cats,
Speaker 1: and we had somewhat of a farm going on down
Speaker 1: there at the time. It was a big deal. I
Speaker 1: think it was more of a big deal for me
Speaker 1: because it wasn't someone moving into my house. I was
Speaker 1: moving into his space and it would still be his
Speaker 1: and it was his home and his house, and he
Speaker 1: owned it, so he had all of the control over
Speaker 1: that situation. And that did scare me a little bit,
Speaker 1: just with the what ifs of relationships, but I was
Speaker 1: willing to do it, thought, why not, We'll take a
Speaker 1: leap of faith, we'll see what happens and hope the best.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't long after I moved in that COVID
Speaker 1: actually hit. So it turned out to be this blessing
Speaker 1: that I had moved in with him, because others we
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't have been able to see each other, and
Speaker 1: that would have been really, really hard after the six
Speaker 1: months we'd had by that point when COVID did hit,
Speaker 1: So we probably would have moved in together at that
Speaker 1: point anyway, just to get around all the rules.
Speaker 2: It was quick and intense and wonderful. Sky absolutely loved
Speaker 2: living with James. There were a great couple and for
Speaker 2: a twenty nine year old who didn't have a child
Speaker 2: of his own, James was great with Sky's daughter, Bonnie too.
Speaker 1: There were challenges and teething issues with having a child
Speaker 1: involved in the situation and the differences of what you
Speaker 1: can and can't do and how much flexibility you have
Speaker 1: in your life once there's a child involved, but it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to bother him. It seemed to just sort
Speaker 1: of we would just work around it, and his family
Speaker 1: were really amazing. Bonnie developed a really strong relationship with
Speaker 1: his dad, and his dad would come and take her
Speaker 1: for walks with the dogs and take her to the
Speaker 1: shops and they would get lollies and chocolates and do
Speaker 1: all those sneaky things that grandparents do, and that was
Speaker 1: a really really beautiful relationship to see blossom. She really
Speaker 1: loved him and he was always very open and accepting
Speaker 1: of her, similar to his mum. His mum was really
Speaker 1: good with Bonnie in the early days and always made
Speaker 1: room for her in their life, so yeah, it felt good.
Speaker 1: We didn't have long before we found out that I
Speaker 1: was actually pregnant. COVID happened, and you're spending a lot
Speaker 1: more time together and TV shows start to diminish, And
Speaker 1: in February twenty twenty, we found out that I was
Speaker 1: pregnant with our daughter, so that was really exciting. James's
Speaker 1: sister was also pregnant at the same time and had
Speaker 1: told us two days earlier before we found out, and
Speaker 1: she also had a little girl the same as us,
Speaker 1: and they are two weeks apart. It was amazing. Our
Speaker 1: relationship through the pregnancy was really good. We were sort
Speaker 1: of forced to be quite close and liveing in each
Speaker 1: other's pockets, and that's what James really liked. He liked
Speaker 1: to be very close, always know what I was doing,
Speaker 1: and always be right there. He loved it. He loved me,
Speaker 1: he loved the belly, he loved the idea of becoming
Speaker 1: a dad and having a little girl. And throughout the pregnancy,
Speaker 1: I think we were sort of focused on having to
Speaker 1: move to a bigger house because we didn't have enough
Speaker 1: room for a baby as well as all of these animals,
Speaker 1: so we eventually moved to a rental and he rented
Speaker 1: his house out and we set up the rental and
Speaker 1: we had all this room and we had room for
Speaker 1: a baby, and things got really excited. I do remember
Speaker 1: when I found out I was pregnant. I had thought,
Speaker 1: something's not quite right in my body. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's going on. And I had done a pregnancy test
Speaker 1: and there was this faintest possible line that it was positive.
Speaker 1: So I'd waited for him to get home and I
Speaker 1: kept this little test in my hand. He was wrapped.
Speaker 1: He was so excited. I remember him calling his mom
Speaker 1: straight away after me, thinking, oh, we'll just wait and
Speaker 1: we'll go and get an ultra sound before we tell anybody.
Speaker 1: But he couldn't help himself. He called his mom, he
Speaker 1: called his sister. He was so excited to have this baby,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it was beautiful. Leah arrived just before Christmas
Speaker 1: in December, and she was born prematurely. She just needed
Speaker 1: to be monitored for things like jaundice. So I stayed
Speaker 1: in the hospital for about five days, and after those
Speaker 1: five days, I was very ready to come home, very
Speaker 1: ready to bring her back into the family and have
Speaker 1: ever run meet her. And get lots of time at
Speaker 1: home with her, but I did go back to work
Speaker 1: when Leah was four days old. In the time leading
Speaker 1: up to Leah being born, James was very adamant that
Speaker 1: my investment property was my responsibility and if I needed
Speaker 1: to maintain that property that I would need to get
Speaker 1: the money to be able to do that. And I
Speaker 1: was on a maximum term contract at work at the time,
Speaker 1: so I didn't get paid parntal leave. I was allowed
Speaker 1: to take parental leave and keep my job, but I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be paid, and to be able to maintain that
Speaker 1: investment property and pay for our expenses, I just I
Speaker 1: had to go back to work. They were very supportive.
Speaker 1: They allowed me to work from home, they allowed me
Speaker 1: some really flexible hours, and it wasn't until Leah was
Speaker 1: about five nearly six months, that I started going back
Speaker 1: to the office only part time. Generally it would be
Speaker 1: one day a week and James's mum would look after Leah,
Speaker 1: and then we eventually had to enroll her in daycare
Speaker 1: when I started going back to work two and three
Speaker 1: days a week after she was about six months. James
Speaker 1: loved her, but he didn't know how to be a
Speaker 1: dad and it became very apparent that the restriction of
Speaker 1: a very small baby was really overwhelming for him. James
Speaker 1: has ADHD and noises really set him off. Leah was
Speaker 1: a very unsettled baby, and the crying would grind at him,
Speaker 1: and you could just see that he was always so
Speaker 1: uncomfortable at home and he really didn't know how to
Speaker 1: react to when she would cry. And it was always
Speaker 1: very much my responsibility to stop her from crying and
Speaker 1: to give her everything that she needed. I had never
Speaker 1: left James with Leah when she was a baby. I
Speaker 1: never started leaving them together until she was much much
Speaker 1: older walking could talk, those sorts of things. It wasn't
Speaker 1: it just wasn't an option. His mum would come and
Speaker 1: help look after her if I needed to go for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, but most of the time it was just
Speaker 1: I would look after her and I would take her
Speaker 1: with me if I needed to go somewhere. It was
Speaker 1: really hard having to feel that level of anxiousness if
Speaker 1: you needed to ask for help or ask for support.
Speaker 1: So me as a person, I feel like at the
Speaker 1: time I just needed to absorb everything and do everything
Speaker 1: and try and be everything for everyone, because no one
Speaker 1: else was going to do it, and if I didn't
Speaker 1: do it, it just wouldn't get done. It was very trying,
Speaker 1: especially when you're working full time as well.
Speaker 2: But moms do what they have to do. Right. With
Speaker 2: two gorgeous daughters, a full time job, and soon a
Speaker 2: new house, Sky didn't actually have time to get overwhelmed
Speaker 2: or too worried.
Speaker 1: We moved house into a smaller property in February twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. We decided that we could have somewhere smaller.
Speaker 1: It was just that we needed three bedrooms rather than four,
Speaker 1: and it would save us a bit of money. We
Speaker 1: wanted to build a house. James and I had these
Speaker 1: goals that we'd set and once we moved, he had
Speaker 1: decided he wanted to do a bodybuilding competition. He was
Speaker 1: always very into bodybuilding, and that comes with a lot
Speaker 1: of other things that I was accepting of. It comes
Speaker 1: with steroids and spending a lot of time at the
Speaker 1: gym and a lot of time researching and focusing on
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And given the ADHD, James would
Speaker 1: often become hyper fixated on certain things to do with
Speaker 1: bodybuilding and diet and it was difficult sometimes but we
Speaker 1: made it work. That was part of human I accepted
Speaker 1: that and we just moved forward. So he decided to
Speaker 1: do this bodybuilding competition. And there's something called a prep
Speaker 1: which leads you up to this bodybuilding competition where you
Speaker 1: have to eat a certain way, train a certain way.
Speaker 1: And it was during this time that James had had
Speaker 1: his work a proof for him to take parental leave,
Speaker 1: paid parental leave, as you're allowed to take it as
Speaker 1: a second partner, and he was taking it at fifty percent,
Speaker 1: so he would have two and a half days a
Speaker 1: week where he would effectively not be working, and then
Speaker 1: the other two and a half he would And I
Speaker 1: can remember during this time thinking, great, we won't have
Speaker 1: to worry about daycare because his mum had looked after
Speaker 1: our daughter and James's sister's daughter two days a week
Speaker 1: at this time for both of us to work. So
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, okay, well, Thursday and Friday she'll be
Speaker 1: able to do that, and Monday and Tuesday James will
Speaker 1: be able to look after Leah, and therefore we won't
Speaker 1: have this daycare expense, which will be brilliant beneath to
Speaker 1: me that he had, you know, laterally decided that Leah
Speaker 1: would stay in daycare on Monday and Tuesday, and then
Speaker 1: the Wednesday that I worked from home would also be
Speaker 1: his half day, so I would be at home anyway.
Speaker 1: And then the Thursday Friday that his mom would look
Speaker 1: after the girls, they would be his days off. And
Speaker 1: therefore he wasn't really spending parental leave looking after Leah.
Speaker 1: He was just spending parental leave sleeping and doing the
Speaker 1: things that he wanted to do as a break for himself.
Speaker 1: He would call it. And I really didn't think that
Speaker 1: that was fair, given that I hadn't had the opportunity
Speaker 1: to have parental leave when I had just had a
Speaker 1: baby and was breastfeeding and getting up every night in
Speaker 1: the nighttime with Leah. But I just let it happen,
Speaker 1: because sometimes you just don't have a say in these things,
Speaker 1: and you just try and work it out for the better.
Speaker 1: So in April, he did this bodybuilding competition and he
Speaker 1: was really disappointed with the results. Afterwards, he had said
Speaker 1: to me, would you mind if I smoked meth once today?
Speaker 1: I've done it before, would you care. I'm really disappointed
Speaker 1: in the results. Could you just let me have this.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that he had done it before. I
Speaker 1: just sort of put it down to boys doing things,
Speaker 1: trying things, and I didn't think much of it. To
Speaker 1: be fair, I at the time sort of thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: if you want to do it one time. Yeah, you've
Speaker 1: just been through this really difficult prep for this competition.
Speaker 1: You're very disappointed with the result. Maybe if you just
Speaker 1: do this one time, you have a good night, you'll
Speaker 1: feel better Tomorrow we'll go back to our normal life.
Speaker 1: The next day came and he sort of went out
Speaker 1: with his friends and didn't come home for a really
Speaker 1: long time, and when he did come home, I could
Speaker 1: tell that he was high again. I was not concerned
Speaker 1: at this point. Even I thought, oh, okay, he's just
Speaker 1: disappointed with the results. And since we'd been together, he'd
Speaker 1: never done drugs, he'd never drank, he didn't drink. I
Speaker 1: thought that he was mature enough to be able to
Speaker 1: monitor and manage that and have a couple of days
Speaker 1: where he did whatever it was that he wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and he would come back to his normal life. He
Speaker 1: would come home and he would things would go back
Speaker 1: to normal.
Speaker 2: Sky was sure there was nothing to worry about. Things
Speaker 2: would look up for both of them, and after the
Speaker 2: letdown of his competition. James had something new and much
Speaker 2: bigger picture to look forward to.
Speaker 1: We had gotten engaged in December, and we had an
Speaker 1: engagement party in April and it was fun. Our friends
Speaker 1: and family came together that didn't normally happen. James did
Speaker 1: not like my family. My family weren't particularly fond of James.
Speaker 1: So for me to have everyone together, knowing that I
Speaker 1: was going to marry this man, it meant a lot
Speaker 1: to me that people could start to get past their
Speaker 1: differences and be together and celebrate what I thought was
Speaker 1: this amazing love that I was going to have forever.
Speaker 2: Then just two weeks later, something big happened, something unexpected
Speaker 2: but that Sky hoped could give James something new and
Speaker 2: exciting to focus on, as well as a responsibility and
Speaker 2: reason to get his life back on track.
Speaker 1: In May, I felt pregnant with our son Kate. I
Speaker 1: was very scared. I didn't think that I wanted to
Speaker 1: have another baby. I especially didn't think that I wanted
Speaker 1: to have another baby with this person at this time.
Speaker 1: Every weekend he would start going out. Every Saturday, his
Speaker 1: friends would come over and they would smoke meth and
Speaker 1: then they would go out. His eyes were just starting everywhere,
Speaker 1: and he was talking crazy, wouldn't stop speaking, would walk
Speaker 1: around the house, would scratch himself like his fingers a lot,
Speaker 1: and that got progressively worse, and he was just very
Speaker 1: unsettled and couldn't sit down, was moving around a lot,
Speaker 1: decided he was going to clean out the garage, went
Speaker 1: into the garage and started tinkering around with all of
Speaker 1: these things and just sort of stayed in there. And
Speaker 1: I had two kids to look after at this point.
Speaker 1: I was not in a position to be following him
Speaker 1: around and babying him and wondering what he was doing,
Speaker 1: so I just I left him to it. I remember
Speaker 1: bathing Lea, putting Lee into bed, and getting into bed
Speaker 1: myself and just thinking he'll come in when he's ready,
Speaker 1: and he did. He eventually went to sleep, and Monday
Speaker 1: started as Monday does. But by Tuesday he was very down.
Speaker 1: He was on this come down cycle, and he would
Speaker 1: just take it out on me. It would be my
Speaker 1: fault that anything bad had happened. And there's one incident
Speaker 1: that my older daughter, Bonnie remembers explicitly, and he had
Speaker 1: made rice and he had put this rice on the
Speaker 1: bench in the rice cooker, and I had cooked and
Speaker 1: put food away, and I hadn't put the rice that
Speaker 1: was in the rice cooker on the bench away, and
Speaker 1: he'd fallen asleep on the couch, woke up from sleeping
Speaker 1: and came into my room and it must have been
Speaker 1: in about three or four am, and just started screaming
Speaker 1: at me that this rice hadn't been put in the fridge,
Speaker 1: and he woke up the whole house and it was
Speaker 1: just my fault. And I was so uncaring, and I
Speaker 1: didn't love him, and he was going to leave me,
Speaker 1: and he hated me, and I was a disgusting excuse
Speaker 1: of a human and just all these really awful profanities
Speaker 1: that you could anything that you could imagine, and he
Speaker 1: was just yelling at me that I hadn't put this
Speaker 1: rice away, and I just remember thinking, rice is about
Speaker 1: ten dollars. Why don't we just cook some more rice.
Speaker 1: It's not the end of the world. But this rice
Speaker 1: was specific, and he needed to eat his meal at
Speaker 1: five am because of his diet, because of his bodybuilding,
Speaker 1: and I had compromised that, and that was very confronting.
Speaker 1: There were lots of instances like that in the weeks
Speaker 1: that followed. I didn't know what to do. I didn't
Speaker 1: know how to confront him. He didn't listen to anything
Speaker 1: that I would say. He didn't care about how it
Speaker 1: made me feel. He really didn't care about my opinion
Speaker 1: at all. He had just sort of started to spiral
Speaker 1: into this place where he was the most righteous, important
Speaker 1: person in the world and nobody else mattered. And every
Speaker 1: time I would bring it up, I would be met
Speaker 1: with this complete shock, as though what I was asking
Speaker 1: was for him to chop his leg off rather than
Speaker 1: for him to stop abusing methamphetamines. Kid was born very prematurely.
Speaker 1: He was born at thirty four weeks in December twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, but he was a trooper. He was two
Speaker 1: point four kilos. He came out screaming he was ready
Speaker 1: to just be in the world. So by the time
Speaker 1: we got to that point, James and I were in
Speaker 1: a reasonable place. He was still doing a lot of drugs.
Speaker 1: He was still going out every weekend, but I had
Speaker 1: numbed myself to it. When Cad was born, he had
Speaker 1: to stay nick you and I was able to stay
Speaker 1: at the hospital for the first night, but because there
Speaker 1: was nothing wrong with me, I then was discharged from
Speaker 1: the hospital the next day, and I had to go
Speaker 1: back and forth in the following days to be there
Speaker 1: for him and be at home for the kids and
Speaker 1: cook dinners and do shopping and do all of those things.
Speaker 1: So I would be at the hospital for about eight hours,
Speaker 1: which would enable me to do two feeds and the
Speaker 1: nappy change in the bath, and then I would come
Speaker 1: home for three and a half hours, and then I
Speaker 1: would go back for eight hours. It was Christmas Eve
Speaker 1: and James was at home with his friends, and I
Speaker 1: had been to the hospital. I was there with cad.
Speaker 1: I was waiting for an eleven PM feed so that
Speaker 1: I could come home and finish off what I needed
Speaker 1: to get ready for Christmas Day the next day, so
Speaker 1: that I could go to the hospital, feed Caid, come
Speaker 1: back and be there for the girls in the morning.
Speaker 1: And I got this message from James telling me that
Speaker 1: he thought that he was overdosing and he didn't know
Speaker 1: what he was going to say to his mom, and
Speaker 1: his mum was going to be so devastated on Christmas
Speaker 1: Day because he was dying and he was outside on
Speaker 1: the road, and I just remember thinking, oh, well, if
Speaker 1: that's the end of the story, then that's the end
Speaker 1: of the story. And his friends were at the house,
Speaker 1: but he had said that he was out the front
Speaker 1: and he was walking up and down the street. He'd
Speaker 1: done too much drugs, he wasn't overdosing. And one of
Speaker 1: his friends that happened to be there that day, he
Speaker 1: is an AMT for work, so I had called him
Speaker 1: despite James asking me not to, and I had asked
Speaker 1: him to go and check on James and tell me
Speaker 1: whether an ambulance needed to be called, tell me what
Speaker 1: the situation was. And his heart rate was slightly elevated,
Speaker 1: but he was fine. He just needed to calm down,
Speaker 1: drink some water, and go back inside. So James's friend
Speaker 1: took him back inside and kept me updated for the
Speaker 1: next couple of hours, and I didn't go home. I
Speaker 1: waited to do the feed at the hospital, and I
Speaker 1: went home afterwards. And I remember sitting next to him
Speaker 1: that night and saying, it's enough. You've had your fun.
Speaker 1: We have a baby that's going to be coming back
Speaker 1: to this house in the next few days who needs
Speaker 1: my attention. I don't have time for you to be
Speaker 1: behaving like you're an eighteen year old juvenile. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: James was thirty two at this point, he had been
Speaker 1: a dad for a few years. He had a new son.
Speaker 1: He needed to let go of the drugs and take
Speaker 1: our relationship in our family life more seriously. Boxing day came.
Speaker 1: I went to the hospital, I picked Caate up, I
Speaker 1: got the all good from the doctors, and then there's
Speaker 1: me walking out of the hospital with this premature baby,
Speaker 1: car set in one arm, three bags in the other hand,
Speaker 1: this little baby, and about to drive him home all
Speaker 1: by myself. I got home and Leah and Bonnie saw
Speaker 1: him and they were besotted by him. But he missed
Speaker 1: all of that because he was in bed for two
Speaker 1: days on a come down, sleeping. He barely came out
Speaker 1: of the bedroom. During that time. I was by myself
Speaker 1: figuring out how to look after this baby that I
Speaker 1: just brought home, who was sick. We were supposed to
Speaker 1: have visiting midwife services when we were discharged, and no
Speaker 1: one ever contacted us. So I really was alone in
Speaker 1: this situation, looking after an older daughter, my younger daughter,
Speaker 1: and then this little baby with no support. So I
Speaker 1: took ten weeks off and that was it. Because I
Speaker 1: got ten weeks off paid and during that time, I
Speaker 1: was expected to care for him, fully look after the
Speaker 1: other two children, fully run the house, do all of
Speaker 1: the things that I was meant to do because I
Speaker 1: was on maternity leave and that was my job. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that when James had previously been on prin
Speaker 1: to leave, that was time for him. So that didn't
Speaker 1: go down too well with me, and I think that
Speaker 1: I probably became a little bit more distant at this time,
Speaker 1: and I was deliberately distancing myself from what he was
Speaker 1: doing because the drug use didn't stop, it just kept
Speaker 1: getting worse. There would be people at my house on
Speaker 1: Sunday nights, Monday nights when I'm trying to keep the
Speaker 1: kids in a good routine. Sunday night, his friends are
Speaker 1: coming over. They're doing god knows what. They would send
Speaker 1: me the randomest emails at one and two am that
Speaker 1: I would wake up to the next day about gym
Speaker 1: programs they were writing, or business ventures that they're going
Speaker 1: to go on. You get this sense of grandeur when
Speaker 1: you take math and you think you're suddenly invincible, and
Speaker 1: that is exactly what he felt. He was invincible and
Speaker 1: no one was going to stop him, and he could
Speaker 1: do whatever he wanted, and he was untouchable.
Speaker 2: But soon James got a new job. Maybe this would
Speaker 2: change things, make him happier and give him more purpose.
Speaker 1: He started a new, very high profile role, and this
Speaker 1: did not take away from his sense of grandeur and
Speaker 1: this entitlement that he had developed through the drug use.
Speaker 1: His new job title CEO made him feel as though
Speaker 1: he was even more invincible than ever now. At the
Speaker 1: same time, he had suggested, let's move back to your
Speaker 1: investment property. Let's get the tenants out, let's move back.
Speaker 1: Let's go there so that we can save to build
Speaker 1: this other house that we want to build. So we
Speaker 1: had started looking at replacing things like the carpets and
Speaker 1: getting it painted just so it was a bit fresh
Speaker 1: for when our family moved back in. And I was
Speaker 1: calculating square meterage of the carpet to do with the
Speaker 1: quotes and stuff that I had received, And I picked
Speaker 1: up James's work phone and I went to calculate one
Speaker 1: of the rooms and I remember seeing the Snapchat app.
Speaker 1: Now our whole relationship of until this point, I was
Speaker 1: under the impression that James did not use Snapchat. I
Speaker 1: had been made to delete my Snapchat account quite early
Speaker 1: on because he didn't trust Snapchat. He thought, you don't
Speaker 1: have Snapchat unless you're doing things that you shouldn't do
Speaker 1: on Snapchat because the messages disappear. And I thought it
Speaker 1: was so strange that this app would even be on
Speaker 1: his phone when he didn't have an account. So I
Speaker 1: clicked on the app and his account was just logged in,
Speaker 1: and I started going through it, and much to my dismay,
Speaker 1: there were hundreds of messages to girls that went back
Speaker 1: over one hundred weeks, so that nearly two years. There
Speaker 1: were photos being exchanged. There were things like him saying, well,
Speaker 1: I have a seven and a half inch cock and
Speaker 1: I know how to use it to women wherever they were,
Speaker 1: and I was really confronted. There were videos of people
Speaker 1: having sex, him having sex with this other woman, and
Speaker 1: I just remember looking at all of these and thinking, Wow,
Speaker 1: I've really missed this. I've had the wool pulled over
Speaker 1: my eyes. He would often be quite abrasive towards me
Speaker 1: and accused me of cheating on him, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that I was at home with all of these kids
Speaker 1: and this baby, and I was always the one doing
Speaker 1: the wrong thing, and I didn't confront James about these
Speaker 1: images or what I had found straight away, because I
Speaker 1: was too scared of his reaction. I was scared of
Speaker 1: what he would do to me, how he would treat me,
Speaker 1: What would happen if he found out that I had
Speaker 1: seen this on his phone. I knew that he would
Speaker 1: blame me and make it my fault that I had
Speaker 1: found it, rather than his fault that he had done it.
Speaker 1: I called my best friend and I said to her,
Speaker 1: this has happened. This is what I found. I took
Speaker 1: photos of it all on my phone from his phone,
Speaker 1: and I sent it all to her and I just said,
Speaker 1: what do I do? And her reaction was, well, you're right.
Speaker 1: You're not safe if you tell him or you confront him,
Speaker 1: and nobody else is there, so you need to make
Speaker 1: sure that you're in a safe environment when he finds
Speaker 1: out that you know. So, given this new job, he
Speaker 1: used to go away for work quite often, so I
Speaker 1: knew that he would be going down south sometime in
Speaker 1: the next few weeks. Now it was my birthday during
Speaker 1: this time, and he pretended like nothing was wrong, but
Speaker 1: I knew the whole time what was going on, what
Speaker 1: he was doing when he was on his phone, and
Speaker 1: it was honestly grating. You just feel as though you
Speaker 1: could explode at any second. So I just I waited.
Speaker 1: I held it together. I remember sitting in my office
Speaker 1: at work and I sent him this message, and the
Speaker 1: message said, I know this is how I know, this
Speaker 1: is what I saw. How could you do this to
Speaker 1: me and our family? Those typical disappointing statements that you
Speaker 1: throw out there as like I just can't possibly understand.
Speaker 1: And his response to it was really quite vulgar. It
Speaker 1: was almost, why are you doing this to me when
Speaker 1: you know that I'm at work? And okay, well I'll
Speaker 1: just stay down here until you figure your head out.
Speaker 1: And no apology. There was no I'm so sorries, There
Speaker 1: was no let me beg for your forgiveness, There was
Speaker 1: no explanation. It was just, oh, well, you know now,
Speaker 1: so you figure out what you want to do and
Speaker 1: let me know. Then, over the course of that night,
Speaker 1: he spent it trying to manipulate me into believing that
Speaker 1: it was my fault. I was the reason why he
Speaker 1: had done this. I wasn't giving him enough attention. I
Speaker 1: wasn't enough, and therefore he was doing this with other women.
Speaker 1: He convinced me that he'd never seen any of these
Speaker 1: women in person, that it was just a few images
Speaker 1: here and there. He had stated that he hadn't engaged
Speaker 1: in any sort of intercourse with the one woman that
Speaker 1: I found these videos off of, and that I could
Speaker 1: contact her if I wanted to, And I really did
Speaker 1: think about contacting her, but I didn't think that he
Speaker 1: meant it, and I felt like if I did contact her,
Speaker 1: he would leave me anyway, because that was what he said.
Speaker 1: He said, you can contact her if you want to,
Speaker 1: but if we do and you don't believe me, whereover.
Speaker 1: And I remember being so terrified of this concept of
Speaker 1: having to have these three children on my own, one
Speaker 1: of which was super high needs. I just I couldn't
Speaker 1: even fathom it. I loved him. I thought that he
Speaker 1: was my home and my family, and we had been
Speaker 1: together for so long that that comfort was a really
Speaker 1: hard thing to just walk away from. I didn't feel
Speaker 1: as though I could walk away and not impact my children,
Speaker 1: and that was the one thing that I never wanted
Speaker 1: wanted to happen. I never wanted to leave him and
Speaker 1: my children be so heavily impacted by that decision, and
Speaker 1: so I just ended up staying and we sat down
Speaker 1: and we had this conversation. I had arranged for his
Speaker 1: mom to look after Cade for a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: and we had this conversation about our relationship and what
Speaker 1: he wanted and what I wanted, and I suppose he
Speaker 1: persuaded me in a way to thinking that it would
Speaker 1: be okay if our relationship was more of an open
Speaker 1: style relationship. And that was never something that I had
Speaker 1: thought about. But he brought up these ideas of this ethical,
Speaker 1: non monogamous style relationship and his views on things that
Speaker 1: he would like to do in a sexual nature that
Speaker 1: I hadn't previously been open to or he had never
Speaker 1: discussed anything like this with me before. So this person
Speaker 1: that was talking to me and saying I want to
Speaker 1: do all of these things didn't really sound like him
Speaker 1: or like the person that I'd fallen in love with.
Speaker 1: But I didn't want to lose him, so reluctantly I
Speaker 1: agreed to him having this site that he already had.
Speaker 1: It's big in the swinging community, it's big amongst people
Speaker 1: who do engage in these ethical, non monogamous situations. And
Speaker 1: I consented to him using some photos of us on
Speaker 1: there for a period. Now he gave me access to
Speaker 1: this account and I was able to see what he
Speaker 1: was saying, but I wouldn't participate. I wouldn't talk on there,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't engage in looking through it. I was more
Speaker 1: of a silent observer at times. But it consumed him.
Speaker 1: All he wanted to do was be on this site
Speaker 1: and talk to these people and find someone and have
Speaker 1: a threesome or him to have sex with somebody else,
Speaker 1: and I was open to that at the time. I
Speaker 1: sort of thought, Oh, well, if that's what's going to
Speaker 1: make you happy, and I'm not able to give you
Speaker 1: that right now because of our son, maybe that will
Speaker 1: fix our relationship. Maybe that will make things better, Maybe
Speaker 1: that will recenter us. Or you might do that and
Speaker 1: then realize that you have everything that you need here.
Speaker 1: Really was what was going on in the back of
Speaker 1: my head. And I had never really been big on
Speaker 1: the whole sending photos or anything like that before this time.
Speaker 1: I wasn't someone who would create a lot of intimate
Speaker 1: content of myself. I didn't really have that level of
Speaker 1: self confidence, and I suppose going through this he would
Speaker 1: always pump me up and make me feel better about
Speaker 1: myself so that I would get the confidence to create
Speaker 1: this intimate content for him to be able to use
Speaker 1: in whatever way he wanted to. I was just desperate
Speaker 1: for him to be happy so that things would be better,
Speaker 1: even if it was just for a little while.
Speaker 2: But after a few months of this, James hadn't changed
Speaker 2: his ways or realized that Sky was in fact enough,
Speaker 2: and she became uncomfortable. She asked him to stop using
Speaker 2: the site and remove any photos of her.
Speaker 1: That caused a really big argument between us because he
Speaker 1: felt like I didn't care about him, because I wasn't
Speaker 1: comfortable with this account being online, and I was trying
Speaker 1: to explain to him that it's not him that I
Speaker 1: don't care about. It's these other people that have this
Speaker 1: content of me and I don't know them, I don't
Speaker 1: have any sort of engagement with them. I'm not speaking
Speaker 1: to them. You are, but you're very liberal with just
Speaker 1: giving this to people, and I'm I want a career,
Speaker 1: I have aspirations outside of this, and it seems to
Speaker 1: be all consuming few at the moment, and I just
Speaker 1: I don't want to participate anymore. And I even said
Speaker 1: to him at that point, look, I'm happy if you
Speaker 1: want to send content of yourself, as long as you
Speaker 1: leave me with the login so that I can see
Speaker 1: what you're saying to these people, that's fine. He fought
Speaker 1: me for a lot on this, and I ended up
Speaker 1: just giving in and feeling like I didn't really have
Speaker 1: a voice, and I just let him keep using it
Speaker 1: and under the same username or whatever it was that
Speaker 1: he was doing, and I just wouldn't talk on it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't talk about it, We wouldn't. It just became
Speaker 1: an annoying thing that he was doing and I just
Speaker 1: had to live with it, kind of like the drug use.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that was still going on too.
Speaker 1: For a long time. I didn't tell anyone how bad
Speaker 1: the drug use had gotten. It's started us every Saturday,
Speaker 1: then it would be every Friday Saturday, and then just
Speaker 1: snowboard from there until he was doing it full time.
Speaker 1: I was just accepting of it at this point because
Speaker 1: when he would be high and he would be on drugs,
Speaker 1: that was the only time he was nice to us.
Speaker 1: By this point, it's sort of got on downhill to
Speaker 1: the point where he was doing it four times a
Speaker 1: week and not doing it three times, and those three
Speaker 1: days would be hell. I would be anxious for the
Speaker 1: three days where he wasn't doing drugs rather than looking
Speaker 1: forward to them. And I remember one day being at
Speaker 1: work and him calling me about my friend who had
Speaker 1: sometimes helped with Kate on Tuesdays, and he had asked
Speaker 1: me what her last name was, and I thought, Oh,
Speaker 1: that's really weird. And he said, what's Sally's last name?
Speaker 1: Tell me right now, and he's yelling at me down
Speaker 1: the phone, and I could tell that he was really frustrated.
Speaker 1: And I told him what her last name was, and
Speaker 1: he said, that's it. We've got a problem. He had said,
Speaker 1: she's posted this on a Facebook page that is associated
Speaker 1: to my work and said that she knows me and
Speaker 1: that I'm no better than the previous CEO. It really
Speaker 1: wasn't career ending, but because of the psychosis that comes
Speaker 1: with drug addiction, he had taken it upon that I
Speaker 1: had coerced her into doing it, or I had been
Speaker 1: complicit in what had happened, and I knew it was
Speaker 1: going to happen, and I was trying to take his
Speaker 1: career down by having her post these things that really
Speaker 1: seemed insignificant at the time, but the phone calls that
Speaker 1: ensued and the abuse. He told me he was going
Speaker 1: to drive to my mother's house and cut her tongue
Speaker 1: out and that would be his revenge. He was adamant
Speaker 1: that he would need to ruin my career in return
Speaker 1: by sending intimate images that he had gained through this
Speaker 1: process that he had requested to explore to my CEO
Speaker 1: or my boss. And he sent me an image followed
Speaker 1: by their email addresses, which were the correct emails. They're
Speaker 1: not difficult to find, and said, I will ruin you.
Speaker 1: I'll end your career, bitch. Maybe you'll have some empathy
Speaker 1: when your career is on the line. And I was terrified.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, I'm the only one supporting these children
Speaker 1: right now. All of your money is going to just
Speaker 1: like a little bit of rent and whatever you want
Speaker 1: it to for drugs and computers and clothes for work,
Speaker 1: and I'm paying for basically everything else. And now you're
Speaker 1: going to put my career at risk. How am I
Speaker 1: going to pay for these kids? How am I ever
Speaker 1: going to get away from you when I have no money?
Speaker 1: And James is a really smart person, So the way
Speaker 1: that he can manipulate things and the way that he
Speaker 1: understands the system and how to get what he wants
Speaker 1: out of things is quite confronting, and when that is
Speaker 1: put on you in a positive way, it makes you
Speaker 1: feel on top of the world and you get that
Speaker 1: joint sense of security when you're with him and he
Speaker 1: wants the best for you. But similarly, when he wants
Speaker 1: the opposite and you go against him, and you go
Speaker 1: against what he wants, it makes you feel terrified and
Speaker 1: like you have no control and whatever will happen to
Speaker 1: you will happen to you, and you have no choice.
Speaker 1: It's just it's what he wants. And so I went home,
Speaker 1: I got my kids all into bed, and then I
Speaker 1: remember he just wanted to have sex with me after
Speaker 1: all of this that he had just been doing and
Speaker 1: the way he had been treating me, and just to
Speaker 1: stop him from yelling, I did it. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if you can call that non consenting, but I
Speaker 1: would definitely say that from then on, there were a
Speaker 1: lot of times where that would just happen to shut
Speaker 1: him up, just to stop him from escalating, to stop
Speaker 1: him from waking the kids up, to stop him from yelling.
Speaker 1: There was no way around it.
Speaker 2: This abuse continued in its many forms sky was isolated
Speaker 2: and scared and felt completely trapped.
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize myself with him, but I also didn't
Speaker 1: know how to be without him or how to let go.
Speaker 1: I didn't really go anywhere. I didn't see my friends
Speaker 1: very much. I just went to work and came home
Speaker 1: and did what I needed to do because there was
Speaker 1: no reprieve from him, and he was just starting to
Speaker 1: make me feel like the world was five thousand kilos
Speaker 1: on my shoulders and we were moving. So I had
Speaker 1: packed everything up. We were moving to my house. It
Speaker 1: was maybe a couple of weeks after this that he
Speaker 1: had decided that he was keeping the rental property that
Speaker 1: we had together, but he was keeping as an office,
Speaker 1: so some of our furniture would stay there and that
Speaker 1: would be his office where he would work from because
Speaker 1: he couldn't be around the kids without crying all the time,
Speaker 1: but he could work from home without crying. And I
Speaker 1: knew he also couldn't go into the office because he
Speaker 1: was always high, so when he would go into the office,
Speaker 1: they would start to notice these things, and he obviously
Speaker 1: knew that as well. So he needed somewhere else to work,
Speaker 1: so he had decided to keep our rental property, and I,
Speaker 1: despite saying that's a very terrible financial decision, given we
Speaker 1: decided to move to save money, I was met with, well,
Speaker 1: I am a CEO, and I can afford it because
Speaker 1: I earned this amount of money, and don't tell me
Speaker 1: what to spend my money on. So I lost that
Speaker 1: argument as well. And the hot water unit went out
Speaker 1: at the rental property, which was of course my responsibility
Speaker 1: to resolve, and I wasn't able to get in one
Speaker 1: day and I couldn't get in contact with him, and
Speaker 1: he kept saying, I'm at work, I'm at work, stop
Speaker 1: calling me, and then sending me these really abusive emails
Speaker 1: saying that I'm the reason why the real estate's so
Speaker 1: difficult to deal with, and it's because I'm a bitch,
Speaker 1: and I don't respond to them. Eventually, I just went
Speaker 1: there and when I went inside, his work laptop was there,
Speaker 1: so I thought, I'm going to look at it. I
Speaker 1: know you shouldn't do that. I know you should trust
Speaker 1: your partner, but by this point it was gone. I
Speaker 1: wanted to look and I was going to, so I did.
Speaker 1: I opened the computer and it was a Mac and
Speaker 1: therefore all of his text messages were on this computer
Speaker 1: and there was another woman. I went through reams and
Speaker 1: reams of text messages between him and another woman who
Speaker 1: I later found to be Amanda. Amanda had a daughter
Speaker 1: very similar age to Bonnie, and they had been away together.
Speaker 1: They were both bodybuilders, so they shared this common interest,
Speaker 1: and he would say things to her along the lines
Speaker 1: of I can't wait for you to meet Leah. She's
Speaker 1: gone to love you. She's going to adore you because
Speaker 1: I adore you, and she's a mini me. And these
Speaker 1: messages were heartbreaking to me. James is talking to this
Speaker 1: other woman about my children and how much my children
Speaker 1: are going to love her, and she meets them as
Speaker 1: though they're going to be this happy family and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to walk away and out of the picture,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what to do. I called his mom,
Speaker 1: and I was beside myself by this point. I don't
Speaker 1: even know if she could understand what I was saying.
Speaker 1: It was through tears. I felt like I was suffocating
Speaker 1: because I couldn't get breath in between the crying. It
Speaker 1: was real devastation that this had happened. So his mom
Speaker 1: got there and she said, what do you mean, what
Speaker 1: is going on? I don't think he would do that
Speaker 1: to you. He loves you off the bat. It was
Speaker 1: already defending him before she'd even heard or scene or
Speaker 1: come to terms with what had happened. So I just
Speaker 1: sat her down with the screenshots and said, you go
Speaker 1: through them and tell me if you think that they're
Speaker 1: just friends. And then my friend had arrived and she
Speaker 1: has a daughter the same age as Leah, so that
Speaker 1: was good because they could go off and play and
Speaker 1: it gave me a little bit of time while she
Speaker 1: looked after Kate and I was talking to his mum.
Speaker 1: But even so, his mum would just say things like, well,
Speaker 1: I need to know how this is going to affect
Speaker 1: my relationship with my grandchildren, and I need to know
Speaker 1: what you're planning on doing. I don't think he would
Speaker 1: have meant it, and you can figure it out. That
Speaker 1: just isn't what you need to hear when you've just
Speaker 1: found out that this person who you've been so flexible with,
Speaker 1: who you've allowed to do things that stray so far
Speaker 1: from your natural moral compass, has then gone further outside
Speaker 1: that and tested the boundaries and to the point where
Speaker 1: he's gotten in to this other relationship and you just think,
Speaker 1: and you're telling me that all I should be worried
Speaker 1: about is your relationship with my children. How am I
Speaker 1: going to support these children? How am I going to
Speaker 1: look after these kids by myself? And what are you
Speaker 1: going to do to support me through that? I couldn't
Speaker 1: say any of that at the time. And I then
Speaker 1: called him and I said I know about Amanda, and
Speaker 1: he lost it. He snapped. He said he was going
Speaker 1: to beat me to my house and run through it,
Speaker 1: and I wouldn't own anything that wasn't broken, and how
Speaker 1: dare I go through his computer anyway. The days after this,
Speaker 1: it turned into me begging for him back, as you
Speaker 1: do when you're the ex that's been cheated on. You
Speaker 1: feel so disheartened, you feel like nothing, your self confidence
Speaker 1: is an all time low, and you just you get fomo,
Speaker 1: for want of a better word, you feel like you're
Speaker 1: missing out on this really amazing person. And I'd forgotten
Speaker 1: all of the bad things. I wanted him to come
Speaker 1: back and be part of our lives and have that
Speaker 1: life and our kids. And I come from a broken
Speaker 1: family and I didn't want that. I just wanted him
Speaker 1: to be there and for us to repair what we had.
Speaker 1: So it was weeks and weeks of me begging for
Speaker 1: him back, doing whatever he wanted to try and make
Speaker 1: him believe that I was better than her, and I
Speaker 1: would constantly compare myself to her. And I was in
Speaker 1: a real downward spiral depression. Wasn't eating anything, I was
Speaker 1: not performing at work. I was very short tempered all
Speaker 1: the time. The only thing I would do is really
Speaker 1: look after my kids and then go home. I didn't
Speaker 1: have anything else to cling onto, and all I would
Speaker 1: think about was him and her and what they were
Speaker 1: doing while I was just sat there with these kids.
Speaker 1: And his birthday wasn't long after I discovered all of this,
Speaker 1: It was a matter of days, and on his birthday
Speaker 1: I still went there. I took the kids there. We
Speaker 1: had a really beautiful day, and I thought maybe this
Speaker 1: would be a turning point. That afternoon, he came to
Speaker 1: my house and we had talked and he had sort
Speaker 1: of said, I'm really sorry, I'll end it with her
Speaker 1: and we can try. We'll see what happens. I barely
Speaker 1: heard from James all weekend, and that to me was
Speaker 1: normally an indicator that he was with a Manda or
Speaker 1: somebody else. He was preoccupied, distracted, he didn't need to
Speaker 1: talk to me, and I barely spoke to him. And
Speaker 1: then Monday came around and it was like nothing had happened,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to talk again. Because he was away.
Speaker 1: I would speak to him, but I put a lot
Speaker 1: of distance between us, and I would say that I
Speaker 1: was working, and I was working, but normally I would
Speaker 1: just sit there and text him all day, ferociously responding
Speaker 1: to his copious amount of text message. His abused his
Speaker 1: accusations that I was sleeping with people at work. It
Speaker 1: was just out of control. But at this point I
Speaker 1: started to stop responding to that, and when he came back,
Speaker 1: he knew straightaway that something had changed in me. He said,
Speaker 1: you're distant, you don't want anything to do with me,
Speaker 1: and he even said, I can tell that you're getting better,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, I am getting better. I'm starting
Speaker 1: to accept who you are and that I can't change you.
Speaker 1: But that means that I need to make decisions about
Speaker 1: what I want. And I think that really hit home
Speaker 1: for him, that he couldn't just control me anymore.
Speaker 2: What Sky had always feared came true. This perceived loss
Speaker 2: of control made things even worse.
Speaker 1: Started threatening my house and my kids. He knew that
Speaker 1: my kids were at my mum's house, and once again
Speaker 1: he threatened to drive there and cut her tongue out
Speaker 1: and then feed it to my stepdad, and my kids
Speaker 1: would watch this process, but that would be okay because
Speaker 1: it would be character building. Or he would drive to
Speaker 1: my friend's house where I was and do the same
Speaker 1: to her and I could watch, and that would be
Speaker 1: okay because it was character building. And he wanted me
Speaker 1: to choose which of these scenarios was going to go ahead.
Speaker 1: He then started saying, well, I'm going to smash your house.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ruin everything you own. And I remember
Speaker 1: thinking he sounds quite serious this time, and he'd always
Speaker 1: threatened suicide, and I'm going to hurt you, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to hurt the people that you love. He never
Speaker 1: sounded this serious. I got home, my garage door was open.
Speaker 1: I went into my house and sure enough, he had
Speaker 1: broken in. He had broken all of my sliding doors
Speaker 1: to the point where the glass was out of the
Speaker 1: frame and there were gaps between the frame and the door,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't get the locks undone, so he then
Speaker 1: proceeded to smash my side window of my house to
Speaker 1: get you to the house. Now, he had taken our dog,
Speaker 1: and he had taken his meth pipe, and he had
Speaker 1: taken my wedding ring. I didn't speak to him. I
Speaker 1: called my friend. She drove straight to my house. She
Speaker 1: stayed there with me that night. And the next day
Speaker 1: James's dad came over and he cleaned up all the window.
Speaker 1: He tried to help put the doors back in, and
Speaker 1: I just wouldn't respond to him. And we're talking hundreds
Speaker 1: of text messages, thirty something miss phone calls, and he
Speaker 1: just wouldn't stop. He was irate his dad had gone
Speaker 1: there and gotten the dog back. He wouldn't stop messaging me.
Speaker 1: He kept threatening suicide. He kept saying that, well, if
Speaker 1: I didn't care anymore, there was no point in living,
Speaker 1: and this is what he was going to do. And eventually,
Speaker 1: as I always did, I started to feel guilty and
Speaker 1: I responded to him and I talked him off the ledge.
Speaker 1: He agreed to change, and we just had less and
Speaker 1: less contact. It was just a weaning process for me
Speaker 1: to try and get him away from me. It was
Speaker 1: Monday evening that I had come home from work and
Speaker 1: he was really angry at me because I had asked
Speaker 1: him where he was that day, and he said that
Speaker 1: he had to go to the doctors, and that Amanda
Speaker 1: had gone to the doctors with him because he needed
Speaker 1: somebody to go. He couldn't go by himself, and I
Speaker 1: wasn't there because I was at work, and we got
Speaker 1: into this really heated argument and he just started throwing things.
Speaker 1: He picked up my coffee table, he threw it out
Speaker 1: the window. He threw a bottle of coke in the house.
Speaker 1: He picked up a computer stand, he threw it and
Speaker 1: it ricocheted off the wall and I was holding our
Speaker 1: son and I had to move and it hit me
Speaker 1: in the head so that it didn't hit him. And
Speaker 1: he just kept yelling and screaming, and I had put
Speaker 1: Lee in to bed and was just hoping that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't wake her up. And I eventually told him just stop,
Speaker 1: and he didn't like that, and he was standing in
Speaker 1: my kitchen at the time, and he just lunched at
Speaker 1: me and he grabbed me by the throat and he
Speaker 1: slammed me against the wall while I was holding on
Speaker 1: to kid, and he just held me there and I
Speaker 1: was just I was motionless. I couldn't do anything. I
Speaker 1: just was so focused on not dropping my son and
Speaker 1: hurting him. He was just a wee little baby. What
Speaker 1: am I going to do if I drop him and
Speaker 1: something happens? And I just I was silent. I couldn't breathe.
Speaker 1: I remember feeling dizziness, and eventually he let go and
Speaker 1: I just fell on the ground, still holding onto kid,
Speaker 1: and he left. He got up and he walked out.
Speaker 1: I sat on my shower floor crying for hours and hours,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know again how I was going to
Speaker 1: get out of this, because he'd gone to another level
Speaker 1: and I didn't think it could get worse. Despite the
Speaker 1: fact that I didn't think it could get worse.
Speaker 2: But it did. James became paranoid, and that paranoia blew
Speaker 2: over one night when he saw Sky's phone bill and
Speaker 2: that she'd called a number he didn't recognize.
Speaker 1: It was five am, and it had been a night
Speaker 1: of just a use and threats and I'm going to
Speaker 1: send these images to this person, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: hurt your mom and your friends, and it just it
Speaker 1: never stopped. And I had gotten up to get ready
Speaker 1: for work, and there was a knock on the door
Speaker 1: followed by, you better let me in, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: something's happened to him, opened the door and he came
Speaker 1: in in a fit of absolute rage, and he just
Speaker 1: kept saying, whose phone number is this? Whose phone number
Speaker 1: is this? And I didn't know what to do. He
Speaker 1: picked up a vase in the front of my house
Speaker 1: and smashed it all through the front entryway. There was
Speaker 1: glass everywhere. Leah and Kaid both woke up. Luckily Bonnie
Speaker 1: wasn't there, and he just started screaming and yelling and
Speaker 1: having this absolute breakdown. I had had to put shoes
Speaker 1: on the kids and get them settled and get them
Speaker 1: breakfast and all the things that you're trying to do
Speaker 1: in a normal mourning around this absolute, un pretty didictable
Speaker 1: lunatic who's just throwing things around my house and screaming
Speaker 1: at the top of his lungs. And I sat them down,
Speaker 1: I got them breakfast, and then I went back to
Speaker 1: him and he was in my garage at this point.
Speaker 1: I shut him in the garage and locked it so
Speaker 1: he couldn't get back into the internal house. And to
Speaker 1: try and get back into the house, he pulled a
Speaker 1: suitcase of clothes that I had packed to give back
Speaker 1: to him over to the door and set it on fire.
Speaker 1: I saw smoke starting to come under the door, and
Speaker 1: my reaction was, we're going to die. He's going to
Speaker 1: burn the house down and we're all going to be
Speaker 1: in it. And there was smoke everywhere, and Leah had
Speaker 1: come out asking me if it was okay, and he
Speaker 1: had just said, get the kids out, Get the kids out.
Speaker 1: It was terrifying. I didn't know what to do. He
Speaker 1: was between me and the car. I couldn't get to
Speaker 1: the car without going past him. I didn't know what
Speaker 1: he was going to do in this manic episode to
Speaker 1: me if he managed to get his hand on me
Speaker 1: and the kids between there and the car. I had
Speaker 1: called my friend and she had called his friend and
Speaker 1: he came to the house. He talked James down. James
Speaker 1: had put the fire out by this point, and he
Speaker 1: was just coughing soot everywhere all through the house, just
Speaker 1: walking through the house, just coughing this black soot. His
Speaker 1: friend helped me get the kids in the car and
Speaker 1: I drove away. My mum and my friend tried to
Speaker 1: convince me that it's wrong and this shouldn't happen, and
Speaker 1: you need to take some serious action here, but I
Speaker 1: didn't know how. I just felt so stuck, and I
Speaker 1: remember saying to them, this is my life now, this
Speaker 1: is just how it is. There's no way out. He
Speaker 1: has the upper hand, he is more powerful than me,
Speaker 1: and there is nothing I can do about it. And
Speaker 1: that was how I felt.
Speaker 2: She was terrified of him, of what he was capable
Speaker 2: of life on her own, and what he would do
Speaker 2: if she tried to cut him off for good. She
Speaker 2: just didn't see a way out. But only a week
Speaker 2: later there was another episode. This one was the final straw.
Speaker 1: We still weren't together, but there were talks about him
Speaker 1: potentially moving back into the house because the lease was ending,
Speaker 1: and I just I didn't know how to say no.
Speaker 1: We'd sort of gotten past all this really heavy stuff,
Speaker 1: and his family was still pushing him onto me, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to say no. He had fallen
Speaker 1: asleep and I had gone through his phone again to
Speaker 1: see what he was doing, to see if I could
Speaker 1: trust him, to see if there was a way to
Speaker 1: mend all of this trauma that he had caused, and
Speaker 1: I found that he had been paying women for sexual
Speaker 1: gratification in money and in drugs, and I confronted him
Speaker 1: about that the next morning, and I said, look, it's
Speaker 1: time for you to start telling me the truth about things.
Speaker 1: Are you capable of telling the truth? Prove that you're
Speaker 1: capable of telling the truth. I asked him about it,
Speaker 1: and he again just saw red and went into this
Speaker 1: fit of rage. He picked up a deathque that was
Speaker 1: in my living room and he started slamming it against
Speaker 1: the roof and the ground and the couch and the walls,
Speaker 1: and the desk was completely mangled by the end of it.
Speaker 1: And I didn't see what else he was doing. He
Speaker 1: sort of started throwing computer equipment around. But Leah came
Speaker 1: and grabbed me by the hand, and I had kid
Speaker 1: with me, and she took me into her bedroom and
Speaker 1: she said, it's all right, Mummy, We'll be safe in
Speaker 1: here while daddy breaks the house, just staying here. And
Speaker 1: I broke down and just thought, how my kids should
Speaker 1: not be thinking like that. They shouldn't be thinking that
Speaker 1: they have to save me from anything. They should feel safe.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't do it anymore. So that Friday, I
Speaker 1: went to my mum's house. I stayed there and I
Speaker 1: just made excuses to be away from the house as
Speaker 1: much as I could all that weekend, and on the Monday,
Speaker 1: I went to the corner. I filed for a violence
Speaker 1: straining orner. Something clicked for me and I couldn't let
Speaker 1: this person keep doing this to me, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: let it keep happening in front of my kids. I
Speaker 1: was really disappointed in myself. I didn't know how I
Speaker 1: had let my life get to that point where I
Speaker 1: was having to get a restraining order against someone that
Speaker 1: six months earlier I could have married. I felt really
Speaker 1: regretful that my kids had experienced so much and they
Speaker 1: were so little, and I was ashamed. I was ashamed
Speaker 1: that I had allowed him to compromise my moral values
Speaker 1: to suit his agenda when I didn't need to, and
Speaker 1: I could have gotten to the same outcome, potentially in
Speaker 1: a less violent way. I was just so lost. You
Speaker 1: hear it all the time, and you hear people talk
Speaker 1: about these domestic violent situations, And before I was in
Speaker 1: one would have said, why don't they just leave? And
Speaker 1: it's such a common misconception that this leaving is something
Speaker 1: that you can do because you never feel safe. The
Speaker 1: day that the vero was served, he tried to go
Speaker 1: to daycare and take Leah from daycare. He never really
Speaker 1: had a relationship with kid, so I wasn't worried about
Speaker 1: him taking CAID, but Leah, yes, it worries me. His
Speaker 1: parents have taken the restraining order very seriously, mind you,
Speaker 1: and I have had no contact from him directly and
Speaker 1: I haven't seen him. I was tact for him when
Speaker 1: I got my restraining order. I made sure that he
Speaker 1: was living back with his parents, that he didn't have
Speaker 1: access to income, he'd be made redundant at work so
Speaker 1: he couldn't come after me. He had as little resources
Speaker 1: as possible to use against me, and I then had
Speaker 1: a lawyer assist me in drafting up a statement of
Speaker 1: everything that had happened and helping me collate the evidence,
Speaker 1: and I gave it to the police in early twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. The police investigated and came down to a
Speaker 1: number of charges, and he was charged with those things
Speaker 1: in March. Now it's really disappointing because a lot of
Speaker 1: the assault charges couldn't be proven after the fact, and
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things where it's really violent
Speaker 1: coercive controlling behavior, but unfortunately coercive control isn't a crime
Speaker 1: yet where I live, so we had to go down
Speaker 1: to what is a crime? Revenge porn, so threatening to
Speaker 1: send into images of me as a crime. Setting the
Speaker 1: fire is a crime, and breaking into my house and
Speaker 1: causing damage the way he did was a crime. So
Speaker 1: he was charged with those things. They set a trial.
Speaker 1: They ended up negotiating with him to get a guilty
Speaker 1: plea to avoid trial, and he walked away with a
Speaker 1: two and a half thousand dollar fine, which to me,
Speaker 1: it's just insulting. And I don't blame the police, but
Speaker 1: I think that the justice system is a really difficult
Speaker 1: place to navigate, and they're not keeping up with the
Speaker 1: expectations of the community or the social justice side of things.
Speaker 1: There are so many women who die every year, and
Speaker 1: this is why, because violent defenders like James are let
Speaker 1: off the first time that they do something like this,
Speaker 1: they're let off the second time that they do something
Speaker 1: like this with a fine, and then the third time
Speaker 1: that they do something like this, someone will die, and
Speaker 1: naturally then they'll receive a harsher penalty. But it shouldn't
Speaker 1: take someone to die for him to be in prison.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I wish I did die he strangled me
Speaker 1: on two separate occasions, and on both of those occasions,
Speaker 1: I thought, well, this is it for me. I'm gonna die.
Speaker 1: When he would constantly come into my house in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night when I was asleep, and I
Speaker 1: would wake up to him standing over me angry, I
Speaker 1: always wondered what happens if one day he just brings
Speaker 1: a knife and I'm just gone, or he gets a
Speaker 1: gun and there's nothing I can do about it. And
Speaker 1: I did think I wouldn't survive. I thought he has
Speaker 1: so much control and power that it's just a matter
Speaker 1: of time before he kills me. And I definitely didn't
Speaker 1: think I would ever get out. I thought that I
Speaker 1: would be living like this forever. And it's hard to
Speaker 1: explain the way that it makes you feel. But when
Speaker 1: you're getting these constant text messages every day and these
Speaker 1: phone calls, and just this cycle of no matter what
Speaker 1: you say, you get abused, and everything is your fault.
Speaker 1: Every single thing that would go wrong in James's life
Speaker 1: was my fault one way or another, and you just
Speaker 1: had this way of manipulating things. And the best way
Speaker 1: I can explain it is that your brain feels like
Speaker 1: it's just being pressed down on someone's got a wet
Speaker 1: rag and they're just ringing out your brain and you
Speaker 1: just want it to stop, and it's so uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: it just makes you so fuzzy, but you can't make
Speaker 1: it stop, and it hurts so much. Your brain feels
Speaker 1: like it's going to explode under all of this pressure
Speaker 1: of someone ringing it out. But until that other person
Speaker 1: is satisfied again and they stop abusing you and they
Speaker 1: stop coming for you for that short period, it just
Speaker 1: feels like that. So that's why you always just give
Speaker 1: in and you do what they say and you're amenable,
Speaker 1: because otherwise your brain feels like that, and it's you
Speaker 1: can't deal with that. It feels like your ears are
Speaker 1: going to start bleeding, your eyes are going to pop
Speaker 1: out of your skull, and you feel like you're going
Speaker 1: to die just from words, which is completely unrealistic, but
Speaker 1: it's exactly how it feels. I think that if anyone
Speaker 1: is listening and they are going through forms of domestic abuse,
Speaker 1: it's really important to know that there are a lot
Speaker 1: of community supports and you don't know it when you're
Speaker 1: faced with it in the moment, but there are people
Speaker 1: there that want to help you, and it's really important
Speaker 1: to understand how to get out and who can help
Speaker 1: you get out. And those people do exist, and their
Speaker 1: numbers are available online, and if you can just get
Speaker 1: five minutes to research them, do it, because there are
Speaker 1: genuine businesses and associations that can help you get out.
Speaker 1: If you are in a situation where you're feeling stuck
Speaker 1: and you're feeling like there isn't going to be a
Speaker 1: way out, there is definitely a light at the end
Speaker 1: of the tunnel, and you can get there. You can
Speaker 1: do it. It's been instrumental for me to recognize the
Speaker 1: difference in how I feel when I'm at home, and
Speaker 1: that's something that I've really honed in on for myself,
Speaker 1: is when I'm at home now, I don't feel scared
Speaker 1: and anxious because of him being there. I don't feel
Speaker 1: like I need to act a certain way or not
Speaker 1: speak or not laugh, or not have my friends over
Speaker 1: or keep my kids quiet. I don't feel like I
Speaker 1: need to conform to what somebody else wants of me,
Speaker 1: which is unrealistic. I'm comfortable. I'm confident. My kids can play,
Speaker 1: they can laugh, they can smile, they can do what
Speaker 1: they need to do and it's not harming anybody else.
Speaker 1: And I think that the way that I feel at
Speaker 1: home is something that I reflect on a lot when
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, Oh, this sucks, my family's broken. I still
Speaker 1: lost that person. Even though he didn't turn out to
Speaker 1: be a good person at the time, I still wanted
Speaker 1: that person, so that gives me a lot of grounding.
Speaker 1: I don't think you ever really can just move on
Speaker 1: from something like this. I think you have to grow
Speaker 1: into it, is my view, and I notice behaviors and
Speaker 1: things in myself now trying to maybe start dating, and
Speaker 1: those sorts of things that I just I'm not ready,
Speaker 1: and I have to recognize that it's probably going to
Speaker 1: be a long time before I'm ready to have that
Speaker 1: kind of a relationship with a male again. And growing
Speaker 1: into it, to me is accepting that there's limitations to
Speaker 1: who I am now because of what's happened to me,
Speaker 1: but not letting it become my entire personality. I don't
Speaker 1: want to be known as the victim or as someone
Speaker 1: that this has happened to. I want to be able
Speaker 1: to help other people who are going through this situation,
Speaker 1: and I want to harness the power that it's given
Speaker 1: me as a woman to be able to speak out
Speaker 1: and to be able to provide that support to other people.
Speaker 1: I get overwhelmed from time to time. Three kids on
Speaker 1: your own is a lot, and parenting wasn't meant for
Speaker 1: single parents. But I have a lot of support in
Speaker 1: my friends and my family. I'm quite far down the
Speaker 1: journey now. I'm past the shock of what people are
Speaker 1: still finding out about, and I'm more into the acceptance
Speaker 1: part of my journey and trying to evolve from it.
Speaker 1: And it's not easy. It's not easy to live with
Speaker 1: this thing that's happened to you that tries to define you.
Speaker 1: But I think I'm dealing with it as best as
Speaker 1: I possibly can. And I just want to make people aware.
Speaker 1: I want to try and help other people. I want
Speaker 1: to use it for good rather than let it drag
Speaker 1: me and my kids down. And don't want to be
Speaker 1: branded as a victim or branded as viral. I'm just
Speaker 1: me trying to get through every day. I'm living every
Speaker 1: day in the hope that the system will have my back.
Speaker 2: If you or anyone you know is a victim of
Speaker 2: domestic violence, you can visit one eight hundred respect dot
Speaker 2: org dot au or call one eight hundred Respect a
Speaker 2: confidential information, counseling and support service for people impacted by domestic,
Speaker 2: family or sexual violence. Everyone Has an X is a
Speaker 2: Minti Media production and proudly part of the Mummamea network.
Speaker 2: Is written and narrated by me Georgia Love and produced
Speaker 2: by Linda Scott. If you have a story you'd like
Speaker 2: to share, email podcast at momamea dot com dot au.
Speaker 2: You can support us by following the show in your
Speaker 2: favorite podcast app and leaving a five star review. We'll
Speaker 2: see you for the next episode.