It’s October 1963, and it is the start of my father’s first therapy session as an in-patient in St Vincent’s psychiatric unit. He tells the doctor that halfway through his wife’s pregnancy he had started to go “berserk”. He admits to emotionally and physically abusing her.
The doctor records that the patient forbade his wife from having any contact with her family following a violent argument. He explains that the patient felt that by controlling her he had “won”. I was seven before my mother finally escaped my father.
We have both been repeatedly let down by authorities who made excuses for the violent men in our lives. Credit: Dmitri Maruta The doctor writes that my mother, referred to as “Wife” in my father’s treatment notes, is “standing with him 100 per cent” and is a “great help”. My mother later tells me that my father would warn her not to fall asleep, as she would not wake up.
Night after night. All to keep her terrified and too scared to leave. While she was pregnant.
I also find out that my father was in the hospital because of his attempted suicide. He stuck his head in the gas oven, while holding me, a nine-month-old baby, in his arms. My mother had to act.
My father was sent home after a “successful” three-week treatment. It took another seven years before we could finally escape his escalating, and decidedly unresolved, violence. Jump forward to 2006.
I am two years into my own emotionally abusive, controlling relationship. I r.
