Abusing the system.....System down!

I started thinking I was to blame in this rotten world. I had allowed it go on to the point I could take no more, I did not stand up and fight. I went through years of being locked in the house, Pinned to the wall by my throat, being called all the names under the sun and I couldn't get out....... This was a world of my choosing, and when I did finally have the fight in me......System down! Eight years has passed since I left my abusive Ex -husband, but it didn't end there for me.

I decided I had had enough, we had a child together so a total break could not be achieved, I tried to be the bigger person, i didn't want to stop him seeing our son, but our son needed to stop seeing the toxicity between us. I had spent years being scared of what he would do to me, but it had gotten to the point he didn't care who he did it in front of anymore so i had nothing to lose, even my employer had to call the police to have me rescued once. People had gotten to the point they would pretend nothing had happened they saw nothing because he would threaten them.

After we separated (which was a whole incident in its self) I stayed in the family home until we could find somewhere else, the real estate we rented through refused to take his name off the lease, and they couldn't restrain him from a house in his name for too long (first system failure) I had moved to his country based on promises that when he had a relationship with his father everything would be fine he would get help but i had no one, even his family deserted me after false promises of "we know what is happening, you will always have us" but it even got too hard for them. After numerous amounts of him coming into the house and taking our son without saying anything (yes once he was having a play date with his friend and he just walked in and took off, leaving the friend playing on the floor alone) I found a place that only had my name on the lease. I tried to get a restraining order and he stood there smiled and promised he would behave.... the Judge said "you two have a child together, you need to learn to get along" if only it had been that easy. We were going through family court also at that point and I had it written into the court order that my ex-husband sat in the car watched our son go up the steps, and once I had let our son into the door he was to drive away. But that didn't happen either.

I had a fourteen year old daughter at the time, he had brought her up since she was four years old. I heard my son knock at the door and my daughter went to open it. The next thing I heard a commotion and a thud as my daughters body hit the wall, he had literally thrown her across the room then came for me. I am sure you know what comes next. This time I tried to press charges, but as it turned out the attending officer was one of his bits on the side who had intercepted the call; when I called a few weeks later to find out what was happening I was told I had said I didn't want to press charges, and even the recording where you could hear my son screaming "no daddy, don't hurt mummy" while I was trying to get help disappeared from the police had disappeared. He did try to have me deported after that, he contracted to immigration at this point and enlisted his friends to help him.

So I went into hiding, I didn't know what else to do. My friend gave me refuge in his house where my children felt safe with a man around. He found me eventually and would sit outside on his motorbike to intimidate me, So I moved again to another friend, an elderly lady this time, but each time I moved he would find me. By this point I was broke, didn't want his money and I was showing my children that you can pick yourself up from anything. I had lost my job because of him so I went back to school, I had an exam that was once a year on the day of a court hearing, I had a letter from my University as evidence to excuse me so I sent my Lawyer in my place..... and he stood there in front of the judge smiled as he always did and told them that our son was better off with him because he was the poster boy citizen; great job, no previous convictions and the supposed independent court lawyer agreed, because all she knew was a smiling face and I was a supposed scheming mother who was lying about this golden man in front of her, He couldn't possibly be that man. My daughter then gets on a plane back to her father as she cannot take anymore and was scared to death of him.

I had no choice, in order to make sure my son didn't see anything else I gave in, I saw my son on weekends and school holiday's. He had a new girlfriend at this point, and I was just the crazy ex-wife who was a compulsive liar, with no home and no job. She would stand in the background and listen to him scream at me down the phone that "the best thing you can do for my son is get on a plane and get out of his life, you are pathetic" and then I would have to wait weeks to see him again because he scared me so much but no one believed a word I said and by now he worked for the Department of Justice........ I didn't know what his new role was at this point.

We went back to court, I had gotten my own place in the mean time which was far enough away it would take effort for him to cause trouble. He had remarried, but he tried having it written into the court order that I had to move close to him to see our son more. However I had been in contact with the courts back in England to get the details of time he had spent in prison, which was supposedly one of the things I lied about.....Surprise surprise he wanted to be nice and have 50/50 custody. As far as I was aware our son was doing well with his fathers presence in his life so I agreed. Fast forward 6 months and the latest wife ups and leaves with no warning, he tells everyone she was seeing another man (including me)

Then the next girlfriend comes on the scene, this one is a prison officer, obviously she can handle herself right? she moves in with her children, she is nice to me & I start to feel more comfortable on hand over after 6 years of conflict. My son starts wanting to spend more time with me and my new partner who knows nothing of my past.

A year goes by and I receive a message from the other wife asking me if I would feel comfortable serving divorce papers for her, so I agreed to take them to the now girlfriend and she will do it. Out of interest I asked her what happened. She told me she had found messages, images and emails on his phone of him having affairs with multiple women, when she tried to leave him he hit her and while she was vomiting in the toilet he grabbed her and dragged her by her hair through the house and locked her in a room, at her first chance she grabbed her daughter and ran. He caught her trying to run outside the house, he was in the car with our son and put his foot down to try and run her and her eleven year old daughter over. I questioned my son about this and he kept quiet, didn't say anything.

I kept an eye on things after that point, watching carefully and my son wanted to spend more and more time with me. One night in November 2020 I received a phone call from a friend to tell me that the police were knocking my ex-husbands door down, and my son was inside. He has been arguing with his girlfriend who was now covered in bruises.....

When i got my son home that night he told me everything. How he stayed with his father because he was scared if he came back to me his father would come after me, He told me he would stand between his father and the girlfriend to make sure he couldn't hurt her, and the abuse ran so deep that my son dare not eat any more than one simple portion because of the torment he faced. My realisation came a few days later when on the way home from school in the car. I was dropping some of his friends off and my phone rang. The Bluetooth on my stereo picked the call up on speaker phone and it was him, he had received word that one of the boys at school asked a question and my son answered honestly. He threatened my son in front of his friends to keep his mouth shut because family business is family business.

We got a restraining order. The girlfriend since dropped her charges but given the long list of reports under his name the police tried to pursue it.

Today, over a year later; With a traumatised child, he once again got away with everything. A Department of Justice prison officer with a smile.