Raped, Controlled, Stalked Don’t Let This Be You

I hope that others can take from this, hope and strength to make positive changes.

I met Rick when I was 18, we were in the same friendship groups and knew the same people but had never spoken. He added me on Facebook randomly and we got to talking. It started as friendly chat and then he asked to take me out. He was lovely at this point, complimenting me and making me feel like I was the only one he had eyes for. I had been messed around in the months previous to this and dangled on a string, cheated on and all sorts so this was a welcomed change.

For the first month or so things were amazing, we spent all our time together and he couldn’t do enough for me. I began staying at his house where he lived with his parents pretty much every night. It wasn’t until we were out for a friend’s birthday that things started to change. I was glad to have him with me but by the end of the night he started to get a bit quiet and moody. When we got home he started questioning me about my male friends that were there. How long I had known them, where we met and if there was ever anything between us. I chalked it up to insecurity and put his mind at rest and we moved on but it became so frequent. Whenever a male friend would comment on my Facebook or show up in my news feed it would cause an argument and I would end up having to unfriend them.

Time goes on and it becomes an issue going out at all. I thought if he came with me everywhere it would ease his mind but it just didn’t. It ended up turning into excuses “I hate your friends” “You’re not going if I don’t and I’m not coming” “you’re supposed to want to spend time with me not them”

How things ended up in just a few months is still kind of amystery but I went from being so sociable and not being able to live without my friends and family, to living in track suit bottoms all day every day in his bedroom staring at the same TV, dreading getting a text incase it caused an argument. I wasn’t seeing my friends, I wasn’t going home anymore and my mum would plead with me to come home once a week so she could see me. Even that ended in arguments so that I would feel so bad I wouldn’t want to leave to see my family but stay and sort things instead.

I think it was around four months in when things started to get physical. It started the day I had my contraceptive implant removed, they had a really hard time getting it out so I was left with stitches and heavy bruising. I was feeling really poorly and all I wanted to do was to just go to sleep. For a month or two he had been going on at me constantly how we don’t have sex enough and made me feel guilty because I apparently made him feel unwanted. Even though we were having sex at least 5 times a week.

So he is hassling me whilst im laid trying to sleep. Groping me and just not letting it go. I told him I didn’t want to and pushed him away but it wasn’t enough. He was rough with it and as a result the stitches in my arm burst open from being held down. When he was done he headed for the bathroom and I grabbed my bag, left my shoes behind and legged it out into the garden and out the back gate and walked and ran barefoot to my closest friends house which was around 10 minutes away.

It was probably around 2am but she let me in, covered in my own blood and was asking me what the fuck had happened. I couldn’t even tell her I was beside myself. 15 minutes later he was outside in his car calling and texting me to come out. She begged me to stay because she knew he was the cause but I was embarrassed, scared and ashamed so I went home with him.

This became a regular occurence where I would say no but it wouldn’t matter. So I stopped saying no. It was easier for me that way, I didn’t need to be held down. I didn’t need to be hit, I could just lay there and wait for it to be over.

He became every single part of my life. I couldn’t do anything on my own anymore, couldn’t bath without him in the room. I couldn’t even wee without him in the room and if I did manage to get to wee in peace he would watch me through the key hole. I had to go to work with him, he was a mobile carer so I had to sit in his car and go with him wherever he went.

I couldn’t take pride in my appearance anymore, I remember dying my hair and having him rub hair dye in my eyes and pushing me into the bath tub in anger because “Who was I trying to impress?” I became no one.

It came to an end around a year in, it was coming up to my closest friends birthday, I wanted so much to be able to go and celebrate with her. I knew if I asked or told him I was going it would cause an argument and result in getting hurt so I waited until the day before to tell him. At least then it would be over with quicker and it wouldn’t be drawn out arguments. We were sat in his car between his jobs and he was screaming at me. I remember I just caught sight of myself in the mirror of the sun visor and I saw myself properly for what felt like the first time in months.

My eye was black, I looked grey and miserable and I remember thinking – what the fuck are you doing? Have you heard him? Have you heard what he is saying to you? LOOK AT YOURSELF. And I turned to him and said, calmly “take me home Rick I can’t do this anymore.” He changed, from being this screaming beast of a man to a pleading little boy.

Telling me how he would change, he would give me my space and he would try hard to work on us. I had left him twice already and gone back because of this kind of promise. But this was it, I was done. He was refusing to take me home so I told him if he didn’t I would call my step dad to come get me and that would be worse for him because he would want to know why I was crying. So he took me home.

That should have been the end because it was for me, but it wasn’t for him. I had to deal with him stalking me, being wherever I was. Texting and calling me so much that in the end my mum had to take me to the police to report it. They were genuinely concerned because of his behaviour and the way he was talking about killing himself and it being because of me, that he would try and take me with him.

He had tried already to grab me and drag me into his car on my way home from work. He was everywhere and I couldn’t escape him. I felt so guilty reporting him to the police I tried to walk out half way through interview but they told me – given the stuff they knew already they would be taking things further whether I wanted to or not.

The Police escorted my dad to collect my stuff from his house, which he had pissed all over and given back to my dad in a last attempt at any kind of control. Eventually he gave up, the last contact being him waiting for me outside a relatives house where he knew I would be and having to phone the police to remove him whilst sat in this relatives car and having him watch and listen to me do it standing at my side of the car just tapping on the window begging me to hear him out. But it worked, they granted me an injunction meaning he wasn’t allowed to contact me at all and doing so would result in arrest and charges.

It has taken me years to move past it, to trust people again. I became so angry and hostile that I would cause fights with strangers in bars for something as simple as putting their hand on my shoulder when I hadn’t told them they could. Every time I smelt something that smelt like him I would panick and just not function.

Everywhere I went I had a memory of him. I got to a point where I had changed jobs and was working in London, and every day I would stand on that platform and think about throwing myself in front of the incoming train because it would just be over. I won’t lie and tell you it was easy to get out because it wasn’t, but I will tell you it was the best decision I ever made. There is support out there, there is people that will listen, believe you and take you seriously. The help is there and when you are ready to take that step it is waiting.

This is my story, don’t let it be yours.