‘I was four when my dad tried to strangle me’: Coward attackers through the eyes of a child victim

Maggie, who was beaten throughout her childhood, wants men who hurt women and children in their homes to carry the shame of the cowardly crimes they commit.

Maggie was four when her dad held his hands around her throat so tight it burst capillaries in her little cheeks.

And while she remembers being hit a lot as a toddler, it was the “aura of threat” hanging in the air of the home she shared with her mum and two brothers that had the most profound effect on her.

“I know my dad would put a belt on the door handle, that meant if you woke him up from a sleep he would hit you with it,” she said.

It was something Maggie, now a fourth-year law student, never thought about much during her childhood.

“It was a weird environment growing up. As kids you don’t realise something is wrong, that it’s not normal to live in that kind of fear,” she said.

Maggie believes men who commit coward attacks on their partners and children should be shamed. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“I remember I would go to a friend’s house. They would backchat their dad, or he would ask them to do dishes and they would say no and nothing would happen to them.

“I would think that was weird because I would get hit if I did that.”

Maggie spoke out after seeing the Telegraph campaign to change the attitude towards evil in our homes, by changing the language and calling out perpetrators for what they are — cowards.

In all reporting from now on, The Telegraph will, where the law permits, refer to any alleged act of domestic violence as a coward attack.

“Growing up it was hard because everyone would say ‘oh, he seems so nice’, people just wouldn’t see or wouldn’t want to see.

“So it’s a great step forward to talk about this and call it out.”

She said it wasn’t just outside the home that family violence was hard to talk about.

“You don’t realise it’s happening to each other, and because of that you don’t realise how bad it is. I had no idea it was happening to my mum until the day before she told us we were leaving — and she didn’t know it was happening to us.”

Maggie, now a law student, still has to learn to find her voice after years of coward attacks on her mum, two brothers and herself. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Maggie was 13 when she went with her mum to the local police station.

A couple of days prior, Maggie remembers all the family being in the car and her dad “threatened to behead us all”.

“I was so scared talking to the police because what if they didn’t believe us? What if he found out? He would kill us.”

Thankfully the police did believe them, and that afternoon the man of the house was arrested and charged with multiple counts of assault.

“The trickiest thing with domestic violence is that there are all these individual incidences of assault, how do you remember an entire life of abuse?” she said.

“How do you fit within all of the elements of each charge?”

Maggie’s dad was found guilty of the majority of offences and sentenced to a jail term.

“He was found not guilty of trying to strangle me when I was four because it was so long ago and I was young.”

The Daily Telegraph is campaigning to change the attitude towards evil in our homes, by changing the language and calling out perpetrators for what they are — cowards.

The Telegraph is joining forces with NSW Police, advocates and sporting greats to stand against evil in our homes.

Maggie has a niggling bulging disk in her neck — a lingering injury that reminds her of those big hands around her little neck.

Her family changed the locks on the doors, had CCTV cameras installed, determined not to uproot their lives when they had done nothing wrong.

Thankfully they have never paid the price for staying where they are.

But the scars remain.

“It’s been like nine years and I still have to unlearn,” she said this week.

“I have to learn to stand up for myself but in little ways. Before, if I did that I would get hit but now I have to learn to say my opinion and what I think.”

National Children’s Commissioner Anne Hollonds said children are not just witnesses of domestic, family and sexual violence, they are victims in their own right.

“Just as women’s safety is a key priority for national cabinet, we need children’s safety and wellbeing to be made a national priority.

“Despite decades of evidence, there is currently a lack of accountability and urgency for change,” she said.” 

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