Domestic violence: Qld mum knew husband ‘was going to kill us all’

Queensland woman Grace was a mother-of-two with what looked like a perfect life – but in reality, it was a nightmare. Warning: Distressing

WARNING: Distressing content.

Imagine another person telling you what you’re allowed to wear, what you’re allowed to eat, and how much you’re allowed to weigh. What books you can and can’t read, what TV shows you can and can’t watch, and what you can and can’t use the internet for.

Imagine that you’re allowed to use the phone – but not after 7pm each night. You’re allowed to go out – but only for certain amounts of time, and never after dark.

It sounds like the life of a character in a dystopian novel. Of a prisoner. But for Grace* it was her reality for two decades.

“As soon as we got married, that was it. He changed completely. He considered that he owned me, that I had to do all the housework,” the Queensland mum-of-two told news.com.au.

“It was just like a switch had been flipped. He was a coercive controller to the nth degree.”

Despite having worked in the legal industry for 25 years, Grace didn’t realise that what her ex-husband was doing was a form of abuse. She also didn’t realise that when he’d have sex with her without her consent – during which he would become violent – that it wasn’t “his right, because we were married”. It was rape.

“I knew what he was doing wasn’t OK,” she said. “But I thought it was because he was mentally ill. I didn’t understand, at that point in time, that it was a choice for him to behave that way.”

Under the shadow cast by his violence, Grace “ceased to exist”.

“I basically slipped into survival mode,” she said. “I was petrified to go to work, because I was afraid that when I came home, in his rage, he would’ve killed our eldest child.”

On average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner.

Almost 10 women a day are hospitalised for assault injuries at the hands of a spouse or domestic partner.

Every day in May, as part of Domestic and Family Violence Month, news.com.au will tell the stories behind these shocking statistics.

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Grace* was subjected to two decades of coercive control, physical, sexual and financial abuse. Picture: iStock

Friends of the couple, who witnessed the abuse, made him get rid of his gun because they were afraid of what he might do with it. He threatened Grace and their children with a sledgehammer.

“I knew that it was only a matter of time, because his rage was getting more and more out of control, that he was going to kill us all,” Grace said.

The day he threatened to burn their house down, with Grace and their then-six-year-old and three-year-old inside, she knew that she had to get out.

“I looked at his face – he’s got blue eyes. They were black. I was looking at somebody I didn’t even recognise. And I knew that if I’d have let him in the house, he would’ve killed us, without a shadow of a doubt,” she recalled.

“And I only realised a couple of months ago that because we were on acreage and I’d taken the keys off of him to lock him out of the house, that if he’d had access to petrol that day, I’d be dead right now and so would my children, because he was in a blackout rage.

“I didn’t even recognise him. I was looking into the face of pure evil. And I knew then that it was only a matter of time until he killed us. And I knew that I had to get out.”

Eight-and-a-half years later, that terror hasn’t gone away – because, despite “concrete proof” of the abuse that she and her children endured, courts have permitted Grace’s ex-husband time with their children on weekends, overnights and during school holidays.

“Despite multiple reports to the Department of Child Safety (DoCS) by doctors, hospitals and specialists of the abuse and neglect of the children by their dad during his care time after we separated, DoCS wouldn’t act,” Grace said.

“He took the kids for a walk in the rainforest, knowing that they’d come home and tell me, and then told them he that was going to take them on the skywalk bridge the following contact weekend. To anybody that doesn’t have any experience with these types of people, that just sounds very innocent.

“But I knew exactly what he meant by that. He meant that he was going to take them and throw them off … I literally live my life in fear that each time my kids go to their Dad, it’s going to be the last time I see them.”

Her children’s mimicking of his abusive behaviour – which is all they’ve ever known from him, and therefore think is “normal” – makes Grace feel like she is “never going to be free”.

“I just look at my eldest child, and I just think, ‘Oh my God … how can the court not know what it’s doing to these children?’ There’s all this rhetoric out there about stopping DV, but you can’t stop DV while the children are still being exposed to a DV perpetrator,” she said.

“And the reality is, they’re going to copy his behaviour, which is exactly what they are doing. I’m never going to be free … It’s just like he’s living in my house.”

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The fact that she is still in family court nine years later, Grace said, shows that “the system is not there to protect children” or women.

“I was treated like a criminal, and he was treated like the victim … The fact that he threatened to murder the children should’ve been an automatic ‘no’. The fact that friends made him get rid of the gun, because they were afraid he was going to kill us, should’ve been an automatic ‘no’ to him having any time whatsoever,” she said.

It’s why Grace now donates her time and legal expertise to other women experiencing abuse, “so that they don’t end up in the same position I am and don’t feel so alone, because they’ve got no one to help them”.

“I just want to help other people so they don’t go through what we’ve gone through,” she said.

While an average of one woman is murdered by a current or former partner per week in Australia, survivors or violence don’t live full lives, Grace said, despite not being “physically dead”.

“But there’s more than one way to die. I don’t know how to explain it properly, but I feel like I’m dead too. I have been murdered by my ex-husband and the system. Even though I’m still breathing, and still walking around, what kind of a life do I have? I don’t have anything.”

*Name has been changed

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