Woman poisoned boyfriend’s drink with hand sanitiser, threatened to stab him with knife

A NSW man has told his harrowing story of abuse for the first time after a series of increasingly depraved acts carried out by his girlfriend.

An abusive woman poisoned her boyfriend’s glass of wine with hand sanitiser then berated him the next day for being “lazy” and “pathetic” because he was vomiting and couldn’t get out of bed.

It was a pattern of abuse and violence that escalated to the point where she pulled a knife on him, threatened to kill his dog, taunted him about his dead father and scared the couple’s child so badly that he wet himself.

The victim Chris*, who spoke to news.com.au on condition of anonymity, is telling his story to illustrate how domestic and family violence impacts men, too.

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.

One in 16 Australian men have experienced physical or sexual violence by a current or former partner.

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

Chris’ story began 10 years ago when a woman he “randomly met” started pursuing him. He says the pair got along well and he ignored red flags about her behaviour because he wanted to make the relationship work.

Things were fine until the she moved in with Chris’s father.

“She was having a lot of problems with her father and her brother. Ringing me, telling me she’s having fights with them physically,” Chris says.

“I did what most people do and I assumed she was the victim. I thought, ‘shit, what can I do to help her?’”

The first incident of real concern was when she “went nuts and cut herself on something then wiped blood on my dad’s front door”, Chris says.

Years later, after the pair fell pregnant, she exhibited signs of violence towards him.

“It started getting very violent and I sort of had to take it because I was more concerned about the baby.

“Once the baby was born, it got worse. It really peaked in September last year, when my father passed suddenly. She was going to bed at 3am, getting up at 10 or 11am.

“She’d be upset because she hasn’t slept well, then verbals would start. She would say things to me like, ‘You’re just happy your dad’s dead because you get his stereo’.

“She rang my sister and my mother and abused them to the point where they’ve had to block her. She was paranoid. It got to the point where my family would ring me and I couldn’t answer the phone. She’d start swearing, saying, ‘oh, are they talking about me?’.

The victim said there were red flags that he ignored.

“For four or five months I couldn’t even answer the phone in my own house.”

Chris says he was sleeping in a separate room with a suitcase and his dog guarding the door because “she’d try to force it open at night”.

“That was probably the worst thing — not feeling comfortable in your own house. Everybody needs somewhere safe to go.”

Police were called to the couple’s home in January this year. When they arrived, she became volatile and aggressive.

In a separate incident this year, Chris says she poisoned his drink.

“I had a mouthful of wine left in my glass on the bench. I picked it up and slugged it back and had this burning feeling in my throat.

“I knew something wasn’t right. The next day, I could not get out of bed. I was vomiting, sweating. She was just calling me lazy and pathetic because I couldn’t get up. It wasn’t until I questioned her about what happened that she admitted it.”

The next incident involved a knife.

“I was cooking dinner for my son and myself and by this time I’d gotten sick of cooking her dinner and her not eating it. I didn’t cook her anything and she was a bit annoyed. She started helping herself with her hands, eating my dinner off my plate.

“I said, ‘Don’t be disgusting’. We were saying things back and forth and she’s poked me in the eyes. I had marks directly under my eyelids. She scratched my neck. Punched me in the mouth. And as I went to walk away she kicked me in the arse.

“I told her I was calling police because she’d assaulted me. She started charging at me. I ended up in the kitchen with my back leaning against the sink. She opened the drawer up and pulled a knife out and started holding it horizontal, saying, ‘Are you going to call police?’. I said, ‘Give me the knife’. She stopped halfway and I sort of grabbed it and put it in the sink but I cut my finger.

“I did call the police. She grabbed the knife out of the sink and said, ‘I’m going to stab your f***ing dog’.”

Chris says he genuinely feared for his life given the way her behaviour had been escalating.

“I would never grab a knife out of someone else’s hand unless I had no other choice. From the physical stuff to the sanitiser in my drink to physically grabbing a knife. I wondered what was next.”

Chris says the pair parted ways but “she had nowhere to go”. She returned to the house but her behaviour worsened. She left again only to return with a rake to smash a window on the front of the house.

The couple’s child “ended up wetting himself” because he was so frightened.

Chris was referred to Relationship Australia’s Safer Pathways program through police reports. An AVO has been brought out against his former partner and child protection reports have been completed.

It has been three months since the pair have seen one another and Chris says things are “heaps better now”. But he acknowledges the toll his former partner’s abuse took on him.

“It was like I was in a car crash,” he says. “I was in shock. For the first three or four weeks after it all happened I felt very flinchy. I found myself very anxious but now I feel like it’s slowly releasing. Like I’ve got a whole weight off my shoulders.”

His advice is simple for domestic violence victims who find themselves in situations like his.

“Just read the red flags. Don’t ignore them. I’m still learning myself. I just wish I was more assertive. Maybe because I felt sorry for her, maybe that’s cost me. Maybe listen to your head, not your heart.”