#36 

Laura from FiLiA in conversation with Nancy – A story about coercive control and how to be free of it.

Laura: Hello. I'm Laura Brooks volunteer with FiLiA. And today I'm here with Nancy one of the Surviving Sisters and we're here today to hear about Nancy's journey of her life. 

Nancy: As we said, I'm Nancy. I am 63 years of age. I'm a surviving sister and my abuse started at a very early age. I was a normal child until I was eight years old and then I was raped by my father. It was hard because who, as an eight year old child, who do you tell? So therefore you just think it's normal. You think it's happening to everybody. Of course it interfered with my behaviour, I have three brothers, so I couldn't tell them anything. My mother had already left she just disappeared. So he, the father was one of these that he was on the busses. He was here and there so we ended up living with him then onto my grandma and my grandma was all for my father. So you couldn't say anything against him. 

Anyway, one day it was time to go and feed the ducks in the park. It was supposed to be a treat out. I was taken to the park where my mother was waiting and I was never allowed back. I was never given chance to say goodbye to my brothers and I, I came back once and tried again, by this time the father was staying with another lady, we were going to try and all live together.

She had two children and there was four of us. But the stepmother decided that she couldn't cope with six children. So the best thing to do was to get rid of the girl. 

I was 13 and friendly with one of the boys from my eldest brother thinking he was a friend. 

I've gone babysitting, a knock on the door and the friend came and he said, my brother had sent him to make sure I was all right. 

I was raped again. 

I ended up pregnant. I couldn't tell anybody because my brother might have thought it was me. So I was sent to live with me mum. Mum didn't know I was pregnant. They didn't know I was pregnant until the night I went in the hospital in Gateshead. I went into hospital and had a little boy and the police were brought in and I daren’t give the police any names because it might come back on my brother. So they couldn't do anything. I came home and I got a visit from this so-called father and my brother, John. 

My mum had said he knew all the time that I was pregnant, but nobody knew. But they went the separate ways. And my mum ended up adopting my son with her new husband, he took over his name. And,12 months after that, I ended up in a working girls hostel because I couldn't obviously cope with it, but I didn't know what to say.

I started off downstairs in the children's home. And then as I got a job, they put you up in bed sits with a shared kitchen. And that was teaching you to stand on your own two feet. I couldn't afford to have a bed sit outside of that so therefore I went into catering and live-in. So I ended up in Scotland and never thought about my mother or anything.

And then I got back in touch with her, why? I don't know, I met another man. And I had a daughter to him, but he went away to work in Amsterdam and never came back. So I was bringing this child up on my own when I met the next man who I married, until he went off with another woman, but he couldn't tell me, I had two children to him. 

He didn't have the guts to tell me that he didn't want me, but nobody else was to have me. So he tried strangling me and kicked seven bells of shit out of me at the bottom of the stairs. And he did it in front of my kids. My daughter, Rachel ended up being fostered because she was more of a perpetrator because she saw what was going on with me, so she had to overrule me and I couldn't cope. She accused me of beating her up. I didn't. It was a dog that jumped over from the back of the van to the front of the van. Social services were brought in, but it was just another setback.

But my husband had another woman. 

So my mum ended up coming to Shipley because I'd taken an overdose.

I couldn't cope. 

And when I did wake up, there was a look down on you from the nurses, snidey looks. And I walked out of Bradford Royal infirmary, jumped in a taxi in my nightie and got them to take me back home. My mother was absolutely blazing because I'd done that. 

They didn’t know I’d gone missing, they thought I'd gone out for a smoke, but that wasn't the point. I coped with that. I always swore I'd never take an overdose again because of those nurses. 

I met another man and I was with this man that 31 years. And for 31 years, he's pecked at my brain. I wasn’t allowed to go out or to have friends. And for the two years previous, I was laid in bed one night and I was asleep obviously. And I woke up and he's there on his hands and knees and he hots his fists into the pillow. Saying - I am fucking sick of this. I never get any effin sleep - And I woke up and says, what's wrong? He says -  you have been snoring - And this is where I said - you don't have to worry about that again – I got out of bed and for two years I slept on my dining room floor and I had a daughter living with me then. I mean, I had my other two daughters, one went out to work one Saturday and never came home and the other one left one weekend when my mum were there, but they didn't see any of this, it was done discreetly. 

But through what I've been through, I was very aware and very over protective of my girls because I didn't want the same thing to happen to them. 

When it all came out and I told my mum that I'd been raped by my father I'd been raped by my brother's friend. All she was concerned about was – you sure it’s not your fathers?  After I told her I'd been raped by him. I mean, my mum she called a spade, a spade, she had no time, although I did everything I could for her, she had no time for me. I was fat. I was ugly. I had slanty eyes and there was always something wrong with me. 

My mum died and I had this out with her before she died, and she said, well, I know I've got a favourite. And that was the eldest boy, and I said, I do everything for you and I don't ask for anything in return. I said, I've never asked you to stick up for me or anything. 

I was in junior school and we had blackboards then and the teacher put a crossword on the board and they put the questions down on the side and one was:  Nancy's nickname four letters, lump.  And of course the whole school then took the mickey out of me. And I got up and walked out the classroom and walked out of the school. 

Then grandma took me back and I got into trouble and he didn't. So they condoned the behaviour. 

I went with this last one for 31 years. And the final straw was -  he’d be doing something outside and a lump of wood would hit you but it'd be your fault for standing there. You'd fall down the stairs, he’d say - stupid bitches under the sun because you weren't looking -  but it doesn't matter that you'd been asking him for two years for an handrail, but it was your fault. And it was always my fault. 

He used to say the neighbours, you weren’t to talk to them and it was really, you weren't allowed to go out.

You went shopping, but you're only allowed to go down the aisles that you needed something, he’s stand there and wait for you because it shows you up all the time, but in front of his friends he was absolutely fine. I used be in the car and go to work with him and have to sit in the car while he was at work, because then he knew where I was.

And he used to say, ‘you’re loopy’ he was angry at everything. Shout at the TV. You weren’t allowed to watch a program unless he liked it. He put the American civil war on and laid on the settee on the control and went to sleep all day. You were only allowed one television on. You couldn't have the other one on, in the dining room because that was a waste money.

Laura:  Controlling every aspect of your life. 

Nancy: Yeah. If you go anywhere. Like if I was going to, let's say the doctors, -   It would be – How long you're going to be -  he would know the exact times, how long it took for you to get from A to B and back again. And he would check the mileage. 

So anyway this particular day, I said, I need to go, I don't know what triggered it. I need to go to doctors my knees are bad. And I went to the doctors. It was an evening.  And I went in and the other young student and I don't know what that student thought of me I said I'm having problems with my knees again. And he says, right. We’ll look at the painkillers. He says, you all right? I said, yeah, I'm fine. It's just my knees. And he just asked how well we're doing in general. I'm saying I'm fine. I'm fine. And I've got to the door and the doctor said – are you sure you’re alright? And I just broke down, totally broke down.

I said I'm sorry. I'm sorry. And I'm worried about people sat in there. Anyway, the doctor says, talk to me. And when I told him, he said, you need to get out. And I’d already spoke that just before that I've said, I just feel as though I shouldn't be here. And he says, you talking about suicide? I said, yeah.

He says, you're not taking tablets are you. I says, no, I won't take tablets. 

He says, why is that? Cause I woke up last night.

He says how you're going to do it? I said, I've got a hose pipe in the car ready for doing it that night. And he says, I’ll get you help, I promise I’ll get you help. And he did.

And it put me through, the next day he was on the phone and he got me through to DVS and he says, please don't do it.

I went home and he started ranting and raving;

The doc said - well, what's he doing this time?  

He just took me painkillers. 

Well, it took an effort and a long time for you to say that.

I said -  He just wanted to go through me meds.

He says, yeah, you having me on?

I said, I'm not. Anyway he put me through to DVS they helped me and I got out of there.

They took me to a program called Freedom Program. I think it was the second week of the Freedom Program when I could tick every box that were on that sheet. It was time to get out. And from there they helped me get a home. They didn’t want anything in return. 

And like today I don't carry a hose pipe anymore. I have my ups and downs. I still suffer from depression. I still have an absence of brain because I keep flipping from one to the other in my brain.

And I forget where I am, but if I can help one person by telling my story. It's not a story. It's my life. Then it's all good. 

I will have done something with my life 

And I will have proved every one of them wrong. I'm not useless. And I no longer want to be used. I just want to be me.

And if that means being on my own for the rest of my life, then that's where it will be. I've got my girls back. I've got my grandkids and everything.

My daughter, she housed me for three weeks and I slept in a bedroom with her seven-year-old boy and without her I wouldn't be here. And she knew, and she said, she'd seen it coming. She actually saw the perpetrator. 

There was a van parked up the wrong way and the perpetrator went out and was going to set about him with a hammer and even she said you need to get out. 

And I'm so glad I did.

Laura: I’m so glad you did.

Nancy: The only other thing I’d like people to know ladies to know I mean.

Is that the hardest thing to do is to ask for help.  But it isn't, it's a strongest thing you can do. And I'm living proof of that. The road isn't easy. 

Laura It’s hard being vulnerable. 

Nancy: It is, but they teach you to be strong and they let you be you again, that's all you need.

I’d just like to thank you for listening.

Laura: I’d like to thank you for sharing your life with us Nancy, you've come out of the other side and you've looked all your adversaries and problems in the in the face. 

 The first time I saw Nancy she was performing the Vagina Monologues with a group of surviving sisters. And you took my breath away watching you because you was real. And you could see the story and the journey. I hope that the rest of the people who were listening, other women out there can take the strength and just the sheer force of you Nancy that has overcome everything in your life to be where you are today, helping other women, being a volunteer, giving a platform to women who don't have one and just being there as a shoulder to cry on, you know, you're making the difference now every single day. 

Nancy:  The thing is even three years down the line, I know if I'm ever in trouble or I'm feeling at my lowest, there is always somebody there to talk to always at the other end of the phone.