Escaping domestic abuse - but the battle has just started

by viv
(England)

6 months in my new rented home with two of my children, I have not seen my step son all this time. I open the post box to find another clipping out of the bible, telling me to confess my lies. (10 years with my abuser, verbal abuse was daily and physical very occasional, for me the verbal abuse was so much worse)

I know what it is like to feel like you are dying from the inside out. I know the pain every person feels through suffering domestic abuse. What i did not exspect was to have to keep fighting after i finally escaped, i feel like i'm still living that nightmare.

first threat he ever said and continued to use - You ever tell anyone or leave, you and your children will be left homeless - this is all your doing anyway, my reaction is because of your action.

second - you will never see your step son again, i'll then take my son from you through the courts and your son will go into care - my sister is high up in her work, everybody will believe me because my family is so well respected.

third - you will end up in the gutter with nothing and no one, everybody believes i am a lovely person, on the otherhand people think you are weird, you come from crap, so people know you are crap, i'll make sure you have no one left to help you.

I sadly had a really bad solicitor, she did not get my case ready to present to the courts. I stood there unrespresented and lost my childrens home, the judge agreed with my abuser, that if i wanted legal rights to our home i should have been married, everything was in his name. 8 weeks my abuser gave me to get out of our family home. My abuser never in the 10 years we were together financially helped me, every penny i earned went into the home and the children, i had no savings (where previously i have always worked i am currently a full time student - and have no income other than student loans).

Facing him in the criminal courts where he then denied his abuse and tried to show that it was me who abused him. He was found guilty on all three charges. His sister (social worker) was present at the trial, and on leaving the court, they both smirked at me, this was a warning to remind me of his other threat, about the kids.

Monday - I will again stand in the family courts unrepresented because i can not afford a solicitor and try and argue his application for custody of my son, i have no faith in the family courts, his sister is a manager of childrens social care and i know that his reports will be damaging.

I have wrote to every single councillor and even prime minister in a hope that somebody will help me to put right these wrongs and sadly my voice has gone unheard.

I am trying every day every second to keep positive and strong for my children, but i do feel that every time i take one step forward, i then take 10 steps back.