I forgive Dad for killing my abusive mum

WHEN she read the note her dad posted through her letterbox in the middle of the night, the contents were so chilling that Paula White knew something terrible had happened.

- BY EMMELINE SAUNDERS

Frantic, she rang him - and he told her that her mum was dead and he was going to hand himself in to the police. Former paramedic Charles Graham, 78, had strangled his wife Davina, 67, in their home.

But rather than blaming her dad for killing her mum, Paula, 43, forgives him and says she'll stand by him when he's released from prison.

Because Charles, she says, put up with years of abuse throughout his marriage - and she believes he was in a "kill or be killed" situation.

And now Paula wants to raise awareness of men who, like him, suffer in silence from domestic abuse.

Scream

Of her mum, Paula says: "It was like growing up with Jekyll and Hyde - you never knew what mood you'd get. One minute Mum was like your fairy godmother and the next she was the evil stepmum."

In public, retired nurse Davina presented as a pillar of the community and was well known for her fruit baskets. But behind closed doors it was a different story. She struggled with mental health issues, going in and out of hospital for treatment. And she was known to the police.

Paula recalls: "She was always an abusive woman, since I was a child.

"She was well known to mental health services and she was reported many times for domestic disturbances. She would threaten to commit suicide on a regular basis."

As he tried to protect his daughters from his wife's behaviour, Charles would "take the brunt" of Davina's verbal abuse.

Paula says: "He'd say, 'Mum is having another wobbler'. She would scream at Dad all the time, calling him useless. He would never retaliate."

When Paula's sister Kerry lost her son Brandon, five, to an epileptic fit in 2002, Davina's behaviour spiralled.

Heartbroken Kerry never recovered from the tragedy and died in 2016, aged just 36, from pneumonia.

Davina even made Kerry's funeral about herself and was told to leave by relatives, Paula says.