My escape FROM HELL

Breaking free seemed like an impossibility until, one day, Joanne couldn't take any more

- LOUISE BATY

Shaking with terror, I felt cold metal jabbing into my skin as the man pinned me tightly against the wall. It was the early 90s and this man was no stranger. Gerald* was someone I’d loved and feared in equal measures for years. Now, despite me being around 10 weeks pregnant, he was holding a crossbow to my stomach and making me promise to have an abortion. Sobbing and nodding my head, I finally felt him release me, and I crumpled to the ground in horror.

This nightmarish scenario was a world away from my middle-class upbringing, first in Belfast, Northern Ireland, then in Telford, Shropshire, where I’d moved with my mum and younger brother, then aged 10, after my parents’ divorce.

I’d been so naive and trusting back then and had been impressed by the other girls in my class who talked about fancying boys. I’d never been interested until a shy boy asked me to be his ‘girlfriend’ when I was 13. Back then, it just meant holding hands after school, but within a few days, his older cousin, 17, had muscled in and was walking me home instead.

One day, this older boy dragged me into some bushes, lifted up my school skirt, and raped me. I had been a virgin with no understanding of sex at all and I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t feel able to talk to my mum, who was now studying as well as working long hours. She had no choice but to leave me and my brother to look after ourselves without the family support we’d had in Belfast.

Once word got round that I was sexually active, my life became an utter nightmare due to the culture at the school, where older boys preyed on girls. The boy who raped me would barge into my house after school, bringing other boys with him. With no adults there to protect me, I was gang-raped, and this happened repeatedly over the following two years.