Escaping abusive relationships when the abuser is your carer

By Spinal cord injury survivor, R.F. Hunt

For anyone needing personal care, there needs to be a high degree of trust. But what if that isn’t present?

What if you are in a relationship and your partner rather than acting as a ‘carer’ is instead controlling, abusive or neglectful?

Molly had been diagnosed with cauda equina syndrome, which is a spinal cord injury (SCI) and was discharged home from hospital, with her partner as her main carer.

Molly says for the first six months, her partner was ‘charming and lovely’ but when her physical situation deteriorated and she became more dependent upon him, his personality switched.

She said: “He went from Prince Charming to the thing in your nightmares.”

The reason Molly had been in hospital was because for a long time she had been suffering from increasingly debilitating back pain.

But the severity of her pain was dismissed by her GP who told her it was more likely to be due to her fibromyalgia.

Then, one day, Molly took a bath. She got in it fine, ready for a relaxing soak, but to her horror as she was getting herself dry, she found her legs were completely paralysed.

At the hospital, they found she had a herniated disc that had damaged the spinal cord. Initially, the prognosis wasn’t good with emergency surgery leading to cauda equina syndrome.

Following surgery, she was released with no information about her spinal cord injury. No information about support services available, or access to equipment, and not even an appointment at the spinal unit.

Molly said: “Nobody took the time to tell me what my life was going to be like or what I needed to seek for help or where I needed to go or anything. I was just trapped in my body.

“And the worst thing was that they released me home to somebody who was also my trap.

“So, I suddenly had to fight losing myself whist fighting not losing myself to him. I was very much in a Dante’s hell sort of scenario.”

The lack of curiosity by the hospital staff into the care Molly would receive at home led to her being released home into the arms of an abusive partner.

Her situation was exacerbated by her limited movement. She couldn’t move independently so felt stuck in this increasingly toxic situation.

‘A person with a physical disability is five times more likely than a person without a disability to be abused by a partner, spouse’ – Women Against Abuse

On more than one occasion, Molly said: “He would take the phone off me so that I couldn’t ring people when I had to be bathed because I couldn’t wash myself.

“He’d threaten to drown me in my bath.”

Friends had started to drop-off following Molly’s injury. But during this time her partner started isolating her from other friends and family and took control of the finances as she was deemed “too broken” by him.

This was a traumatic time, as along with Molly in the house, there was also her young daughter.

For a long time, Molly had tried to protect her daughter, who was just ten years old at the time of her SCI, by keeping as quiet as possible, despite the provocation from her partner.

“The only thing I could so was stay quiet when these things were happening. It was the only way I could protect her at the time, if I just didn’t cry, if I didn’t shout, if I didn’t fight back, then she wouldn’t know it was happening.

“Because the moment you start fighting, then she’ll know, she’ll hear, so it was my job to keep quiet so that it didn’t affect her anymore.

“She only really started to notice the last couple of months.

“Before that, I took everything that was wrong and silently just tried to breathe through it because I couldn’t mess up her head as well as her life.”

Not only was Molly trying to protect her young daughter from the abuse going on in the home, but she was also trying to deal with the barrage of negative feelings she was experiencing.

She said: “I felt like a huge hindrance. I felt really useless.”

Later on, in relation to jobs around the home, Mollie said: “In my mind, I’d already failed as a parent  because I suddenly just couldn’t look after her, I couldn’t cook, and I couldn’t do laundry.”

Molly knew something had to change. She searched for more information about her spinal cord injury as well as support offered from domestic abuse charities.

Molly said: “I was determined that we were going to have some form of life.”

One of the key problems was Molly couldn’t move around the home. She knew she needed a wheelchair.

When that finally arrived, the power in the relationship suddenly changed and she knew this was her opportunity to leave her partner.

This was a risky time, but she managed to do it, with the help of her wheelchair and the support of organisations including More Positive Me, a domestic abuse charity and the Spinal Injuries Association who encouraged her there was a possibility that her daughter and her could not just have a life, but a good life.

Refuge have advice about leaving an abusive relationship here.   

Many patients like Molly find themselves discharged into situations that aren’t conducive to providing the care necessary for someone with a spinal cord injury or other complex disability making them vulnerable to abuse, control and neglect.

The Spinal Injuries Association said: “Returning home after SCI can be extremely challenging.

“Every day we hear of people who are failing to access the care support and rehab they need. These cases of domestic violence are truly shocking.

“Hearing the stories of people with SCI being placed in vulnerable situations with no way out due to a lack of support or services is unacceptable, dangerous and must never be allowed to happen.

“SIA aims to support those who are newly injured with a network of services that helps them access the care and support they need.”

Before a patient is discharged, hospital staff need to ensure the patient is given information about their diagnosis and information about support agencies/charities.

But as well, staff need to ask the ‘difficult questions’ to ensure the patient has care established at home and that this care, whether it be supplied by an outside agency or by relatives/ partners acting as carers is sufficient and being delivered in a professional manner.

R.F.Hunt is a freelance journalist, columnist and author, who has spinal cord injuries.

Where to get help – if you have a Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) and if you need heed help in escaping from abusive relationships.

• Spinal Injuries Association https://www.spinal.co.uk
• The National helpline (Refuge) https://www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk
• Women Against Abuse https://www.womenagainstabuse.org/get-help
• More Positive Me https://www.morepositiveme.co.uk