A Victim Re-Victimised – Mad In America

Trigger warning: This story contains graphic details of domestic violence and sexual assault.

I was at my girlfriend’s house, desperately searching for my phone and car keys. The only items that could provide me with the ability to flee. Two objects she had deliberately deprived me of, knowing that I would be trapped, her prisoner, without them. In my frantic quest, I was hurling and smashing everything in her rental property. Her possessions, her home, her physical and emotional state, everything that she was and owned were no longer of consequence to me. I was livid with her actions, her blatant disregard for my very being. She had hurt me, used me and stolen from me and I wanted her to feel my pain.

She was furious. With both hands, she pushed me in the ribs and I fell to the ground. As I lay on my back she locked eyes with me—I was her prey. Scrambling backward, I managed to find my footing and proceeded to stand. She slapped me across my face, hitting my right eye. I retaliated and shoved her in the ribs. Whilst she was momentarily stunned I attempted, in vain, to leave her vicious and looming form. Yet, every door in her house was locked and every key was missing. She had trapped me like a stolen animal inside her remote residence. I had no means of escape and no way to call for help in my hour of need.

Unexpectedly, two Northern Territory police officers she had surreptitiously contacted appeared at her locked screen door. She thrust past me and unlocked the door for them with a key from her pocket, desperate to speak to them first to disempower me further. The officers wanted to arrest me for assaulting her and committing property damage. However, she insisted that I not be charged despite her vehement claims of victimhood. She described me as being “violent and suicidal.” She insisted that I was “mentally ill” and should be taken to the Cowdy Ward, the psychiatric abuse facility at the Royal Darwin Hospital. I do not know why they complied with her demands. Perhaps it was because it would be less paperwork for them to do when they returned to their air-conditioned offices.

I was terrified. I had just been physically abused, deprived of my liberty and had my property stolen. Yet, I was the one who was being arrested under the Northern Territory Mental Health Act because my diabolical girlfriend falsely advised the police that I was the perpetrator.

I sat in the back seat of the police wagon foolishly attempting to convince the ignorant officers that I was a ‘stable’ individual. I informed them that I was a mother, a school teacher, had a Master’s degree, and was an exhibiting artist. I wanted them to know that they were wrong and had made a terrible mistake. They never once asked me why I damaged her property, nor did they mention the pulsating wound on my face or the blood seeping through my clothing. At that moment, I saw no purpose in telling them the truth. As they chose to believe that I was a ‘mentally ill criminal’, it was safest to say and do nothing. Three individuals had condemned me without evidence. I was outnumbered and began to doubt my own memories and reality.

She stalked the police car to the hospital. When we arrived, I was placed in a goldfish bowl prison and monitored for twenty-four hours by a series of morbidly obese security guards. The entire time she remained with me. She scrutinised and regulated my every move: what I drank, what I ate, whom I spoke to, and when I could use the bathroom. She conversed with the doctors and nurses on my behalf as if I were non-verbal and cognitively impaired. She advised the hospital that my ex-husband, children, friends, and family should refrain from contacting me. She was also still in possession of my phone and refused my anguished pleas to access it.

After a day of being a tragic zoo exhibit, the staff recommended that I be released because my conduct had given them no justification to consider that I was suicidal or a danger to myself or the public. I wanted to leave. I desperately wanted both her and the hospital to release me so that I could run away to my home, lock all my doors and windows and never have to see or speak to another horrible person again. Yet, she insisted that I was severely unwell. She demanded that I be psychiatrically committed. For some perverse reason the ‘professionals’ acquiesced. Why didn’t anybody realise that she was my captor? Like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, she had everyone under her spell. I was simply her frightened and mute victim conveniently painted to be ‘mentally ill’ with her abusive con artistry paintbrush.

I was incarcerated for four days at the Cowdy Ward. Every afternoon she ‘visited’ to interrogate me and ensure that I was aware that I was her property and my fate was in her hands. She regularly conversed with the staff to provide them with inaccurate information regarding my emotional state and behaviour. She reminded them that I was very ill and untrustworthy.

The days were simultaneously monotonous and frightening. I wondered whether I would be raped in my bed at night, assaulted, drugged to oblivion, given electro-convulsive ‘therapy’, or ever see and hold my children and pets and be free again. Despite withdrawing from an alcohol and Prozac addiction, no one seemed to believe that this was a cause for concern because it was obvious to them, from either pure observation or their Superman x-ray vision, that I had a ‘chemical imbalance’ in my brain and deserved to be detained.

I was finally discharged because a cluster of psychiatrists with clipboards and peculiar, irrelevant questions determined that I had ‘recovered’ from a “situational crisses” (sic). More plausibly, it was because my prison bed was required for another unfortunate individual. The hospital staff released me back into the arms of my abuser. She was now my ‘carer’ and had legal authority over me. She had the keys to my home and my car, had taken my pets whilst I was detained, and had the power to psychiatrically re-commit me anytime she chose.

She forced me to attend a drug and alcohol withdrawal and rehabilitation facility, and then attend AA meetings numerous times each week whilst she continued to drink Jack Daniels excessively and abuse her Adderall and Valium prescriptions. I had to do everything she wanted and also prove to the ‘authorities’ that I was ‘recovering’. I realised that I had to somehow manage to submit to her every whim whilst slowly removing myself from her domination without arousing her suspicion. A seemingly insurmountable task.

When my ex-husband requested that I move to South Australia with him, I readily accepted. Finally, I could physically and geographically escape her drowning oppression and abuse. She attempted to persuade me that it was the wrong choice and that I wasn’t “thinking properly.” She demanded that I remain with her because I was permanently ‘mentally ill’ and would never be capable of managing my needs again. She advised me that I was unlovable and that she was the only one who could or would ever care for me. However, despite my eroded self-esteem, maintaining my relationship with my children was my priority. Besides, I was now finally sober and considered ‘recovered’ enough to leave the Northern Territory. I did not legally require her or anyone else’s approval.

It took me seven years to finally report to the South Australian police that on that fateful night in August 2017, my former girlfriend physically and sexually assaulted me, stole my property, held me captive in her residence, and gave a false statement to the Northern Territory police alleging that I was “suicidal and mentally ill.” I wept as I informed the two male officers (despite requesting that I communicate exclusively with female officers) that she purchased alcohol and then encouraged me to drink half a carton of Pure Blonde beer with prescription drugs during my early attempt at sobriety. I explained to them how once intoxicated, she took me to her room, undressed me, and cut me five times with a razor blade: twice on my inner left thigh, once on my abdomen and twice on my ribcage, and then proceeded to drink the blood from my seeping wounds. I continued to describe to them that she digitally penetrated and then raped me with a black sexual apparatus, and then forced me to penetrate her with the same device as I was too overpowered and frightened to resist her.

The police officers almost exhibited empathy towards me when I disclosed that, after the abominable act, I was tearing her home apart in a desperate attempt to locate the phone and car keys that she had stolen from my handbag to prevent me from fleeing or contacting somebody for assistance. I continued to cry as I clarified to them that I pushed her in self-defence because she had imprisoned me inside her home, and physically and sexually assaulted me. When I notified them that the Northern Territory police officers failed to question me as to why I had destroyed her property or how I came to be wounded and bleeding, they looked at me in disbelief. At no point during my interview did they comment upon why the police took me, a rape and domestic violence victim, to the hospital under the Mental Health Act, nor why they permitted me to be incarcerated in a psychiatric facility for days.

My ex-girlfriend will never be held accountable for her actions. There is no evidence, no eyewitnesses, nothing but my scars, traumatic recollections and written testimony to prove the horrific abuse she subjected me to over two years of her coercive control. The police officers, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, and others who failed to assist me will never be interviewed or reprimanded. ‘Friends’ and family have distanced themselves from me. They choose to believe that I am ‘mentally ill’ rather than suffering from the aftereffects of innumerable brutal crimes that commenced in early childhood. No one comprehends that because I have been repeatedly traumatised I should be treated with gentleness and compassion, not ostracised. Their distance reinforces my insecurities, making me feel worthless and annihilated. Consequently, I prefer to stay at home in my self-made penitentiary, avoiding humans because I refuse to ever again be a victim re-victimised.