Christmas: The most violent time of year for women

Christmas past

Five Christmases have passed since Ellen separated from her husband. She met him on holiday in Turkey. The country was a sunny revelation, she said.

Her Irish boyfriend was a taciturn man who would spend their nights out ignoring her.

In Turkey, Ellen felt she was flavour of the month. “I was amazed because they were all asking me out. I felt like Lady Diana walking down the street,” she said.

She loved it.

She loved it even more when a “tall, dark, handsome” man asked her out. She agreed to go for a cocktail with him. After one week, he asked her to marry him.

At 38, Ellen was keen to have children. “The biological clock was ticking and I thought: ‘I’ve hit the jackpot here’.”

The irony of the phrase would return to haunt her.

Ellen went back to Ireland but returned to Turkey a month later. The pair got engaged and her parents bought the engagement ring “as he had no money”.

Ellen’s boyfriend was “very eager” to get married, she said, so he converted to Catholicism, they married and returned to Ireland two weeks later.

“He had already changed,” Ellen said. He threw stuff at her and shouted. She was scared of him.

“I wondered if I should leave him before I brought him back, but I kept thinking that we were married by three priests and all my friends had come over. I was just too embarrassed to do that. So I brought my ‘holiday romance’ back with me.”

Ellen’s father converted the attic and the couple lived there together. Ellen then became pregnant with her son. She thought things would change. They didn’t.

When the baby was four months old, Ellen took the family on a trip to Glendalough. She got lost. Her husband got very angry, punching his fist through the window. Ellen was terrified, but managed to drive home.

When they got to the house, he started to hit her. She put the baby down somewhere safe, but her husband chased her, hitting her below the neck.

“He often hit me on the chest as the bruises wouldn’t show when I dressed for work.” He also tried to choke her.

Ellen’s husband kept his violence hidden from Ellen’s father, she said.

Christmas had no comfort and no joy for Ellen. She would endure five of them with her violent husband.

One Christmas, he demanded that she write down, then type up a catalogue of his violent acts. She was to give him the typed document after Christmas dinner was eaten.

“The next day, I made him scrambled eggs and he banged the table, told me it was disgusting. He then threw the plate at the wall,” she said.

The couple’s young son was there. So was Ellen’s dad.

Christmases were tense. Ellen “walked on eggshells” and tried to get her son “out of the house” whenever she could. When she bought presents for their son, her husband “would complain”.

“He would want to know why I was buying stuff for our son. He would get very jealous. I would hide shopping bags when I came in. It was awful.”

Finally, after he had threatened to kill her, Ellen’s father witnessed her husband trying to strangle her. (Her four-year-old son had run and fetched his grandfather.)

Ellen went to the doctor. She also went to the Garda. They were very helpful, she said. The husband had to leave, they said.

Ellen rang Women’s Aid many times at Christmas. “I’d be in tears. And I’d be thinking: ‘Here’s another Christmas wrecked’, and they would be very comforting.”

They also advised Ellen to get a restraining order. Eventually, she did. She was glad.

Christmas present

“This Christmas is a very stressful time for women living in domestic violence situations,” said Sinead Harrison, direct services manager for Women’s Aid.

Christmas doesn’t cause domestic abuse but where there is violence and very controlling behaviour, it can be a difficult time, she said.

“At Christmas there’s this pressure for everything to be lovely. There’s a lot of financial pressure. It is also a really difficult time for women who have left abusive situations.”

At the moment “we are very busy in the courts,” said Harrison, “because it is all about making access arrangements, and abusers will use Christmas as a time to control former partners”.

Santa still has to come, though, so it is a time that is very tight for a lot of women. “‘How am I going to get through Christmas?’ is a question we are being asked a lot.”

There is pressure at this time of year to spend time as a family, said Harrison, and this contact makes a woman vulnerable “as it lets the abuser back in”.

A huge element of domestic violence is financial abuse, she said, so even where a woman might not appear to be on the poverty line, money can be used as a weapon by abusers.

Women from all walks of life are abused, she said.

The Women’s Aid helpline is busy all year round, “but in the run-up to Christmas we are getting contact from women we haven’t heard from for a long time,” said Harrison.

Women are trying to “suck up” any dysfunction and make it the nicest, most uncomplicated day they can for their children.

“We know it is a difficult time. A time of stress. Pick up the phone. Call us. It is free. It is confidential.”

This year a woman who rang the service last year gave them a donation of grocery vouchers.

She had received vouchers last year and they had helped her to get through Christmas.

In a better position and rebuilding her life, she wants to help other women now, said Harrison.

Christmas future

What good is sitting alone in your room?

“Come hear the music play

Life is a cabaret, old chum

Come to the cabaret . . .”

Ellen has rediscovered her love for musical theatre and this is the song she’ll be singing this Christmas. In the shower, at the kitchen sink. Everywhere.

“I’ve met the nicest man I could ever have imagined,” she said, beaming. “He is so nurturing and caring and kind.”

He asked Ellen to marry him on her birthday two years ago. They will wed in 2017. The venue is booked.

Santa is coming this year and Ellen will make sure her nine-year-old gets a good haul.

Her partner will cook the turkey. The house has a tree and decorations. Her future husband has even put a garland on the stairs. “We’ve never had that before,” she said.

She’ll be at home eating turkey, mince pies and enjoying a glass of sparkling wine, she said. And it is not just the wine that is sparkling. Ellen is happy.

“I have learned to enjoy life. I am happy in myself now.”

So what would she say to women who are in a bad place this Christmas?

“Things can get better. Don’t think, ‘This is the end of your life and I will never meet someone again’. You will. There are plenty of lovely men out there. Lovely men.”

The Women's Aid helpline is at 1800-341900; womensaid.ie

Ellen’s name has been changed