It’s a woman’s story. And also that of her two young children, who have practically never left home since their birth. They were kept locked in a one-room apartment in Montreal, under the yoke of a violent man who threatened and controlled their mother, allowing her only rare timed outings. Beaten and starving, they survived for years in toxic confinement.
Rose and her children (we are using a fictitious name here to protect them) escaped last year from the tyranny that demolished them for a decade.
For hitting, harassing and threatening his partner and children for years, the man received a one-year prison sentence, which he has already served. But for Rose’s children, everything has to be learned: going to school, making friends, but also running, opening a door and even taking the stairs.
What Rose experienced was a case of extreme coercive control, said Arianne Hopkins, vice-president of the board of directors of the Alliance of Second Stage Shelters for Women and Children Victims of Domestic Violence, which has 38 establishments. members in 15 regions of Quebec.
Rose agreed to confide in Duty so that others can avoid falling into this trap. Because if domestic and family violence is often associated with beatings, his story illustrates what exactly coercive control is.
This term refers to anything used to abuse, humiliate and manipulate a person. It is an insidious and progressive takeover, which does not necessarily need physical violence to be exercised and which aims to maintain domination over the victim, writes on its website the Regroupement des Maisons pour Femmes Victims of domestic violence.
Beyond the blows
Rose grew up far from Montreal. She came to settle in the metropolis for work and found herself there alone, without family or friends. She met the man who would become the father of her children, and says she wanted to “trust this man who seemed full of promises”. Control was implemented in a “very gradual” way, explains the young forty-year-old. He held out the promise of a life where she would lack nothing. “He had two personalities,” one sunny, the other very dark.
Rose is a “brilliant, lit” woman, but “she was cut off from everything” and isolated from those close to her, whom he constantly denigrated, summarizes Ariane Hopkins, who met Rose more than once as part of her functions. He touched on his greatest weaknesses and “went and played in that”.
Life with him quickly became problematic. And manipulation is omnipresent. “If I went out to buy groceries, he would time me. If it took too long, he would start calling constantly,” she says. If she wanted to go for a walk, he would say that the time wasn’t right for her, that she was disrupting his plans and causing him stress, all to make her feel guilty. In court, the man admitted that the family was not allowed to leave the house and had no social life.
The doors of the house were not locked, explains Rose. “I was not a hostage, it was coercion. If I didn’t listen to him, I was punished. » She then modifies her behavior precisely to avoid her punishments.
He didn’t like the idea of her working. Tested by the pressure he exerted and that of her first pregnancy, she left her job, which isolated her even more. He himself did not work, under the pretext that a large sum of money was promised to him. “If I asked questions or questioned him, he would yell and say I didn’t trust him and act like a victim. » He accused her of being bad and negative. One example among many? One day, she bought a pack of gum: he yelled at her for an hour, accusing her of cheating on him and trying to cover up someone else’s smell.
“Everything was turning against me. » Were the children making noise? He insulted me, shouted and accused me of being a bad mother, incapable of taking care of his children. Sometimes this behavior would last for hours, Rose said: “He would tear me to pieces. » “Eventually, I became exhausted. As if my brain was dead,” she says, out of breath.
When she began to have doubts and gathered the strength to leave him, he would come “with just enough money” and say “just the right thing” to keep her hoping.
Children locked at home
Her children “have seen nothing of life”, summarizes the mother in an interview. They were cut off from the outside world. No school, and only too few appointments with the doctor and dentist during all these years. Their teeth completely rotted in their mouths, says Rose.
Due to a lack of a visit to the pediatrician, diagnoses were not made until very late: the two children have an autism spectrum disorder, and one of them also has attention deficit disorder, their mother wrote in a victim impact statement read in court the day her ex-partner received his sentence.
The children were also very thin when they left their toxic living environment. Because food was often lacking in this house where the gentleman monopolized the little money that the household obtained – mainly family allowances from the government – to spend on lottery tickets. He made it so that I never had any money, Rose said: “another way to control me”. Despite this, she multiplied the ways of hiding money to feed the little ones behind her back when they were hungry.
“The children were not allowed to make any noise at all. I too had to walk on tiptoe. »
The youngest was hit with beach sandals because he was jumping in his playpen, she said. In court, the man admitted to punishing his children by hitting them with his hands and a belt — and sometimes with his fists. He admitted to having also hit her with his fists when she physically intervened to protect the children.
And while his heart was breaking to see the blows coming at them, he said it was her fault, accusing her of being a bad mother, incapable of raising them properly, she said.
Rose stops her story. “My body is shaking now just thinking about it,” she said, tears welling up in her eyes.
In a year, her children have “not once” asked to see their father, she maintains. One of them is terrified of returning “home” — a word he sees as the place where he has been locked up all these years.
The fear of leaving
Caught in this harmful whirlwind, psychologically destroyed, without money, Rose did not know where she would go if she left him: she believed that women’s shelters were reserved for the homeless. In any case, at the time, she did not see herself as a “battered woman”, because he “did not hit her repeatedly”, she explains in an interview.
Becoming more aggressive after the birth of the children, he mainly used threats: he held his fist close to his face and shouted with rage, “so close that I received his saliva in the face”. A kind of “mental block” kept her from walking through the door forever, she explains. She was afraid of what he would do if she left.
And as he constantly belittled her — and repeated that no one would believe her — she began to doubt herself and lose her composure. It was “like brainwashing.” “I experienced cognitive decline with exhaustion, stress, anxiety and fear…I became confused, constantly wondering if I had enough evidence. »
Rose has since been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which she attributes to the violence perpetrated by her ex-partner.
The day she took action, she had received orders to go to a store to collect a package. She was so anxious that an employee saw something was wrong and asked her a few questions. Rose broke down and started crying. It was the store manager who called the police. Why at this time? Her rage was getting worse lately, she explains. “I felt hell approaching and I said to myself: it’s now or never. »
I felt hell approaching and I said to myself: it’s now or never
Rose can tell this story today, more than a year after leaving this hell.
Her face lights up when she talks about her kids’ first costume Halloween. She recounts their smiles on the day of their first snowball fight with children their age. She said she was happy to watch them run in the park or throw a ball, which wasn’t possible in their one-room apartment.
“My heart was broken not to be able to offer them all this,” she said, with tears in her eyes. It’s like a dream come true. »