The hell of a battered husband
Sunday, 21st
October, 2007
When high-ranking garda Brendan Delaney reported for duty sporting black eyes, curious colleagues were fobbed off with mutterings about a rough game of Gaelic over the weekend. No one questioned him. After all, no local lad was going to get into a scrap with a garda weighing 15 stone and standing over six feet tall - and the gentle pillar of the community certainly wasn't going out looking for trouble.
But the horrible truth was that Brendan Delaney was enduring a living hell at the hands of a vicious bully.
However, his aggressive tormentor was not a gangster he'd helped take off the streets - but his wife and the mother of his three children.
Over 20 years of marriage, Brendan was physically and mentally tortured by the woman he loved. 'I always dreaded going home - I never knew what was coming next,' confesses 50-year-old Brendan, whose name has been changed to protect his children.
'Day after day, I'd come home to a barrage of shouting and roaring. Sometimes, if she had a drink, I was afraid she might stick a knife in me. She'd lash out with punches and shove me around - she could be like that for days.' Many would not have believed that Brendan, who towered over his wife's tiny six stone, five foot nothing frame, spent evenings cowering in a corner as she kicked and taunted him.
'She was out of control,' he says, 'I never hit back - I just got out of there. There were times it felt like I was running for my life.'
Although Brendan admits he always knew his wife had a fiery side, when he married her he never thought she could be violent. It was five years into a relatively happy marriage - 15 years ago - that she first lashed out.
'We were driving home from Dublin after a night out with friends,' Brendan remembers. 'She was annoyed as she didn't want to go home that early, whereas I was up for work in the morning. First came the shouting - I just kept my mouth shut.
'Then she flew off the handle, reached down to take her shoe off and stabbed me in the head with her high heel. There was blood gushing everywhere around where the steel cap had gone in. I pulled over on the side of the road and put a cloth to my head.
'I was in shock but she kept saying it was my fault, that I was trying to control her life. She said she'd never do it again and I believed her. It went from there. She used to come home late sometimes - I was minding the children - and wake me up looking for a row. Anything at all would set her off.
'She tried to provoke me, "c'mon if you're any sort of a man" she'd say. She'd pull the clothes off the bed and hurl abuse at me. Sometimes she'd threaten me with knives, but I'd get out. It could go on for hours.
'One night, I'd a very big day at work ahead of me and she was still going at three in the morning. I got into my car and drove off. I ended up sleeping in my car in Phoenix Park that night. The next day it was as if nothing happened. When I asked her to explain herself the finger would be pointed at me - she was never to blame.
'I always tried to avoid any trouble in front of the children - I'd plead with her to wait till they went to bed. But she seemed to want the audience and she'd tell them I was the blame.
'The children cried, or they were afraid to say anything, but you could see by their faces they were terrified. I comforted them and told them Mammy was a bit upset and not to take any notice. I played it down.' Despite leaving his alcoholic, bullying wife, there were many times Brendan - who ironically himself counselled victims and gave lectures on domestic abuse - always went back.
'Four years ago, it got so bad I couldn't take it anymore and I left,' he says sadly. 'But I went back for the children's sake. I just couldn't walk out and leave them there alone.
'She begged me to stay and said she couldn't cope without me. She promised the world and said she'd get help. I decided to give it another go, to try and help her along, for all of our sakes. But she never got help and things only got worse.' The family's nightmare took on a sickening twist before it eventually ended. In the end, it was his wife's allegations of him physically and sexually abusing the children that forced him out of the family home two years ago.
While she was declared unfit to look after them, his children, aged ten, seven and four, were taken into care as investigations into allegations of Brendan's abuse got underway.
Finally, after months of court appearances and interviews with social workers, the accusations were proved unfounded and Brendan won sole custody of his children. His wife has only occasionally been in contact by phone since.
The memories, however, of those dark days still haunt Brendan. 'Looking back now I don't know how I put up with it,' says Brendan. 'After a while, everyone knew what happening. Once I got a call from the lads at the station asking me to come and pick her up; she'd turned up looking for me after a few drinks.
'It was embarrassing and there was a lot of shame, but she was my wife, and I loved her once. I really thought it would get better. It never did.' Brendan isn't alone. Startling figures from the National Crime Council reveal that 26 per cent of men suffer domestic abuse - just three per cent less than women. Of these, 13 per cent - the same percentage as women - suffer physical abuse.
But whereas one in three women report to the gardaí, just one in 20 men file a complaint.
This picture may surprise many - but not former nurse Mary Cleary, who set up the charity Amen to help male victims of domestic violence. Mary, who worked in the fracture clinic at Our Lady's Hospital, Navan, often escorted A&E paramedic teams on emergency callouts to homes.
Seeing the same faces cropping up set off alarm bells - and eventually the men confessed their living hell.
'I remember treating a guy with a head injury who said the mirror fell off the wall,' recalls Mary. 'A few weeks later, I met him again in the fracture clinic for something else. It was two or three visits along when he admitted his wife hit him with a hammer.
'Another man needed surturing to his scalp after he was hit with a coal bucket. I've seen men with cut lips, scalded bodies, cigarette burns and bruises. Another guy had been hit from behind with an iron bar - he was concussed and taken to hospital.'
Time and time again, Mary heard these men's desperate cries for help. But when she tried to find them some help, she hit a brick wall. She soon realised men like Brendan had nowhere to turn, and so she set up a helpline and support service called Amen.
That was ten years ago. Since then, every Tuesday night, at a church hall in Navan, Mary welcomes up to 20 men who are being bullied by their wives or girlfriends. Every day, Mary and her small team answer up to 15 calls from men no longer able to cope alone with abuse at the hands of the women they love.
'These men are from all walks of life - they are GPs, pilots, gardaí, soldiers, social workers and the unemployed,' says Mary, whose encounters inspired her to write her book, That Bitch - Protect Yourself Against Women With Malicious Intent.
'They may look like a model family from the outside, but behind closed doors it's hell on earth. A lot of these men have been brought up in homes where you never raise your hand to a woman and wouldn't dream of retaliating - some women feed off this.' It's not just beatings - the psychological scars may not be visible, but they are a very real, private pain.
'This destroys esteem, which leads to depression - they demean and demoralise until the men become a shadow of their former selves,' says Mary. 'Isolation from family and friends is a huge issue as these woman are control freaks. They will drive friends away by making it clear they are not wanted and slowly the men's support networks are decimated.' Brendan fell into this trap, even estranging himself from his family to whom he'd always been close.
'I used to play a lot of GAA, but after a while I stopped,' he admits. 'She didn't want me seeing my family either so, for a quiet life, I wouldn't; it wasn't worth the aggro.
'I stopped socialising. If I spoke to a female, I was accused of having an affair. The finger was pointed at me for so long that, after a while, I started to believe all the bad stuff she'd say. I wondered if I was the baddie in all this - I wondered why I couldn't keep her happy.' People may ask why these men don't just get out. But, as Brendan discovered, walking out on a marriage also means leaving your children and your entire life.
Men worry that if they leave, the children will be targeted next. Sometimes, the woman threatens to commit suicide.
Many men believe they can change their wives' behaviour, while others are blinded by love - Mary often hears of how beautiful the wives are.
Brendan remembers: 'There were signs, but she was a lovely woman when she was younger. We met when she was 20 and I was 21 - I'd never been with anyone else.
'She was my first love. I wasn't very wise to life. I'd come from a very happy, simple home. My parents were wonderful people, I hadn't seen this carryon before.' The stigma is a hurdle for many men. 'Policemen or army officers, for example, fear if people find out it will ruin their chances of promotion, as it'd be hard for colleagues to take them seriously,' says Mary.
Although there are telltale signs, it rarely starts out physical. 'These women will test the water first to see what they'll get away with - classic bully behaviour,' says Mary. 'When that first cup or plate is thrown at you, you may not see it as abuse. Then, like any abuse, you're on a fast train down the tracks. When do you get off?' Another major taboo that Mary confronts regularly during meetings is sexual abuse by women.
'It's a real taboo,' she sighs: 'I've spoken to men who are taunted with the question of whether the children are really theirs, told how useless they are in bed and how they could never satisfy her, or any other woman, sexually.
'One college lecturer who came to us had to put up with his wife having affairs and then waving her knickers in his face - it's these women who then accuse the men of having affairs.' When men do decide to stand up for themselves, it seems the odds are stacked against them. Mary points to a systematic denial within Irish culture of the male as a victim, physical or sexual. Deeply embedded cultural barriers are hard to shift; we can't get our heads around the idea of women having such power over men.
'Police telling men to get a grip on themselves: "C'mon, she's half your size' is a common story.
'Men say, "If I'd done to my wife what she did to me, I'd be in jail now" and they're right,' says Mary. 'Sometimes, the man's strength can be his weakness. If you are 6ft 4in policeman or army officer, people don't believe it.
'This is why it's very important the men keep a diary of what's happening. One man I spoke to had been up all night with taunting and abuse and I told him to report it. But the ban garda said it was obvious he had a drink problem as his eyes were all red and he smelt of aftershave.
'There's all kinds of support and understanding for women, but nothing for men who suffer. There are womens' refuges in every county - men end up sleeping in their cars or in the office. One man took two trains and travelled hundreds of miles all the way from Cork for a meeting as we're the only support group in the country.' To illustrate the unfair bias, Mary points to the tragic case of Pete McBride, who was savagely stabbed to death by his girlfriend at their London flat in July 2002. Mary is in regular contact with his bereaved parents, Marian and Seán, who live in Newbridge, Co. Kildare.
Girlfriend Sonia stabbed Pete in the heart with a kitchen knife, after abusing him for years. Chillingly, during the murder trial, the court heard how, before collapsing in his kitchen after the attack, Pete managed to call 999 - and insisted he had fallen on a knife. Pete's instinct was to remain loyal to his lover, no matter what.
Marian and Seán will never forget the sight of their swollen, bloodied son as he lay in his hospital bed on a ventilator, fighting for his life. Pete lost his fight - and his family feel they lost their fight for justice.
Despite self-defence being ruled out and Sonia finally pleading guilty to manslaughter on diminished responsibility, she walked free just 16 months later.
'These woman are bullies and, as with any bully, the reaction is important,' explains Mary. 'In some cases, they've had abusive upbringings. Psychologists said Sonia wasn't responsible for her behaviour - she was simply taking out on Pete what others had done to her.
'Like their victims, the women come from all walks of life too - teachers who treat their husbands more like a bad pupil, nurses, businesswomen.
'They can be very charming in public. You'd never dream they were capable of this behaviour.' So Brendan, it seems, is one of the lucky ones - and he knows it.
'I see light at the end of the tunnel now,' he says. 'For a long time, it was a very dark tunnel. At one point I was so desperate I thought about suicide, but I knew I could never do that to the kids.
'AlAnon and Amen helped a lot. When I finally got away from her clutches, the light came on and it has gotten brighter. I enjoy life now, whereas I dreaded it before. I have turned the page and I'll keep going.
'I've got three beautiful children who I love very much and look after. I get up with them in the morning and dress them and help them with their homework in the evenings. I'd never say a bad word about their mother.
'Yes, it's tough sometimes and hectic, but all parents know that. I was the happiest man alive when I got my children back. They're safe now and even after everything they are happy - nothing else matters to me.'
That Bitch - Protect Yourself Against Women With Malicious Intent is available in Easons. Visit www.amen.ie or call 046 9023718 for information and advice.
To buy the book or find out more information click here
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www.VenusTheDarkSide.com Phone: +44 (0)1761 414541 Fax: +44 (0)1761 412615 Email: info@venusthedarkside.com
© Copyright 2007 Roy Sheppard and Mary T Cleary. All Copyrights and Trademarks acknowledged. All rights reserved.
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