I walked on eggshells around my father for years and he once beat me for 'getting a B'. Years later, I learned the pitiful reason for his cruelty

Like most children after a long day at school, Joyce Wong just wanted to lie on the lounge and watch cartoons. The eight-year-old had homework to do - but her dad wasn't home from work yet - so she flicked on the TV, promising herself she'd just watch for a few minutes. Distracted by a rare break from her books, Joyce lost track of time. An hour later, she turned the TV off in a panic, and grabbed her notebook just as her father burst through the door.

She wasn't off the hook though... Immediately, her father approached the television set. 'It was an old box TV, not like the flat screens we have today,' Joyce tells me. 'He went on the side of it and hovered his hand around the back - it was warm so he knew immediately it had been used. He looked at me in absolute fury.'. Rushing over, he hit her across the head. Joyce's most potent memory of her childhood is trying to remain invisible and unnoticed by her father, for whom nothing she did was ever good enough.

'Don't watch TV until you're told,' he scolded me. With silent tears streaming down her face, Joyce opened her notebook and carried on with her homework. Sadly, she was used to this. 'I can't remember a time when my dad wasn't abusive,' she says. 'Asian culture is really toxic; I had to get good grades, be skinny and not wear too much makeup. 'My father had a short temper and was easily triggered. He was strict because "he loved me". I wasn't the best at school even though I studied really hard. I panicked every time my dad looked at my notebook to see what the teacher wrote.

'I would go to school from 12-6pm then had tutorials at home from 6-9pm. It was non-stop learning all the time. That's just how it is.'. Joyce's mother was a successful businesswoman who ran a beauty company and often came home late. Joyce, who grew up in Hong Kong, can't recall a time when she wasn't fearful of her father. She was unquestionably more successful than her husband. It took years for Joyce to realise this was probably why he was so cruel.

'I believe my father felt emasculated by my mother because she made more money and worked more often,' the now 30-year-old tells me. Joyce says that throughout her childhood, she was 'brainwashed' into being a perfectionist and a people pleaser. She quickly absorbed the belief that the abuse was somehow her fault. She wasn't her father's only victim either. On many occasions, she witnessed him hitting her mother.

Mother and daughter were both constantly walking on eggshells. Every night after school, Joyce's father would flip through her notebook to see what her teachers had written on her work. 'Even if I'd forgotten a pen, it would be written down in red, like a strike against my name,' she said. And her dad would blow up, yelling at her or striking her across the face. Her father was also physically abusive towards Joyce's mother (left).

At the dinner time, mother and daughter would sit in silence, avoiding eye contact. One wrong word or ill-timed glance and he'd erupt. Joyce felt sick with fear from morning to night, every single day. The 'breaking point' was when Joyce, who was expected to get straight As, came home with an assignment that had been given a B grade. All day, her stomach had been churning as she dreaded the moment she would have to hand the paper over to her dad and accept her fate.

It happened one morning after a trip to MacDonald's. The 'breaking point' was when she came home with a B grade. 'You're not good enough,' he screamed and continuously beat her. After the takeaway meal, Joyce's dragged her to a park outside their apartment and bashed her. He shoved the paper with the B grade on it in her face, yelling: 'You're not good enough!. 'You need to improve, you need to do better if you want to survive in this world. Don't you understand?'.

Then he hit her repeatedly over the head until she passed out. Coming to, Joyce was battered and bruised, unable to see out of one of her eyes. But her dad insisted on taking her ice skating and shopping afterwards, clearly plagued by a guilty conscience. After finally taking his daughter home, he told her to go to her room and to sleep. As she cried in her bed, her mum came in to see her, horrified. 'What happened?' she whispered, dropping to her knees to comfort her daughter. Through her tears, Joyce explained everything. Her mother then took her to hospital.

Immediately the police were called and Joyce's mum reached breaking point. She ended the relationship with her husband and moved out of the family home. Joyce's injuries took six weeks to heal, but she remained in hospital for three months until there was a safe place for her to live. 'People say 'you need to forgive and forget'. No you don't, and I will never forgive my dad for what he did to me and mum,' says Joyce (pictured with husband Celvin, their daughter Amelia and their two 'fur babies').