I realise how hard it is for people to comprehend how I could have stayed married to him for so long but later on, after I was diagnosed with complex PTSD, a psychiatrist told me I’d formed a ‘trauma bond’ with Kenneth and was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, more commonly seen in kidnap victims.
One evening in 1997, I’d put Max to bed and was sitting in the living room before going to work a night shift in my job as a nurse, when Kenneth came in and raped me.
If I had to seek medical treatment, I became expert at pretending I’d ‘tripped and fallen’ or ‘walked into a door’, and although I often saw disbelief on the faces of the nurses and doctors that treated me, I was too terrified and controlled to breathe a word to them about how I’d really come to harm.
I refused to talk about what had happened but thankfully the doctor took images of my injuries, which would later be used as evidence against Kenneth.
My son Max* was born in 1995 and I would be beaten while he was a baby in my arms, Kenneth didn’t care when he was in one of his rages.
