Bambi's story
Trigger warning: Bambi’s story details her experience of physical and emotional domestic abuse – including violent assault and manipulation. Please call our helpline if you need support.
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This is Bambi’s* story…
(*Name changed)
“I had the perfect childhood. It was so happy and filled with lovely memories. My mam and dad worked hard for everything they gave us. They were the best team. They gave us a fairy-tale childhood straight out of a children’s book.
“I was a care-free child. My sisters and I would spend our days making dens and as a tween we’d record the top forty off the radio and make up raps. We thought we were TLC and Salt-N-Pepa! We’d go out to the cinema, shopping, to McDonalds or meet with groups of friends at the local entertainment park - always chaperoned by our older sister, as is tradition in our Romani gypsy community.
“My dad loved my mam so much. He treated her like a queen. Their relationship was just perfect. They’d cuddle up and show each other affection all the time. They were couple goals. I wanted what they had when I got older and met a partner but unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. Michael couldn’t have been any more different from my dad.
“I met Michael at work. We were both care workers. He’s a huge man – 6’4” - and built like a bear. He wasn’t good looking but he made me laugh and he seemed nice and kind. None of my work friends liked him though. They said he thought a lot of himself and was a know-it-all. My mam and dad thought he was nice enough, but my sisters thought he was immature and needy.
“Michael and I were friends for a year or so before we got together as a couple. The early days were good, fun, ‘normal’ if that makes sense? There were some warning signs. He could be extremely clingy and jealous of my brother-in-law’s friends being around me. He needed a lot of attention.
“The tension became worse when I got pregnant with our daughter. He totally changed the moment I got pregnant. He’d be normal one minute then so cold and cruel the next. He’d call me a ‘fat c**t’ and lazy, even when I was working 60 hours a week, right up until the birth. He’d rage at me for the smallest, silliest things.
“Before meeting Michael, I hadn’t seen much violence before. I once saw our cousin beat his wife really badly once after church but there was no violence in our house. My dad would never raise his hand to my mam - or any other woman for that matter.
“I remember the first time Michael was violent. It was a hot summer’s day. I had a vest top and flip flops on, and these maternity cheese cloth trousers which were so comfy and cool in the heat. Michael and I lived in a caravan on the back of my mam and dads’ yard. I was in my mams place and he was on our laptop. He was using it to check something about a child he had to a previous relationship. He started getting angry because his ex-partner had gone to get a non-molestation order on him. He came up with a million excuses why she’d done it.
“We started having cross words about it and ended up back in our trailer. Suddenly, he threw the laptop up the floor and stamped on it, smashing it to pieces. He grabbed me around my neck and squeezed hard. I’m only 4’11” and he was so strong he was holding me there mid-air. I remember trying to scream my lungs out for help.
“My mam’s Jack Russell started barking because she could hear me screaming. My mam appeared at the caravan door and shouted ‘what the hell is going on?’ He’d let me go when the dog started barking but my mam could see I was in complete shock. She saw the deep red marks around my neck and chest and saw the broken laptop up the floor. She started screaming at Michael that she was going to get my dad, that my dad would kill him. Michael grabbed his trainers and ran off down the road barefoot.
“It was chaotic. My family naturally wanted to protect me. Everyone came and crowded into the caravan to ask what had happened, which is extremely normal in our culture. We’re all about family. I was in shock. Michael had never showed a violent side before. He’d been jealous and needy, but never physical. Michael came back that night at 10pm with a family friend. Michael was calm. He had flowers and was so apologetic, almost crying. He promised me it would never happen again.
“My mam wasn’t happy and had lost trust in him, but she tolerated him being around as I wanted to move on from it. She probably didn’t want to drive me away. The rest of the family must have felt the same.
“Things were calm for a while. We moved out of the trailer into a house. We were getting ready for the arrival of our baby. Then one evening, at Christmas time, our new neighbours invited us over for drinks and Michael was drinking homemade wine they’d given him. I remember it was 10:30pm, he was drunk and I was so tired – I was seven months pregnant at the time. I said I wanted to go home. Michael started telling me to ‘f**k off’. Our neighbour, Katie, was shocked - she’d never seen this side of Michael before.
“I went back to our house and Michael followed me. Once we were inside, he exploded. He picked up the Christmas tree that was plugged in our lounge, threw it across the room, and started jumping on the baubles. I ran into the kitchen and he chased after me. I remember I didn’t have anything to protect myself so I grabbed the closest thing to me which was a tub of chocolate powder and threw it at him to try and deter him. I ran into the bedroom but I was heavily pregnant and he was very quick.
“He tore the curtain pole out of the wall and smashed the wardrobe to pieces. He then turned his anger to me. He punched me in my left eye so hard I thought he’d blinded me. He picked me up by the neck and started strangling me. Because the curtains had been torn down, Katie had come over and saw him beating me. She ran in the house and screamed ‘get your f**king hands off her NOW!’ He instantly let me go and moved away from me. He started sobbing saying ‘she attacked me Katie, she hit me’. She obviously saw through it. She screamed ‘get out now, GET OUT!’ and he ran out of the house. He was only wearing jogging bottoms. He’d torn his t-shirt off in his rage.
“I’d called a friend and she’d come to the house. Michael came back around midnight. He was bleeding from a cut on his face and had blood on his hands. He said he’d had a fight in a pub. Aside from the blood, he acted totally normal – as though nothing had happened. He didn’t even mention the attack. My neighbour told me to finish with him, as did my friend who’d come over. I didn’t leave though. I had a baby arriving any time. I thought things could change with the baby’s arrival, that Michael would change for the better.
“After our daughter was born, things went from bad to worse. Michael had no interest whatsoever in being a dad. He was disrespectful towards me all time, he’d call me names. But I put up with it for the sake of our child having two parents. We were quite a happy family unit from an outsider’s point of view but my life was a living hell. I hid the dark, violent episodes from everyone.
“Things got even worse when Michael became heavily involved in taking steroids. The person who supplied him explained he would have ‘roid rage’. That terrified me because I knew he already had a terrible temper without drugs.,
“One New Year’s Eve, we’d had a takeaway some other neighbours. Our daughter was a toddler at the time. Michael was drunk. He’d been verbally abusive during the evening, calling me a ‘fat c**t’, telling me I was ugly, belittling me. The neighbours were shocked, embarrassed and uncomfortable. People were often shocked when they witnessed his entire personality flip.
“We went back to our house and I put our daughter to bed. When I left her room, Michael and I started arguing. He went into a rage and punched me so hard I flew across the bed and was knocked unconscious. I remember waking up to my daughter screaming ‘You killed my mama!’. I managed to get up, pick her up and blindly ran to our neighbour’s house. Our neighbour Sarah was in shock at the sight of me. She was sobbing as she’d never seen anything like this before. Her husband was disgusted. They helped clean me up. I said I didn’t want to report it. I told them I could fix it myself and that I knew they were there for me, that I was grateful for their help. I went back to my own house and called my daughter’s nursery to say she wouldn’t be coming in the next day. Then I called in sick to work. I couldn’t have anyone seeing the extent of my injuries.
“Another time he smashed my head into a glass mirror just before we were leaving for our sons play. I remember feeling the shards of glass in my face when we arrived but Michael made me hold his hand and whispered to me ‘act normal, so no one knows.
“He’d go on to beat me over a hundred times. It’s odd how it becomes normal. You never think this sort of behaviour could be normal, that you’d stand for it. I wasn’t raised in a violent household and I never thought I’d end up in a relationship with a violent man. But over time, the insults chip away at you. You don’t think you can leave. You’re told no one else would want you, so your confidence is on the floor – you just don’t have any. And you stay for your child, to not anger him more, to save the shame leaving might bring on your family. You become very good at hiding things from your family and friends so no one knows the hell you’re going through. It was a very lonely time in my life. I thank god I have my daughter to get me through.
“It wasn’t only the physical abuse that was hell to live with - the mental torture was never-ending. He’d sleep with our mobile phones and the house phone under his pillow. He’d steal bottles of Oral Morphine from work and threaten to inject me with it if I stepped out of line. I lived in constant fear.
“One time, our neighbour Pete came around and he somehow got into an argument with Michael. I got in between them and Pete went back to his own house. Michael was full of rage. He tore out the gate post and kicked our gates down. I told him it was over – I couldn’t handle any more. It wasn’t the first time I’d told him it was over. He’d never listened before and I never had the strength to follow it through and leave.
“I told him I was going back to my mam and dad. He flew into another rage. He punched me in my face and my left cheekbone cracked. He then picked up a Pyrex bowl and threw it at me. It smashed and cut my leg deeply. My converse trainers were soaked in blood. I still have the scars today. Our daughter was asleep upstairs. Eventually, Michael went and got into bed and fell asleep. I called my friend Toby. I picked up my daughter out of bed and left as quietly as I could and went to meet him. Toby was utterly shocked. He told me if I didn’t tell my mam and dad, that he would. He made me have a shower and ordered my daughter some food. I couldn’t eat because my cheek was fractured so badly.
“I stayed with Toby for a few hours, just to get my head into a clearer space. I didn’t tell my mam and dad. I didn’t have the chance because when I returned home a few hours later, he told me to pack up our things. He was taking us across the country where he had gotten some work. He didn’t want anyone locally seeing my injuries. They were the worst he’d inflicted on me and he knew it. I’d walk into shops and people would stare in shock. I had random people coming up to me and asking if I was ok. I made up excuses, I didn’t want to make him angry again.
“Another time, Michael and I went out with friends for a meal. My mam and sister had my daughter for the night. At the meal, Michael tried to flirt with my friend which caused an argument between her and another girl in the group. Michael was trying to interfere in their argument so I said we should walk away. We walked off and went and sat on a bench. I asked him why he treated me the way he did. Why did he beat me? Why was he always cheating on me?
“He’d first cheated when our daughter was small, around one year old. We’d swapped phones one day for some reason, I can’t remember why, and I saw texts from a woman. They were obscene. I expected Michael to be apologetic, embarrassed maybe, but he didn’t care. Over time, he’d cheat all the time – random people, my ‘friends’, his work friends, strangers. He didn’t care how it made me feel. He had no respect for me at all.
“So we were sat on this bench, and I asked him why he treated me like he did, why he cheated, and Michael said it was my fault - it was because of the way I acted. I walked away back to my friend’s house as we were staying over. I had to wait for her to come back as I didn’t have a house key. Michael had followed me back to the house and appeared from behind some bushes. He was raging and hurling insults at me for walking away from him. He punched me so hard it threw me completely over the car roof. I landed onto chipping stones on the other side. He came around to the other side where I had landed and dragged me by my hair to the pavement, then he started choking me out until I went blue. Thank God my friend came back at that point. She shouted ‘she’s blue!’. She’d never seen the abuse before – I’d become very good at hiding it from everyone. Plus, Michael told everyone I was the abuser if he was ever asked about it.
“He told my friend ‘I have to choke her, it helps calm her down’. He then tried to drive off in our car. I said ‘don’t drive, you’re drunk’ and took the car keys. This infuriated him more. My friend said she was calling the police and went into her house. She meant well, she was trying to help. She didn’t know what a monster he was. When she went inside, I was left alone with Michael and his rage so I began running towards a nearby road. I had family members there. I thought ‘if I can just get there, they can save me’.
“Michael started running after me. I can remember thinking ‘Bambi , you’re not gonna make it. He’s too fast’. I could hear his footsteps getting closer. He kicked me to the floor and stamped on me. I had his boot marks all over my body. He grabbed my fingers and broke them. I remember the snapping sound. I can hear it now. He grabbed my hair and smashed my head repeatedly against the pavement until my nose broke. I felt it pop and the blood blinded me. He punched me hard in the mouth. I couldn’t remember much after that – maybe I passed out.
“The next thing I know, a police woman is handcuffing me and putting me into a van. Apparently, when the police arrived, I was hysterically screaming. Michael had hidden behind some bushes when he’d seen the police coming so he was nowhere to be found. A policewoman told me if I didn’t calm down, she’d have to arrest me. It’s a huge shame on a Gypsy family for a woman to get in trouble with the law but, at that moment, I just needed to survive. So, I asked the policewoman to arrest me. I told them I’d tripped over. I knew I’d be safer in the cells than I would be with Michael.
“A couple of them were dismissive, they just said ‘chuck her in’. This was years ago now. Police contacts tell me it just wouldn’t happen now. There’s been so much improvement in educating the police on dealing with domestic abuse.
“The police rang my mam at 5am. I received a penalty notice for disorder which my dad paid for. I came back to my mams house and my dad. My mam rang the police and complained ‘why I had been arrested?’. One of the officers came out to the house and spoke to me. He took me to hospital for x-rays.
“When I was at the hospital my mam rang Michael. She never let on she knew about the abuse. And Michael didn’t know she was in hospital with me. She asked when he was coming to pick up our daughter. He told her ‘Bambi had a lot to drink last night, I’m looking for her now. I’m scared she’s been hit by a car, that she might be in a ditch’. She said ‘I know you’ve beaten my daughter’. He denied it. He said me and my friend had been fighting. I can’t remember what she said. She was furious. She probably hung up on him.
“Once I’d told the police the truth, Michael was arrested. He told them I’d attacked him, I was the abuser. That I’d fallen and received the injuries. They must have seen through it – he was huge lump of a man, I was tiny. But there was no evidence from all the times he’d beaten me. I’d hidden everything. And I told the police that I’d fallen. I’d been given the penalty notice for disorder. I wish I’d taken photos from all the times he’d beaten me. Things could have ended there and then.
“One police officer was absolutely fantastic. He took statements from all the witnesses we’d come across when Michael had taken me across the country with the short-term job. He worked so hard to gather evidence. He went totally above and beyond what a policeman would do. He also put me in touch with the Cheshire Domestic Abuse hub so I could get the support I needed. He was an angel.
“Looking back, the final straw for me wasn’t a beating. It was total humiliation and I’d finally had enough. He’d taken me out for my birthday with all his workmates. We saw some girls I worked with and Michael went off with them. In our community, it’s shameful for a woman to be socialising alone with a group of men. It was inappropriate and uncomfortable. I called a taxi. I later heard he’d cheated with one of the girls. He’d left me, with a group of men, on my birthday, to go and cheat with a girl I worked with. It was too much. I’d had enough.
“Of course, he then hounded me with apologies, chocolates, flowers. But my mind was made up. Even when he’d left the house, he still tried to control me he even asked if we could be friends and if he could live in the spare bedroom he would try and make me feel guilty saying he wasn’t feeling confident and that he had started over eating and had no self-esteem . I’d changed my password on social media and all my devices. He tried to log into my social media on my daughter’s iPad. When he couldn’t, he went mad. He came to the house – he was supposed to be taking her for tea – and he was screaming at me ‘why have you changed your passwords?’. He grabbed my throat but thankfully my new partner was there so he broke it up. Michael would never hit a man, he’d only hit women.
“My partner after Michael was the total opposite of him – gentle, kind, patient. He listened to me and supported me completely. He saw that my daughter and I came as a package deal and he adored her like she was his. The relationship didn’t last though. I carried a lot of trauma and emotional baggage with me into our relationship.
“After I ended things with Michael, he put a tracker onto my phone. He’d turn up all hours at my door. He once called my sister, told her he was outside my house and had a gun. He could see my new partner at the time was there and he was watching us while on the phone to my sister.
“She called me and told me to leave the house immediately. I went to grab the ornaments but she said ‘leave the Waterford, leave the crown derby, just get the baby and go’. So we left the house and went to a family friends. But of course, he followed us there because he was tracking our phone. And he was calling and calling. I called the police. They came and told him to leave so he did.
“I then found out he’d not only tracked by phone but cloned it so he could see everything I was doing on my phone, every message I was sending. He also had spyware hidden cameras in the house to watch me.
“It took years – me building the strength to leave, the police gathering evidence, us having to navigate back logs in the court system – but his assault charge finally went to court and Michael was given a non-molestation order, a five-year restraining order and a suspended sentence. He also had to attend anger management courses. If I could turn back time, I’d have recorded every beating and gathered evidence – the lack of evidence and statements from all the abuse is the main reason he wasn’t sent to prison, the reason he still walks the streets.
“Even now, years later, I don’t like arguing with people - even having cross words with someone causes me massive amounts of trauma that I internalize. I struggle a lot with mental health. I have PTSD. I don’t sleep properly. I even developed Fibromyalgia due to the trauma so I’m in frequent pain even now. I overthink things a lot and struggle with my emotions. I feel scared and frightened a lot.
“I have to make sure all my house doors are locked and I panic if there is anything out of place in the house because I instantly think that Michael has broken in. I got home the other day and the cushions on my sofa had been moved. I instantly felt panicked and called my sister as I knew she has keys to my house. She told me she’d moved the cushions and calmed me down because my first thought was ‘Michael’s back. He’s here’.
“My family have been so good to my daughter and I. My mam got me doctors’ appointments to try and get me help for my mental health. My whole family rally around me and help me with every day things – like my sister packing my daughter’s lunch boxes and carrying my bags when we shop. She’ll have to be stern with me when we go shopping and tell me not to over spend. I’ve overspent on shopping for a long time now after developing OCD about shopping and cleaning.
“If I’m honest, I don’t like people now. I like to be alone. I crave quiet and peace. I have very low self-esteem. I feel ugly and vile after Michael telling me I was for years. I remember one year he gave me a Valentine’s Day card. It was a nice enough card, with a romantic poem printed inside but he’d written an obscene message inside. He’s written ‘you’re a fat b*tch’ and ‘I hate your guts’. He ended the cards with his own poem: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, they’ll need dental records to identify you’. He thought it was funny. I still have it. I don’t know why.
“He ended the card with his own poem: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, they’ll need dental records to identify you’. He thought it was funny.”
“I’ve also kept the make-up I used to camouflage my cuts and bruises on my face and body so no one knew. In the traveller community, when someone dies, you put some things they’ll need in their next life with them in the casket, but then you burn their other worldly belongings in a bonfire. It’s ceremonious. I burned most of the things connected with Michael in a bonfire. I need to burn the rest. I’ll do it when I’m ready.
“I’ve also kept the make-up I used to camouflage my cuts and bruises on my face and body so no one knew.”
“I hate talking about what happened. I prefer to just block it out. But just listening to my story makes me realise how strong I am. For all the violence I was subjected to, I should probably be dead. But by god’s divine intervention, I’m still here.
“I want to help other Gypsy women get out of the cycle of abuse I found myself in. So many of us feel we have a duty to stay, that it would bring shame on their family to leave. Our voices don’t get heard or we feel so scared to speak up in the first place, or people just assume that domestic abuse is normal in our communities. But it’s not normal. It should never be ‘normal’.
“I want people in our community to know there are people out there who can help. Like the amazing police officer who went above and beyond to get the evidence I needed for the court case. And the women from the domestic abuse hub I spoke to would call me to just chat. They really helped me. I remember calling The Samaritans one night after a beating. The person on the end of the phone just listened to me. Sometimes that’s all you need, someone to speak to and to listen to you. My CWA is a domestic abuse charity in Cheshire and they’re helping me heal. They have a 24/7 helpline, counselling and crisis accommodation for people who have nowhere to go. I want people to know there’s charities like My CWA out there who you can turn to.
“If I could talk to the old me, or someone who’s in an abusive relationship now, I’d say ‘leave’. Leave now before it’s too late. Don’t think that you can change their behaviour. They have to want to change and make moves to change themselves. There is NO shame in leaving an abuser. You can go back to your mam and dad and start your life over. I’ve done it, some of my cousins have done it. It’s ok to be a single mam. It’s better to go back to your family and be safe than seriously hurt or even dead. Because that’s what could happen, you could lose your life. I could have lost my life and my child would have been without a mother.
“I want people going through the same hell I went through to know they’re not alone. Please don’t stay and get beat every day - it’s teaching our sons that it’s ok to beat women and it’s showing our daughters that abuse is okay. I feel massive amounts of guilt towards my daughter because she witnessed so much of the domestic abuse. I know it’s not rational. I know it wasn’t my fault, but I still feel so guilty. Still, my daughter is thankfully nothing like Michael. She’s incredible, so kind and loving. I’m so relieved she’s turned out to be this wonderful and balanced young person. She’s my rock, my whole reason for being alive, my purpose.
“And another purpose I have now is helping others. This is the first time I’ve shared my story but if reading this helps just one person escape an abusive relationship, to have another chance at life, then it’s all been worth it. If my story can help someone else escape, to break the cycle of abuse. Because we need to break the cycle. It’s time to change the story.”
If you’ve been affected by domestic abuse and need support, contact My CWA today. You’re not alone.