The double whammy of being a survivor of domestic abuse who is blind and male

Nov 2

In the Beginning
When I first got together with Alison (not her real name), she presented her best side to me and friends. We rarely quarrelled until our wedding day. Then on our wedding night, she complained continuously, saying the wedding was a disaster, blaming me for everything that didn’t go 100% .

Early warnings
At first, I didn’t spot the red flags. Confusingly, she would say: “I am your carer”, and “I never said I was your carer”. When reading printed letters to me, she would deliberately omit crucial information like contact details. I’d ask for them, and she’d tell me I was hard work, as if I’d asked her for the moon. She’d tell friends and strangers alike that I was a burden: ”… if that’s not bad enough I’ve got a blind husband to see to”. Such comments left me feeling virtually worthless.

Financial
She’d decide what my money was to be spent on, but treat me as ‘The Bank of Husband’. I thought she had no money of her own. However, after she left, she bought a £115,000 home in a single down payment, with money I didn’t know she had. I felt scammed.

“she broke away, leaving me in the middle of a slip road with traffic hurtling around me. Our friend rescued me from the melee. I’d frozen, fearing I’d be run over if I moved.”

Escalation
She would not let me hold her elbow, the prescribed way to guide long cane users, saying I was damaging her arm. Once, returning with friends from a holiday in Devon, we stopped at a motorway service station. After my repeated attempts to get her to guide me correctly, she broke away, leaving me in the middle of a slip road with traffic hurtling around me. Our friend rescued me from the melee. I’d frozen, fearing I’d be run over if I moved.

During that holiday, walking back to our B&B, she kept insisting our friends they were going the wrong way. When I told her to calm down, she pushed me in front of a moving car. The driver had swift reactions, but I came within inches of collision. Later when I mentioned the incident, she told me that because she could see and I couldn’t, everybody would believe her over me. Besides, she alleged, I’d imagined it. I said it had happened in front of sighted witnesses. She replied that she’d pushed me with with good reason. That comment traumatised me more than by the original incident.

I have married again, and my present wife is thoughtful, kind and loving, so my fears, stoked by Alison’s attitude during our marriage, that hers was my best and last chance of love proved groundless. Alison and I are on friendlier terms now.

Reporting
Once when she threw stiletto heeled shoes at me, I reported to the police. The duty officer was brilliant. But the officers in the squad car he sent round told me to go home and kiss and make up. He said I was wasting their time, they’d been chasing guys threatening each other with knives and I was reporting thrown objects? Alison followed me to the squad car and claimed in soft tones that she was the victim. Instantly, she got >>There There My Dear, I got <<Now Look, Sir!

Effects

After an episode, I’d struggle to sleep for a couple of nights, then things would settle. About a week later, I’d have a nightmare themed around the traumatic event. Friends said I had become wary and on edge, afraid to displease her. One said: “When she’s not with you, you seem ten years younger”.

“To be a disabled survivor and a male survivor is to be a disabled male survivor. That is, the cumulative impacts on gender and impairment are greater than the sum of their parts. You are a minority within a minority.“

Lessons Learned

Remarks like “I’m telling you how ugly you are for your own good”, put me off ending the relationship. I began to fear that loneliness was the only alternative to the abusive relationship. I got a feeling of “I’m not ok, everyone else is ok’. Finally, counting how many friends and family members she’d driven away, I ended the marriage. By then I felt life with her was a more daunting prospect than life alone.
Withholding information from important printed material, such as utility bills unavailable in other formats was particularly hard to challenge, as I’d often not know the information was there to be had.
I could not easily have moved out, as I’d need to move to an unfamiliar area. As a blind person, before I can visit the nearest pub, for instance, I have to be shown where it is.
To be a disabled survivor and a male survivor is to be a disabled male survivor. That is, the cumulative impacts on gender and impairment are greater than the sum of their parts. You are a minority within a minority. A male survivor can often feel they are ‘a man in a woman’s world’ because of gamma bias. It is still not known how or whether the few support services available to male victims are accessible to disabled people. Efforts to find out must not put disabled men behind disabled women in the queue. Rather, experts must study the subject of disability and domestic abuse in an open, gender-inclusive way.
One social identity cannot trump another. I felt in my dealings with some police officers, as though I were treated firstly as a man (assumed to be a perpetrator), but they’d overlooked risks associated with my impairment. Example: How can you dodge a missile you don’t see coming?
Where the abuser exploits a victim’s disability to gain control, we should treat the behaviour as both disability hostility and domestic abuse, because the disadvantage of the impairment is the ‘weapon’. Example: A partner deliberately locking essential medication out of reach of a wheelchair user.

Conclusion

Experts could gather the stories of other male victims with a wide range of different impairments. Only then will we begin to find out:

How the experience of disabled victims differs from that of non-disabled victims; and
How domestic abuse may affect disabled men and boys differently from women and girls

In the meantime, I would encourage any disabled male survivors and victims to come forward with their stories, and go to Mankind Initiative or Abused Men In Scotland for support.

This article was first published on the Male Psychology Network website in 2019

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