20 November 2025. This was due to be published several weeks ago, but revisiting these events requires significant emotional recovery, and I needed time before I could return to it.

Two Years Since I Left

20 November 2025, Two Years On

Content warning: This article discusses domestic abuse, police conduct, child-safeguarding failures, trauma and mental-health crisis.

Two years ago today, I escaped domestic abuse.

I packed one plastic shopping bag, loaded my three children into a van, and fled to a budget hotel.

No blue lights.
No dramatic rescue.
No carefully planned exit.

Just one quiet decision.

If I stayed, we might not survive.

Today, the only officer who made me feel my children and I were finally being properly heard and protected is at the end of a 38-year policing career. Not because he failed, but because he tried to put right what others had ignored.

That matters.

Because accountability matters.

In nursing, safeguarding, policing, social care, education, or any profession where people place their safety in your hands, accountability is not optional. It is the standard. It is what protects the public. It is what keeps power from becoming dangerous.

This is Part One of my account.

It covers a brief overview of the period from 20 November 2023, the day we fled, to 9 March 2024, the day I met Sergeant Conrad Smith, the first officer who treated my children and me as human beings rather than problems to be managed.

What happened after that meeting is Part Two.

20 November 2023

One Bag, Three Children, and the Decision to Run

For four years, my normal included:

Coercive and controlling behaviour.
Child endangerment.
Drug cultivation and distribution in the family home.
Financial fraud in my name.
Threats to my nursing registration.
Escalating volatility and intimidation.

My sons were 13 and 11. My youngest was three.

On 20 November 2023, I crossed the line where staying became more dangerous than leaving.

I grabbed what I could.

One plastic shopping bag.
A few clothes.
Three traumatised children.
No real plan.

We drove to a Travelodge.

I was still in shock when my phone rang.

“Private Number.”

For years, private numbers had meant disappearing acts and suicide threats used as weapons. This time, I was on the phone to Refuge when it rang. Still trauma-bonded, I hung up and answered.

It was a police call handler.

My sister, unable to reach me and knowing what was happening, had phoned them.

Minutes after discovering that my 11-year-old had also been abused, I made my first disclosure over the phone.

The next day, I did what women are constantly told to do.

I carried on.

I dropped the children off, put on my work uniform, the only thing I had taken that was mine, and went in for my shift.

In between collapsing in my room, I completed paperwork for:

A non-molestation order.
An occupation order.

I thought I was stepping into a system designed to protect us.

I was wrong.

21 November 2023

Disclosures Two and Three

By early evening on 21 November, I was running on fumes.

Two hours of sleep.
Three children.
No certainty about where we would live.

More than 60 messages had hit my phone in one day. Raging, pleading, blaming, and threatening to end his life.

Then another private number.

Another call handler.

At 18:13, I disclosed, in detail:

Systematic abuse of me and all three children.
Drug cultivation and distribution from our home.
A 2021 incident that had nearly killed my then three-year-old.
Financial fraud in my name.
Coercive control across every aspect of daily life.
Multiple assaults.
The fact I already held extensive documentary evidence.

Later that evening, PC Timothy Rolls attended my sister’s house. My sister, her husband, and my two older boys were present.

I went through it all again.

This was now my third disclosure in about 24 hours.

I described four and a half years of controlling behaviour, the incident that almost killed my toddler, emotional abuse, threats, harassment, the impact on each child, and the evidence I held.

Messages.
Screenshots.
Recordings.
A timeline.
Proof.

PC Rolls told me that if police had attended the July 2021 incident at the time, he would have arrested my ex for child endangerment.

What I did not know, and would not discover for months, was this:

No child-abuse crime was recorded.
No safeguarding investigation was opened.
No protective measures were taken for my children.

It was logged as a domestic incident.

He did, however, find time to lecture me about contact centres.

He also returned in the middle of the night to collect a laptop he had left behind.

My family heard every word.

Accountability matters because decisions made in those early hours shape everything that follows.

A disclosure is not just a conversation.

It is a safeguarding threshold.
It is an evidential starting point.
It is a moment where the professional response can either reduce risk or deepen it.

Late November to Early December 2023

The Silence After Disclosure

Over the next days and weeks, I did exactly what victims are told to do.

I reported.
I evidenced.
I engaged with services.
I tried to keep my children safe.

On 23 November, PC Rolls emailed apologising for a “system crash” and sent generic domestic-abuse support information.

Still no child-protection referral.

Still no contact about giving a formal statement.

On 24 November, my GP signed me off sick with stress.

On 27 November, I saw another GP, met my first IDVA and was referred into MARAC. Support services appeared to assume the police were doing their part in the background.

They were not.

On 4 December, I was allowed back into the family home with CCTV installed, on the advice of my IDVA. We had been home for two days when my ex and a family member attended and threatened my nursing registration if I reported him.

I reported it.

There was no meaningful follow-up.

On 7 December, I submitted an online report detailing four years of coercive and controlling behaviour.

A domestic-abuse worker later told me my ex had already walked into a police station and reported me for “financial abuse” a few days before he left the house I had paid for, maintained, and kept running.

His complaint had quietly been marked No Further Action.

I assumed mine was being investigated.

It was not.

By this point, professionals around me, including my IDVA, family and colleagues, were openly asking why there was no substantive police action.

I was still clinging to the belief that “no update” meant work was happening behind the scenes.

That same night, I collapsed. My mum and sister called an ambulance. I refused hospital admission because I had a family-court hearing the next day.

I had not slept or eaten properly in four days.

8 to 13 December 2023

Orders, Promises, and More Waiting

On 8 December, the family court granted a non-molestation order to protect me.

On 9 December, a different officer, PC Lewis Finch, attended my home.

I disclosed everything again, in full.

He appeared to understand. He acknowledged serious child-protection concerns, said he would arrange Achieving Best Evidence interviews, arranged to return for paperwork, and said the investigation would be opened and progressed.

I sent hundreds of pages of evidence by email.

Messages.
Screenshots.
Videos.
A 40,000-word timeline.

Nobody took a formal witness statement from me.

On 12 December, I took my son to the station to sign consent forms for ABE. I was reassured the interviews would be completed by the end of January.

On 13 December, a second non-molestation order was granted, this time explicitly naming the children for protection.

On paper, things looked promising.

Orders in place.
An officer seemingly engaged.
ABE forms signed.
Evidence sent.

In reality, nothing meaningful had moved.

Accountability matters because reassuring a victim that safeguarding action is underway carries responsibility.

If action is promised, it must happen.

If it does not happen, someone must own that failure.

19 to 23 December 2023

When Children Arm Themselves

On 19 December, my eldest son, 13 and autistic, went missing from school.

At that time, the non-molestation order still had not been served.

He was found hiding in an alleyway near the school. He had a screwdriver in his pocket “for protection”.

He was not truanting.

He was terrified.

An officer attended my property and referenced my ex. He mentioned an iPad removed from the house, then backtracked under questioning and vaguely stated my ex had “been to the station”.

No one has ever been able to tell me who he spoke to, what was said, or why.

On 21 December, PC Rolls and PC Finch came back to my home.

In front of all three of my children, I was told:

“There’s a difference between abuse and a bad relationship. The primary evidence, WhatsApp messages and texts, isn’t sufficient.”

In that one moment, the following were effectively dismissed:

Four years of messages and screenshots.
Videos showing abusive incidents.
Audio recordings of threats.
My detailed 40,000-word chronology.
Four years of systematic coercive control.
Multiple disclosures of child abuse.
Four years of police call-outs and records they had access to.

I was still not given the opportunity to provide an official statement.

Instead, there was another round of advice about contact centres.

That night, I phoned the crisis team.

Having my reality rebranded as a “bad relationship” by the very people I had turned to for protection pushed me over the edge.

On 23 December, I spoke to the crisis team again.

By then, I was no longer only a victim of domestic abuse.

I was feeling the impact of institutional victim-blaming, and for the first time in 34 years, my mental health began to deteriorate acutely.

That matters.

Not because needing mental-health support is shameful. It is not.

It matters because context matters.

I was not suddenly unstable. I was injured by prolonged abuse, repeated disclosures, safeguarding failure, and the experience of not being believed when the risk to my children should have been central.

There should be no stigma in needing support after surviving harm.

The shame belongs with the harm, not with the person trying to recover from it.

The Disclosure Cascade

40 Days, 60+ Contacts

Between 20 November and 29 December 2023, this is what help-seeking looked like in real life.

Police:
17 separate police interactions.
At least 6 different officers involved.
8 full trauma disclosures to police alone.

Health and mental-health services:
4 different GPs.
1 ambulance call-out for chest pain from stress.
Paediatrician for my son.
IAPT mental-health assessment.
Two separate trauma therapies, CBT and EMDR, started then paused because of anticipated criminal proceedings.
Community mental-health team contact.
Crisis team after police minimised the abuse.

Children’s services and education:
Initial social-care contact.
School safeguarding leads.
Head of year after my son disclosed carrying a screwdriver.
Children’s support services, including Your Space, Early Help, and Team Around the Family domestic-abuse worker.

Legal and specialist support:
Refuge.
Two IDVAs.
Solicitor and court staff.
Court IDVA.
Victims’ Advice Line.
Victim Support.
Local domestic-abuse services.

Housing and financial:
Emergency housing and homelessness support.
Mortgage company.
Estate agents.
Utility providers.
Bailiffs.
Foodbank.

Every single contact meant starting from the beginning.

Reliving four years of trauma.
Proving I was telling the truth.
Justifying my decision to leave.
Explaining what my children had seen, heard and lived through.

All while losing over four stone, developing cardiac symptoms, having no stable home, trying to keep three traumatised children safe, and holding down work to keep us financially afloat.

This is what a “multi-agency response” can feel like from the inside.

Not a joined-up safety net.

A disclosure cascade.

January 2024

Breaches Ignored, Truth Revealed

Once the non-molestation order was in place, the breaches started almost immediately.

On 12 January, my ex contacted my mother about our youngest child. A Domestic Abuse Risk Officer working for the force confirmed it was a breach.

My mum waited in for five consecutive evenings until midnight for an officer to take her statement.

No one came.

On 15 January, there was another breach.

Reported.

No action.

On 16 January, he contacted my three-year-old’s nursery twice.

First, he did not identify himself.

Then he became aggressive when refused information.

The nursery manager reported this herself.

On 17 January, PC Rolls attended the nursery.

Rather than simply enforcing a clear court order, he disclosed information about breaches without my consent, stated the other breaches “wouldn’t proceed because they weren’t direct”, questioned the nursery manager’s professional risk assessment, and delivered another speech about contact centres and “father’s rights”.

The wording of the order was explicit: no direct or indirect contact with the children, including through others.

At this point, I contacted national helplines, including the NSPCC and Victim Support. Their advice was blunt.

You need to re-report the child abuse.

I was confused.

I believed it was already under investigation. PC Finch had told me child-protection concerns were being dealt with and ABE interviews were being arranged.

When I finally spoke to him in January, I broke down in tears.

Only then did he say he would now “send the information to CID” about the historic child-protection issues.

That was when the truth emerged.

The child-abuse disclosures had not been passed to CID when he first said they had.
The promised ABE interviews had never been scheduled.
Nearly two months had passed with no actual investigation into the reported incidents involving my children.

Accountability matters here too.

Because when a victim is told an investigation is happening, and it is not, that is not a harmless administrative gap.

It affects safety.
It affects evidence.
It affects children.
It affects whether a victim can trust any part of the system again.

The Health Cost

“Mummy, You’ll Be a Baby Soon”

By mid-January, the stress was literally consuming me.

Between November 2023 and January 2024, I lost over four stone, more than 70 pounds.

My body rejected food. I frequently vomited when I tried to eat.

My heart rhythm became irregular and was documented on ECG.

One day, my three-year-old looked at me and asked:

“Mummy, you getting bigger?”

I explained that I was actually losing weight because I was not eating properly.

She replied:

“Yes, because you don’t eat. You will be a baby soon, when you are even smaller and tiny like a baby again.”

My child was watching me waste away and trying to make sense of it.

On 18 January 2024, I collapsed at home. My 13-year-old and 11-year-old sons had to help me. My GP was deeply concerned about the combination of rapid weight loss, cardiac symptoms and relentless stress.

I then raised a complaint via the IOPC surrounding PC Rolls.

Domestic-abuse agencies around me kept coming back to one question:

Does your ex know someone in the police?

Meanwhile, the list of alleged crimes still not properly recorded or acted on remained long.

Child abuse involving multiple children.
Coercive control.
Child neglect.
Assaults on me.
Assaults on the children.
Harassment.
Fraud.
Drug cultivation and supply.
Threats to my professional registration.
Multiple breaches of a non-molestation order.

The only visible policing outcome at that point was a marker on my address, and an officer telling me to think of it as a “bad relationship”.

This is what system failure looks like from the inside.

It does not always look like one dramatic event. Sometimes it looks like missed recordings, delayed referrals, repeated disclosures, unserved orders, children arming themselves, a mother losing weight she cannot afford to lose, and a victim being told to think of abuse as a bad relationship.

Mental-health crisis does not appear from nowhere.

Sometimes it is the predictable result of surviving the abuse, then being forced to survive the systems that failed to respond properly to it.

Where Things Stood by Early March 2024

By March, the position was stark.

17 separate police interactions.
6 or more officers involved in some way.
8 full trauma disclosures to police.
More than 60 professional contacts in around 40 days.
2 non-molestation orders granted.
0 ABE interviews completed.
0 child-abuse crimes properly recorded at the outset.

I was underweight, exhausted and losing faith in every system around us.

This does not include the later management of the child-abuse investigation. I will come to that separately.

I contacted my local MP, but my strength was fleeting.

That is the context in which I walked into a meeting on 9 March 2024 with a supervising sergeant called Conrad Smith.

9 March 2024

The First Time Someone in Uniform Really Read It

My sister came with me to that meeting.

By then, I was physically depleted and struggling to function. My mental health was hanging by a thread. My children were arming themselves with improvised weapons to sleep and watching me disappear.

I no longer believed that reporting equalled protection.

I expected another officer to skim the last log entry, give me a scripted explanation, and send me away.

Instead, Sergeant Conrad Smith was met with a 77-page document surrounding coercive control, broken down into categories.

He knew the key dates and events.

He used the correct language: coercive control, not relationship trouble.

He recognised that serious opportunities had been missed.

He treated my children’s disclosures as central, not incidental.

For the first time in months, I slept without feeling haunted by an institution that was supposedly there to protect us.

For the first time in months, I felt:

Seen rather than managed.
Believed rather than judged.
Protected rather than blamed.

It was the first day since leaving that I felt an officer was genuinely on the side of truth, facts, my children’s safety and my survival.

Not the force’s reputation.

Why This Is Where Part One Ends

This is where I am choosing to end Part One.

On 9 March 2024, after:

Seventeen police interactions.
Eight full trauma disclosures.
Around 60 professional contacts.
Two non-molestation orders.
Significant physical and psychological harm.

I finally met a police officer who did something very simple and very rare.

He read the evidence.

He understood the law.

He treated us as human beings worthy of protection.

That should not have been exceptional.

But it was.

Two Years On

What Accountability Means Now

Two years on, I am not the same person who walked into that hotel room with one plastic shopping bag.

I function. I work. I advocate. I parent.

But I do so with a nervous system that learned, over months, that asking for help could make things worse, not better.

That period did not simply hurt me. It reshaped how I assess risk, authority and safety.

I am more guarded. Less trusting. Hypervigilant in ways that did not exist before.

But this is not just about trauma.

It is about accountability.

In my own profession, if I fail to recognise safeguarding risk, fail to document properly, fail to escalate, fail to act, or allow personal bias to override evidence, there are consequences.

There should be.

Because accountability is not cruelty.

It is public protection.

It is how systems learn.
It is how harm is acknowledged.
It is how the next person is made safer.
It is how professional trust is rebuilt.

That is what I am asking for here.

Not revenge.

Not punishment for the sake of it.

Accountability.

The kind expected of nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers and every other professional trusted with vulnerable people’s lives.

The hardest part is not only what happened then. It is living with the knowledge that institutions meant to protect my children were capable of watching them unravel and still stepping back.

That knowledge does not fade with time.

It settles.

What Comes Next

What happened after that meeting is another story.

How Sergeant Conrad Smith attempted to put right what others ignored.

What happened after he tried to do that.

And what happens when one officer’s integrity collides with a system that appeared more concerned with protecting itself than confronting the harm caused.

That is Part Two.

Note on Purpose and Accountability

This article is written from my personal lived experience and reflects my understanding of events, records, disclosures and correspondence available to me.

I share this as part of wider advocacy around domestic abuse, safeguarding, police accountability and the mental-health impact of institutional failure. It is not written for revenge or personal hostility. It is written because accountability protects the public, and because survivors should not be stigmatised for the psychological impact of harm they did not cause.

Where professionals are named, they are named because their actions, decisions or omissions form part of my direct experience and are relevant to the chronology. The focus is on professional accountability, safeguarding learning and public-interest reflection.

Needing mental-health support after domestic abuse, coercive control and re-traumatisation is not weakness or failure. It is injury. The shame belongs with the harm caused, not with the person trying to recover from it.