Timeline of Abuse 1996 – 2009

By the time this picture was taken, we had been living in the USA for seven months and was taken at the first house we rented. During that time, we had a visit from my in-laws, my eldest son had started school and we had adopted another cat, Smudge, the one in the picture. It was the calm before the storm of my parents’ visit, which took place over Christmas and New Year.

This is one of the better pictures taken of me. I look very relaxed, although there was a lot going on at the time. When this picture was taken, I was in the middle of packing up the house in preparation for the move to another house in the area we were living in. The difference about this move was that we had help from some people we had got to know. I was also feeling quite optimistic about the future. The house we were moving to was in a good area and we already knew some of the neighbours via the home school group we were part of.

A proud moment, my first bread machine loaf of bread. The miracle about this picture is that I am able to stand unaided. I had not long come off crutches due to severely dislocating my kneecap. I should mention that shortly after injuring my knee, my husband went on a training course for a month in the UK, I still couldn’t stand or walk for long and was receiving zero sympathy from my husband, yet making a loaf of bread in our new bread machine made me so happy. Around this time, my in-laws came to visit, my husband and I went on a house hunting trip to Oregon and we had to go for our medical for our USA permanent residency application. All of these took place after I had come off crutches.

The picture was taken during our second summer in Oregon and came about because I was trying to please my husband. We hadn’t long had our digital camera and he had been complaining he didn’t have a good picture of me. For his birthday that year, I asked the boys to use the camera and take some pictures of me. The results were pretty good. We then decided to take pictures of the boys. Come the day, he made the appropriate noises, but he wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t a one off incident and, as time went on, buying him presents that he would like became difficult and they were usually discarded.

Marriage reset number??? Shortly before this picture was taken, my husband had been made redundant. It is hard to be made redundant in your own country, but when you are living in another one, it is impossible. The only good thing was that by now we were permanent residents of the USA. My in-laws had arranged to visit and offered to look after the boys if we wanted to go away. Despite money being tight, we took the opportunity. This picture was taken early on in the mini break that we took. Fortunately, there are no pictures of me at the end of trip because things had gone south between us. Somehow we managed, or I should say I managed, to put on a brave face for the remainder of the in-laws’ visit and the marriage continued.

A picture of me taken in the “money pit”, or as it should be correctly known as his office. Whilst I understood why my husband needed a separate office, it turned out to be a vanity project. The office was better decorated than the house. Brand new furniture and a top of the range computer completed the office. Our home in Oregon was rurally located. I had no problem with the house, but why we needed 13 acres of land, I initially had no idea. Then my husband started telling anyone he knew about how much land he owned. It boosted his ego. The house had three bedrooms, the boys shared and the third my husband used as an office. There was a garage of sorts, 1200 squ ft carport. This was then converted into a garage complete with office. It was done in two phases, thanks to remortgaging the house. It was the place where my husband spent his days, unless he was visiting a customer, which became rarer and rarer. To do the conversion, it took an awful lot of money, money that was never fully recovered when we sold the house.

It was also during 2005 that my husband came up with the idea that I should start a nanny placement agency. With the completion of the office I had the thought that we would share it. My husband had other ideas; the office was his, I had to set up and run my business using the computer in our bedroom. I am so glad in those days we didn’t have the likes of Microsoft Teams and Zoom!

When putting together the pictures for the timeline, I came across many from 2007 of me asleep taken by my husband. Each time he took one I asked him to delete it and not to take anymore of me asleep. Whenever he did something I didn’t like and asked him to stop, this was the signal for him to continue. It is only now that I understand this was another way of him controlling me. He got a kick out of me protesting about his actions towards me. When I stopped protesting, eventually he would stop. The respite would only last for a short time, before he found something else to torment me with.

The wasted trip to Seattle. The trip was for both business and pleasure. My husband had been in talks with a contractor who did work for the company my husband was formerly employed by. The contractor was based on the East Coast of the USA, but would be in Seattle on business. They arranged to meet up and discuss a business venture they had been discussing. The contractor was bringing his wife, so my husband decided that the boys and I should also come. The formal business meeting didn’t take place until the Monday evening, but we did meet up with the contractor and his wife on the Sunday and did some sightseeing around Seattle. On the Monday, the four of us continued sightseeing until my husband’s meeting.

What you see in the picture is me packing for the drive back home to Oregon. What you also don’t see is the awful mood my husband was in after the meeting. The drive back to our home in Oregon was done in almost complete silence. The business venture never did take off. After my husband died and I was searching through his documents on the computer I discovered some correspondence between the contractor and my husband. It appears my husband had deliberately sabotaged the business opportunity. It wasn’t the first time he had done this and wouldn’t be the last.

This picture was taken during a period of not knowing what we were going to do. After the ill-fated trip to Seattle, my husband continued to spend his days in his office, but little work came in. I continued to run the nanny placement agency, or rather I attempted to, with no luck. It was a stressful year.

2009 was our last full year in the USA. My husband had made the decision to move back to the UK. I didn’t agree with it, but I knew to keep my marriage alive I had to support him. One of the hardest conversations I have had with the boys was telling them that we were moving back to the UK, a country they hardly knew. It took over a year for us to move and when we did I did so with a heavy heart. This picture was taken because my in-laws wanted updated pictures of us all. When we returned, my picture wasn’t to be seen.