Nigella Lawson pictures: ‘Playful’ behaviour or just unacceptable abuse?

The photos of celebrity chef Nigella Lawson being grabbed around the throat by her husband are disturbing. He said he was just being ‘playful’. It’s not acceptable behaviour, says Barbara Scully

"The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still faithful interpreter - in the eye." So wrote Charlotte Bronte in the novel Jane Eyre.

Nigella Lawson has beautiful eyes, dark, almond-shaped pools complemented by her full, ruby-red lips, which are famed for licking spoons with a decadence and abandon that speak of a woman comfortable in her skin, happy with her voluptuous curves, and successful in life.

On Sunday, when I saw the photographs of Lawson being held by the throat by her husband, the art dealer, Charles Saatchi, the expression in her eyes made me gasp.

Lawson looked frightened, very frightened.

The photographs make for uncomfortable viewing. Saatchi has his back to the camera, but we have a view of Lawson’s face and it is her passivity, while being subjected to this highly humiliating behaviour by her husband, that is shocking. Saatchi also seems to pinch or ‘tweak’ her nose.

The day after the photographs were published, having been a media and internet sensation, Saatchi released a statement, saying that he and his wife were having an “intense debate about the children” and that he “held Nigella’s neck repeatedly, while attempting to emphasise my point”.

“There was no grip, it was a playful tiff. The pictures are horrific, but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place.”

The photographs show that Lawson wasn’t enjoying Saatchi’s idea of a “playful tiff.” She was distressed and, according to witnesses, she left the restaurant in tears. Saatchi’s version tells us that “Nigella’s tears were because we both hate arguing, not because she had been hurt.”

Margaret Martin, from Women’s Aid Ireland, on TV3’s Midday programme on Monday, spoke of how placing the hands around someone’s throat is a common abuse.

With pressure, after 10 seconds a victim can lose consciousness.

Hands around a woman’s neck is not playful, Mr Saatchi. It is highly dangerous and deeply disturbing for the victim — pressure or not.

How comfortable with humiliating (and perhaps hurting) your partner must someone be to behave like this in public?

How ‘usual’ must this be that Lawson endured it, instead of dumping her glass of red wine over Saatchi’s beefy head and leaving the restaurant, some dignity intact?

What words went with this physical intervention or, as Saatchi describes it, this “friendly tiff”? How long has it taken him to erode Lawson’s self-esteem such that she is frozen by his behaviour?

Or, am I being unfair?

Lawson has endured her share of tragedy.

Her mother, sister, and first husband all died, at young ages, of cancer.

Lawson has also spoken about how her mother, who suffered depression, was physically abusive to her children for minor things, such as making too much noise.

In an interview with the Financial Times magazine, in 2012, Lawson said of her mother, “She’d shout at all of us and say, ‘I’m going to hit you till you cry,’ and so I never would cry. I still don’t.”

Lawson also described herself as so pathetic that she craves the approval of her toothbrush.

This is no excuse for her husband’s behaviour.

But it underlines how a bully will find the victim’s weakest point and make it weaker.

What shocked me most about this story, and the photographs, was Lawson, a woman of independent means, a celebrity, well-educated, and yet every bit as much a victim of her partner’s temper as the working-class woman with no means, financial or otherwise, to leave an abusive situation.

As if to highlight this, Lawson reportedly attempted to calm her husband after he ‘held her neck’, and even kissed him on the cheek. That is a chilling and vivid underlining of how this is (presumably) a man Lawson loves.

It is all too easy to make glib judgements on other people’s relationships, be they friends, neighbours or celebrities, whose row has been photographed and appeared in newspapers.

It would be easy to urge Lawson to make a stand against domestic violence by leaving Saatchi. Certainly, I would prefer peace and security over opulence.

But no one knows the depth of another’s feelings.

No one can get inside another couple’s relationship, no matter how well you think you know one or both parties.

I hope that Lawson has some good, trusted and honest friends. I hope she has someone she can talk with honestly; someone who will provide a safe space in which she can begin to regain her self-esteem and inner strength. Because the first step away from a dysfunctional relationship usually comes from talking honestly about it to someone who will listen, who will be supportive and who won’t judge.

As parents, it is incumbent on us to not only tell our children with whom to conduct respectful relationships (which is not easy, let it be said), but to show them how that is done by ensuring the home in which they grow up is not a place of aggression, disrespect and casual physical intimidation or violence.

This is, perhaps, the saddest part of Lawson’s story.

As the child of an abusive mother, Lawson’s children have possibly been witness to behaviours at home that will not help them to form healthy relationships in the future.

Only time will tell.