A schoolgirl’s dream became a violent nightmare

TO 12-year-old Frances Smith*, he was all her schoolgirl dreams come true - a 15-year-old apprentice with a motorbike, money to spend, a great sense of humour and who, most importantly, noticed her.

After four years of being treated like a princess, the “funny, easy going Johnny” asked her to marry him and Frances thought she “was going to be happy for life.”

But, for the next 21 years and throughout four pregnancies, she was subjected to a regime of savage brutality with many of the attacks ending in rape.

She became a nervous wreck and tried to commit suicide on five occasions, believing she would probably be murdered anyway.

Since 1996, 107 women have been murdered in Ireland and 69 of these were killed in the home, according to Women’s Aid.

“There was rarely a reason. I’d look at him crooked or maybe forget to give him sauce with his dinner and I’d get a punch. As the years went on, he got involved in crime and credit card fraud it got worse, I’d be dragged out of the bed for no reason and kicked until I thought I would die,” she said.

As his reputation in Dublin as a ‘hard man’ grew, the violence spilled outside the home and he’d often spit in her face as they sat in the pub at the weekend.

“I remember once getting such a beating when I was pregnant with my first that I had to pretend I was in a motorbike crash. I used to sleep in with the kids to stay out of his way but then he’d yell at me to ‘get in here’ and he’d start into me.”

Frances regularly opened her bowels on the bedroom or kitchen floor as her husband held her down and kicked her repeatedly into the stomach - one of the worst ever beatings was when he attacked her just days after an operation on her bowels.

“The gardaí were around to the house nearly every five minutes.”

As the girls got older they were dragged into the nightmare and at 14, one had to get her lips stitched after he swung at her with a lock while another, aged 12, has a permanent scar on her head after he “tore into her with a pan”.

Frances didn’t have one friend over the 21 years as she “wasn’t allowed friends or to be with her family”.

Two breaks for freedom to relatives’ homes ended up with a hatchet through her father’s door and her sister being threatened with a Stanley knife.

Frances has since got a lifetime barring order against her husband and recently divorced him. She has ghost written a book on her experience ‘In Fear of Her Life’ which was recently published.

Tomorrow, she will join people all over Ireland in acknowledging a minute’s silence for the 107 women murdered in the past eight years on International Day Opposing Violence Against Women.

“I may be gone from him and I have a life back. But I still live in fear. Three weeks ago, he came to the door because he saw a car... and thought I had a man here. It was our daughter’s car. A man? He’d leave me and the man dead.”

*Frances Smith is a pseudonym.