‘Natasha O’Brien did what I haven’t been able to. She spoke up and stood up...’
The author asks: 'How many more protests will there have to be before we change things so that women are safe?'
I was 40-years-old when I was raped. In my own home, in my spare bed. In the middle of the night, by a man who I was due to be married to.
I still can’t say the word comfortably, but today it’s particularly difficult because of the latest failure in Ireland’s judicial system. There’s a silent scream and a physical pain that’s truly exhausting, because yet another woman has been added to the list of women Ireland does not value, protect, or keep safe.
We’re not so mná-some after all.
Natasha O’Brien did not get justice. Before her, Ashling Murphy did not get justice. And before them, many hundreds of women, whose names we add each year to seemingly endless lists of women who cope, who survive, who find a way to go on knowing that in some cases they “got lucky” — they’re still alive — have not had justice.
How many have been raped? Do we even count or keep data? How many more are living with coercive control? I could Google it, but I don’t have the heart to. It won’t help.
More names to add to the list. Names in a country that will see TDs and local representatives come out in force for photo opps and a myriad of campaign pledges against coercive control and domestic, sexual, and gender-based violence (DSGBV) — should we worry there’s a snazzy new acronym to capture the fear, dread, and soul-sapping experience of surviving — and yet an absence of meaningful reform that would actually effect change?
We have literally just seen a soldier — trained in combat by our taxes and defended for his “character” by military superiors in keeping with the “sure he’s a grand lad” defence — walk free from court having admitted his guilt.
Read that again: He pled guilty but, for fear of “ruining” his career, he got to go home, avoiding a prison term.
He’s not the only one and this isn’t a unique or even unusual story in the Ireland of 2024.
My partner died in an accident in 2019. Then the pandemic came. Being a new widow was unique to me, but trying to navigate a pandemic was not — we were all in “it” together. I was lost and lonely. (I’m not excusing myself but the context is important, to me at least.)
Into this mix appeared a man who, through work, wanted to be part of my life. He was kind, caring, a “stand-up guy” — or so I thought. Within a month, he had talked me out of a set of house keys.
It’s funny really but, in some ways, I blame women’s leisurewear because, you see, I didn’t have pockets. We went for a walk — one of the few things you could do in spring/summer 2020. I had my house keys in one hand with my phone and the (fully Instagrammable) coffee in the other.
It was all a lot to carry in what was meant to be a short break within the permitted 5km. He offered to take my keys for me to “mind them”. At the end of the walk, I asked for them back.
We retraced our steps. I had him check his car in case they’d fallen out of his pocket. I went back to the coffee pop-up. He wound me up to high-doh — it was lockdown, would I even be able to get a locksmith to come and let me back in? Did I have a keyholder? (I used to but he’d died and somehow, in grieving, I hadn’t thought of another, it was on the list somewhere.) Did I have a neighbour who could let me in? (No.)
Eventually, he told me he’d found them … they’d been in his side pocket all the time, he was “sure” he’d checked, but he hadn’t seen them. All was well.
He’d begun to pull at a thread … one of doubt and worry, that festered into fear and control and would play out over the next 36 months. But, that evening, I was just glad to be able to get back through my front door.
He wanted to help me — what if we hadn’t been able to find the keys? He could keep a set. I knew him, we worked together, after all. He’d just mind them, but it would mean I’d never need to be stuck again. It was for my own good.
A month later, I let him move in. I don’t know that I ever fancied him — he wasn’t my type. I hadn’t planned to, but somehow it seemed logical. People were setting up “household bubbles” all around me and, as he put it, it was the only way I’d be allowed to spend time with him or anyone else for that matter.
I knew I was grieving, but this seemed like a new path, a hopeful next chapter, a way forward and out of the great big hole of sadness I’d been in.
Some 12 weeks later, he proposed. I said yes. I will never know why, but it made me "his".
Fast-forward six months and one night he was snoring very loudly — the kind that makes the ceiling shake and the floorboards rumble.
I had an early meeting — one of those dreaded Zoom ones that now have their own meme. I was so exhausted my eyelashes hurt. So I did what I had done a hundred times before with my previous partner with no issue — I shooed him into the spare room.
I wasn’t picking a fight or making a point, I just needed to sleep — even for a couple of hours. I wasn’t prepared for his reaction.
He said that “relationships don’t count if people don’t sleep together”. He said he was hurt. It was my fault. He looked upset. He left our bed in a huff for the spare room and mumbled something about “not being sure” about us at all if I was “going to be so unreasonable” and “didn’t care about his needs”.
I was so confused. I hadn’t meant to hurt him, I just wanted to sleep, but was I being selfish? Was he right that this was all my fault? What had I missed?
An hour later, even the BBC Shipping Forecast hadn’t helped me nod off. All I could think was that I was ruining this new relationship, and I was afraid of making him angry.
I should have noted the feeling of being “afraid” to make him angry but, in the middle of the night, I just wanted to make things better. I followed him into the spare room. My intention was to say sorry, to slip in beside him and just be there. He saw it differently.
He slept naked — he didn’t “approve” of PJs — and that night was no different. He started touching me … first of all in a way I recognised, but when I said “no” it changed.
I said “stop”. I said “no”. I pushed him away. I tried to get out of the bed. I told him I didn’t want to. I said “stop” again — actually, a lot of times but I lost count because I couldn’t breathe.
First, with his fingers and then the rest of him. It wasn’t like the movies. I didn’t scream, there was no “drama”. I did keep saying “no”, at first loudly and then in gasps — it’s important to me to be clear on that — I did at least try. I couldn’t get him off me.
It didn’t take long, best guess, a few minutes. He rolled off me. I knew I was sore but didn’t fully realise why until I went to the loo, still in my T-shirt and pants. I was bleeding, heavily. His fingernails and roughness had torn me. I ached and stung but, mostly, all I had was — How? What? Here? Him? Me? Why?
I didn’t sleep. I can’t remember if I cried, I know I shook for hours. Part of me expected an apology in the morning — a “come to Jesus” moment of realisation. I don’t know how I’d have responded but it doesn’t matter, I didn’t get the chance.
I picked a fight (unlike the spare room move, this time I intentionally picked a fight).
I asked him what had happened, did he know what he’d done? What was wrong with him? What was wrong with him? I was loud.
Initially, he said he didn’t know what I was talking about — he’d slept through the whole thing.
When I shouted back that that didn’t make sense — how could he know he “slept through it all” when he didn’t know what he’d done or what “it” was? — then he changed tack.
There was a sneer on his face as he told me it was my fault. I had sought him out and pursued him to a different bed. He told me I’d asked for it. I was his fiancée, I clearly wanted sex, it’s what I was “for”.
He told me nobody would believe me. He told me that anyone who knew me knew I’d let him move in quickly, had said yes to marriage and was clearly “moving on” from my dead partner.
He told me people — my friends — would be disgusted by me. They wouldn’t believe he was anything other than the gent who’d “saved” me from widowhood. He told me I deserved it. I swore he’d never touch me again.
He left for the office. I was on time for my Zoom call.
Those were the thoughts I let take hold. He never did touch me again, but I let him stay for another three years. I told nobody.
I don’t think I pretended it hadn’t happened, but I know I kept my head down and tried to keep the wheels on. He was controlling.
Even past lockdown, he wouldn’t let me see friends or, if I did, he’d “manage” me (one of his favourites was to tell me he’d pick me up to “keep me safe” from taxi drivers — my girlfriends thought he was a hero but, in reality, it meant he was in charge of when and where and who I spent time with).
In a vein more Stepford than even I could fathom, he’d text me every evening from the office to ask what was on the “menu” for dinner and, once he’d made his pick, I’d be told when to have it ready for his return.
He’d “manage” so many more aspects of life (he didn’t like shaved legs — it might mean I was on the lookout for someone else; he didn’t like me having hobbies so I let sea swimming go; he didn’t “love” my feminist friends so I saw less of them…).
This wasn’t happening. Eventually, it ended. And, as the initial days passed, the small piece of freedom from him started to shed light.
The floodgates opened. I was physically sick any time I thought of him. Every piece of bedding, every towel, every everything he ever touched in my home has been burned, not fit even for the charity shop. I changed the locks. I told work I had the flu. In the coming months, I changed job.
It took me four months after he left to call the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. When I did, they were amazing. But I still spent three full days staring at the number in my phone, not physically able to press dial.
Somehow the word — that word — was too much. It still is. I’m still afraid people will judge me. I let him move in, I said yes to marriage and, worse, I let him stay and I pretended it was fine.
I’ve given a statement to the guards (just in case anything happens or he comes back), but I won’t press charges. I can’t. They were kind but asked — reasonably — I had any proof. I didn’t (the T-shirt and pants are long since gone).
They told me that, yes, it would be he said/she said and unlikely to succeed. They asked me if I’d gotten help. They told me to always call them if I changed my mind. They told me that was about as much as could be done. I do not blame them.
There are a few options: He will meet someone else and “move on to the next one”; he’ll show up and rape/murder me; he’ll show up and try to rape/murder me and, by some miracle, I’ll stop him; he’ll die of something or other (his personality type may mean more risk-taking by him). Not exactly the fairy-tale ending.
However, I am out and free (until 2am comes and I can’t breathe or sleep). I am safe — safer at least. I have perspective. I’ve gotten counselling. I know I wasn’t fully me, but I don’t totally understand what led me into the situation — I may never fully be able to wrap my head around that one.
It’s still new but, day by day, I am feeling more like “me”.
My friends see me, even if they don’t understand where I vanished to. I have hope and am slowly trying new things. Sea swimming is back on the table and my legs are shaved. I have survived.
He still works in the same job. His life is only moderately changed. Mine will forever have a different lens, and that’s the point.
This week, it all came back because Natasha O’Brien did what I haven’t been able to. She spoke up and stood up to her attacker. She risked being judged. She did all the “right” things for herself but, more, for other women. She is brave and strong and yet the system let her down.
Tonight, her attacker is free of jail and she is still living with the aftermath. She is not the only one.
How many more women are there? How many stories far worse than mine are yet to be told? How many times are we going to hear and believe “zero tolerance” from a Government with more female representation than at any time in history, but who still fail to make any substantive or meaningful change? How many more campaigns and protests will there have to be? How many more will there be before we change things so that women are safe?
Tonight, I don’t feel safe. I don’t think I’m alone.
- The writer of this article wishes to remain anonymous.
- If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please click here for a list of support services.
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