Hearing the word ‘guilty’, feelings of relief and validation flooded through my body.

My 29 year nightmare, during which time I’d been beaten, raped and emotionally tortured, was over, and now my abuser was to be locked away for a very long time.

It was hard to fathom that I had married this man, unaware of who he really was and what he was capable of inflicting on me.

Kenneth Quinn, 49, and I met on a night out in Paisley, Renfrewshire and married in 1993.

Although people have subsequently told me they found him cold and a bit ‘odd’, he made me happy.

Looking back however, there were red flags – like critical comments he made about my clothes, and how persistent he’d been when we were dating, showering me with gifts and cards. But this was 30 years ago and awareness about behaviour like love bombing and coercive control didn’t exist then.

The first time he attacked me was in 1994 when I was pregnant with our first child.

Out of nowhere he flew into a rage, violently punching and kicking me while I begged him not to hit my stomach. Afterwards, I was in a state of shock, I couldn’t believe what had just happened.

That was the only time he showed any remorse, crying at what he’d done.

A few months later, in the final weeks of my pregnancy, it happened again when he threw me down a flight of steps.

This Is Not Right

 

Throughout the year we will be bringing you stories that shine a light on the sheer scale of the epidemic.

With the help of our partners at Women’s Aid, This Is Not Right aims to engage and empower our readers on the issue of violence against women.

You can find more articles here, and if you want to share your story with us,

Like every survivor of domestic abuse, I’ve been asked – why did I stay? Why didn’t I leave him then, once he’d shown his true colours?

It’s taken me years to understand why I didn’t flee but back then I was a young newlywed, with a baby on the way, and I couldn’t bring myself to accept this marriage was a terrible mistake.

I also didn’t realise he’d already begun emotionally abusing me too. He’d convinced me I wouldn’t be able to cope as a single mum and with my parents living hundreds of miles away I believed I needed him.

I told myself he would change, and when we became a family things would be different.

Sadly, nothing changed. It only worsened.

My son Max* was born in 1995 and I would be beaten while he was a baby in my arms, Kenneth didn’t care when he was in one of his rages.

One evening in 1997, I’d put Max to bed and was sitting in the living room before going to work a night shift in my job as a nurse, when Kenneth came in and raped me.

I tried to fight him off but he was too big and heavy, and all I could think of was my beautiful little boy, fast asleep in the next room.

Until 2021, my life and our marriage was defined by physical and sexual violence, rape and emotional abuse.

I realise how hard it is for people to comprehend how I could have stayed married to him for so long but later on, after I was diagnosed with complex PTSD, a psychiatrist told me I’d formed a ‘trauma bond’ with Kenneth and was suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, more commonly seen in kidnap victims.

The injuries I sustained over the years were endless.

From bruises and cuts, which meant I always wore long sleeved tops and trousers even in summer to hide them, to broken ribs, wrist and fingers, and head injuries.

I did confide in a few very close friends over the years and they urged me to flee, terrified for my safety and horrified at what he was doing to me, but I just couldn’t do it.

If I had to seek medical treatment, I became expert at pretending I’d ‘tripped and fallen’ or ‘walked into a door’, and although I often saw disbelief on the faces of the nurses and doctors that treated me, I was too terrified and controlled to breathe a word to them about how I’d really come to harm.

Once, I went to my GP after my face had been slashed multiple times with a bank card. I refused to talk about what had happened but thankfully the doctor took images of my injuries, which would later be used as evidence against Kenneth.

In 2005, when Max was 10, I became pregnant again. It wasn’t planned, I hadn’t wanted to bring another child into the world with Kenneth, and after a vicious beating I suffered a miscarriage, losing a life threatening amount of blood.

Losing my baby and almost my life, I knew there was no rock bottom he wouldn’t drag me to.

Max grew up hearing and witnessing violence and watching his father mock and criticise me – everything from my looks and body, to how I kept the house were used against me.

There were times I wasn’t allowed to use the toilet without permission, or had to stay in my bedroom unless it was to prepare meals.

He controlled the heating in our home, what I put on social media and I was forbidden from making new friends when we moved to a new area.

While I was Kenneth’s main target, he harmed our son, too. I remember him throwing us both down the stairs on my birthday one year, then hitting Max before locking me outside naked.

Max learnt to remain silent, like me, about what went on behind the closed doors of our family home and it still causes me so much pain that was his childhood.

It wasn’t just at home Kenneth was violent and angry. He fell in and out of jobs, picked fights with strangers in the street and was accused of mistreating animals when he ran a dog grooming salon.

He had a terrible temper and a short fuse, he could explode at any moment.

In 2021, I walked into a police station in the Scottish Border where we were living at that time and that marked the beginning of the end of my nightmare.

I had lost a loved one in a terrible tragedy, and that loss had pierced through the control Kenneth had over me. I knew life was precious and short and I had to escape him, or else I would end up dead too – at his hands or my own, as by then I was suicidal.

He was arrested and charged with a variety of offences including rape and assault.

By then, Max had left home, and I spent over a year living in a women’s refuge because Kenneth was on bail and police considered me at ‘high risk’ from harm if I returned to the home we’d shared.

In January 2024, Kenneth was jailed for 15 years after being found guilty of ten charges at Glasgow High Court.

Watching him be led away, I felt like I could breathe again. He was gone from my life.

Just over a year on, I am no longer that broken, frightened, controlled woman.

I work in Occupational Health, I have great friends and I am so proud of Max, who now works and lives in London.

My body is scarred, a legacy of my abusive marriage, but when I look at them I am reminded that I survived and got justice for myself and my son.

I campaign and advocate for others experiencing DV and am working with survivors and politicians calling for the UK’s first Domestic Violence Register to be set up in Scotland. Like the one that currently exists for sex offenders, perpetrators would be put on it once convicted, to protect other people from them.

My nightmare is over but for so many other women, theirs carries on and I am dedicated to protecting them so, like me, they can experience a life of peace and safety.