posted at 07/28/09 - 10:44 AM
Speaking out against domestic abuse
IMAGINE being too scared to leave your partner in case he kills himself, dodging knives and other objects that he throws at you, and fearing for the safety of yourself and your child every day.
Jamie Huntlands didn't have to imagine it - she was living it.
Finally, after more than a year of psychological and physical abuse at the hands of her young son's father, she finally escaped his clutches.
In a bid to help other victims break the cycle, Jamie - whose name has been changed in this article to her pen name - has written a book based on her experience.
Reporter LAURIE DEVITT found out more.
"MY SON was just days old and was in the back of the car crying for milk.
"My partner told me he would try and beat the train to get us home quicker.
"I told him that if he did that, none of us would be getting home."
Jamie Huntlands recalls the terrifying moment that her former partner raced the car they were in over railway tracks - as a train hurtled towards them.
The 30-year-old mother-of-one, who was forced to flee her home in Holly Road, Measham, after he followed her home one night, is now finally moving on with her life.
She hopes that by telling others her story, they will find the strength to move on too - and she claims that's why she's written a book about it.
Entitled Nick - Twisted Minds, and published under her pen name of JS Huntlands, Jamie describes her first book as a "novelette".
"Part fact, part fiction", the book recounts some terrible events in Jamie's past - events which gave her the courage to stand up to her tormentor.
"I met him when I was 24, and everything was really nice, as it always is," she says.
"He was 10 years older than me and we lived together.
"I got pregnant three months into the relationship - I was young and stupid.
"When I was eight months pregnant, his sister called to ask if his divorce had come through.
"He told me he had got divorced in 1997, and we started arguing. He told me if I didn't believe him, I should leave."
That was the cue for Jamie's partner to start abusing her.
He began by calling her fat and ugly, even though she was heavily pregnant, and then he told her he had glaucoma - a condition which affects Type 1 diabetics and can result in blindness.
"That made me feel guilty and that I had to stay with him," she says.
After their son, now four, was born, things got worse.
"He wasn't getting all my attention any more so he would inject more medication to make himself have fits, and said he would self-harm, which he did.
"He said if I ever left him, he'd kill himself; he tried to put the responsibility on to me."
The final straw for Jamie was when her son was 19 months old and her partner threw a knife straight at her.
"We lived in a bungalow and my son's bedroom was right next to ours," she says.
"When he threw the knife, that was it. I kept thinking, 'What if my little boy had walked out at that moment and seen it, or it had hit him?'"
Jamie finally told her partner she was leaving, and he was sectioned under the Mental Health Act - giving her and her son the chance to seek help at a women's refuge.
After moving to Holly Road, Measham, Jamie's former partner found her, so she was forced to move again.
She has asked the Mail not to disclose her new address.
On a positive note, Jamie has now found happiness with another man - but the experience she has been through is still affecting her son.
"We were in Tesco last year and he (her former partner) tried to snatch my son off me.
"My son still says to me and my mum: 'That nasty man tried to take me away from my mummy'.
"He knows it was his dad, but calls him 'that nasty man' or 'that monster'.
"He was a terrible father."
Jamie hopes her book will encourage others not to endure the abuse she did - and to get out before it's too late.
"Parts of the book were hard to write," she says.
"I'm hoping to write a sequel and then a book through my son's eyes, with all the things he's told me.
"I wrote the book so it would help others.
"Most people associate domestic violence with hitting, but my partner never laid a finger on me; I didn't think I'd been abused because of that until the refuge took me in.
"It can also be woman on man, man on man, woman on woman.
"I want people to see there's a way out of it, that there's more to life than being abused.
"I told one of the police officers that I was lucky. When he asked why, I said: 'Because at least I'm still alive'.
"Not many women survive."
More information about Nick - Twisted Minds is available at website www.jshuntlands.co.uk