One in Three Campaign
One in three victims of family violence are male

Men's stories

MEN’S PERSONAL STORIES

If you are a male victim of family violence – intimate partner violence, violence from other family members, child abuse, elder abuse, sexual assault, or other forms of family violence and abuse – this page is available for you to tell your anonymous story. Please click here to tell your own story. If you feel like you need support, please click here. Stories are moderated to prevent the posting of spam, so it might take a little while for your story to appear on this page.

 

Pablo's personal story

I am dead as a result of the abuse I have suffered. You will forgive me please as someone else gives me the voice I did not have while I was alive.

I am 39 years old. My teenage daughter decided she was not getting her own way enough. She got a couple of her friends to help her and she told lies to the police. She told the police I was abusing her sexually and that I had raped her. Her friends told similar lies to back her up.

I was arrested at gunpoint, and interviewed by the police. My two little children were taken away from me, and I was forced to leave my home and my wife. My wife was forced to sign papers against me - they told her if she did not sign them they would take our children from her immediately. My wife was devastated. I spent the next year or so staying with other members of my family, and trying hard to keep a good relationship with my little kids and my wife on supervised visits.

I did everything the court orders told me to, and did not do anything to make the situation worse, or to contact anyone. I did not even leave the house where I was staying for more than 8 months, and then I just went shopping in a different town. Me and my whole family were gagged, we were not allowed to say anything, even though my daughter and her friends could still spread lies about me.

In a whole year, and after interviewing me more than once, the police had still not charged me with any crime. But at the end of the court orders, when I thought I would be able to go home and rebuild my life with my children and my wife, my daughter and her friends made a new application for court orders against me, and told even bigger lies. I was served with another lot of accusations and orders that keep me away from my wife, my children and my home, once again.

The police and my solicitor had told me that in cases like this everyone believes that women will never tell lies about things like this, and that men are assumed to be guilty whether there is any evidence or not. I found out that this really is true. A woman or a girl just needs to say something like this, and even though there is no evidence to support the lies told about me, and the police did not charge me with any crime, these women/girls can go on subjecting me to this kind of abuse year after year, the courts will always grant them their court orders, and my life is ruined. Abuse does not have to be physical. The psychological, mental and emotional abuse against me has destroyed me and my family.

I have no way out. I have no way of proving my innocence, as the word of the girls is regarded as the truth even without supporting evidence. Their smear campaign has ruined my reputation. I will never be able to be involved in community groups, sports, any activities with children or girls because of the lies that have been told about me.

My family has been devastated, my little children want their daddy - it breaks my heart every time I have to send them home without me, and they cry for me. My wife is distraught. I have no choices, I have no future, and I do not have the enormous amount of money I need for an aggressive private defense - a lawyer has quoted me $50,000 to $100,000 with a probability that I will never win, because the girls do not have to provide solid evidence. It is possible I would to go to prison for something I did not do, and I would not be the first.

This last lot of orders and accusations is more than I can take. I have been struggling to keep above the hopelessness, fear, devastation, anger, and depression I feel. I cannot turn my head off. It would have been kinder to me and my family if these girls had broken into my home and shot me dead - at least there would have been an event and then a chance of recovery.

This relentless ongoing abuse is a long slow death. And it is slowly but surely damaging and killing my family as well. I cannot fight it any longer. I have no voice, my strength is gone, my life is ruined, my family is destroyed.

On 9th December 2014 I ended my own life.

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