Well this is going to be another very difficult post, so apologies for any rambling. I have chatted with numerous people about certain aspects of what happened, but i don’t think anyone knows the full in’s and out’s of the events.

In 2004 I moved from London to Manchester with my Partner at the time Steve. It was my first real long term relationship. We both managed to find jobs quite soon after moving to Manchester. However within the year, Steve had quit his job and was trying to find a new one. During this time I had to pay for everything, from Rent, Council tax, Gas, Electricity, phone bill and anything else that came up. We did have a number of good years in our relationship which made things worth while but then things started to break down between us and he was spending weekends and most of his time at his friends house Jimmy. Me and Steve decided to end our relationship and within a couple of months he moved his new boyfriend into the flat Jimmy. I was now paying for everything for 3 people. During this time i was practically left living in my bedroom in the flat. They controlled or were always using the front room. It was always promised that when Jimmy and Steve got jobs they would help out with the bills. However that never materialized, Jimmy did get a job, Steve never worked.. It wasn’t until 2010 when I was struggling with money and was noticing that they were buying new things, going out for meals, trips and going on holidays. So they had money but were effectively living off me. It was in 2011 things went extremely down hill.

In 2011 i had reached my limit and couldn’t carry on as i had before. So one evening After i came home from work, I had said to Steve that i needed to chat with him and Jimmy regarding moving to somewhere cheaper. At the time i was thinking all 3 of us would move into somewhere more affordable. However, the suggestion of moving out, made Steve and Jimmy quite angry i guess. Because after the casual conversation of saying i wanted to talk about moving out, i was given the silent treatment by both of them. Wouldn’t talk or even acknowledge me. I was still going to work but on coming home i was finding things damaged or broken in my room, even had cat poo spread over my mattress and bed. I was looking and found a nice flat for myself. I started buying things for the new flat which i kept in my room (toaster and kettle). Due to things being broken and things going missing, i locked things away in a set of draws. One day when i came home from work, I found that the set of draws and been broken into, I kept all my valuables, account details and important documents in there. This was the last straw, i had moved out and into my new flat within the week. I had hoped that would be an end to it, but it turned out that was the beginning.

A couple of days after moving into my new flat away from my ex-flatmates i started getting friends and family reporting they had received abusive messages from my accounts. Everyone one of my accounts had been ‘hacked’ with abusive messages written all over them and some nasty messages had been sent. I Managed to recover most of my accounts but there were a number that had been deleted before i could get access back to them. I had kept these account details in the draw that was broken into, lost a lot of important information and photos that i’ll never recover. On unpacking the Toaster and kettle that i had brought for the new flat i discovered they didn’t work. It wasn’t until my dad took the plugs apart that he found that the wiring had been tampered with, so both the kettle and toaster were “live” when plugged in. My Xbox 360 had wires inside cut, I had over 30 DVD’s and CD’s scratched and had abusive messages on them.

 

I Came home from work to my new flat and found that someone had attempted to break in, part of a key had been broken off in the lock, luckily no access was gained. I Contacted the police and they started to investigate. The next day i had been called into a disciplinary at work. As they ex-flatmates had sent emails to my manager with false reports, they were found to be incorrect and no further action was taking. I reported it again to the police and they started dealing with it as Domestic Abuse, due to mine and Steve’s past relationship. The police had contacted both Steve and Jimmy to advise them not to contact me, although this kind of worked the majority of things stopped, but somethings that they had done previously were still coming through. They had signed me up to various catalog companies and make purchases through it. Luckily i was able to get these stopped. They always signed me up to a Charity saying i need help, but i didn’t it was just to cause more stress and hassle. I Still to this day get intermittent messages to this day from them, but ignore them.

I must admit it is humiliating to know i put myself in that situation. By the time i realized what was happening, it was very hard to tell anyone or ask for help. So was just in a put up with it mood and hope it’ll get better, which it didn’t. Looking back on it now i feel so stupid for letting it happen. I know its not my fault, i didn’t ask for it, but at the same time i didn’t escape it, until it was too late and need the Police’s help. It is very embarrassing to admit that I am and will always be classed as a Domestic Abuse victim. Something i always thought that i’d never be, i’d never get into that situation. Life surprises you it sometimes lets things creep up. I Haven’t listed everything that happened or gone into to much details as it is still difficult to talk or think about even after 6 years. A lot of people will blame me for not doing things sooner and now i realize that i should of, but at the time i couldn’t see an exit. It is a scary thing to happen and a scary thing to admit that its happened to me.