The Dark Side of the Mind: True Stories from My Life as a Forensic Psychologist

by Kerry Daynes

an abusive relationship ends is when the risk of harm increases. I eventually managed to leave, but he didn’t want to make it easy for me to go. He began to turn up at my work. Colleagues would tell me he was lingering in the car park or had marched into the reception area demanding to know if I had left the building for the day. He’d bang on the front door or his face would appear at the window of my home at the same time as the phone would start ringing off its hook. I closed the curtains, and sat immobilized until he eventually went away. On a typically dismal 31 October – Halloween – I’d arrived home from work in the evening and run in to the house just as it was starting to rain. I saw trick or treaters down the road and in a mean-spirited moment thought to myself that they’d be getting soaked in a minute. I rushed in through the door, threw my coat down in the hall and went straight into the kitchen to see if my housemate was home – she wasn’t. When the doorbell rang, I practically skipped to the door, expecting to see the painted faces and plastic masks of children. It wasn’t them. * A few days later it was my housemate who made me call the police, with the ultimatum that if I didn’t, she would. It is bloody difficult to make that phone call. I was filled with foreboding about setting in motion the chain of events I knew would follow. Because when a victim of domestic abuse makes that decision, and calls the police, they are starting a story with only two possible e...