Despite suffering from serious physical, emotional and financial mistreatment, Kathryn Ayton did not recognise herself as a victim of domestic abuse. She wants to spread the message loud and clear that no-one should live their lives cowering in fear. If the victim puts up with it, it gets worse. The victim is a strong person to put up with the bullying. They need to channel that strength to wrestle themselves away from the bully’s grip. Recognising the situation for what it is and asking for help is the first step to the happy, peaceful life we all deserve. Employers have a vital role to signpost and help their workforce understand and identify situations of abuse.
Kathryn Benwell knows she is lucky to be alive. She suffered years of extreme physical and emotional mistreatment at the hands of her perpetrator, and yet her situation was so normalised that she didn’t even recognise that she was a victim of domestic abuse.
“It was only when I finally got him away from me that I thought, ‘wow, how did I put up with this for so long?’ I realised that one of the reasons that some people don’t speak out is because they don’t recognise what is happening to them. We are living in fear, afraid of shutting our eyes and jumping over a cliff edge into a new life. Towards the end of my relationship, I knew I had to make a change, but I now admit I was too afraid of the consequences and buried my head in the sand” she says.
Kathryn met her perpetrator in 2013. A successful businesswoman, she has over 40 years’ experience as a banking regulator then managing director at one of the largest banks in the world, before going on to launch her own consultancy. A smart, educated and confident woman, she has travelled and worked all over the world. She would never have imagined herself as a victim.
Her perpetrator was tall, handsome and charming, and Kathryn says she fell deeply in love. Friends thought they were the perfect couple. “He put me on a pedestal and swept me off my feet,” she says. Ten months into the relationship, he asked Kathryn to marry him, and she accepted.
Escalation of Abuse
The abuse began six months after they got married, when, after an argument, her perpetrator attacked Kathryn for the first time. He picked her up off the floor by her neck, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe, and then threw her out of the house in the middle of the night. Kathryn was terrified and ran down the gravel drive barefoot and called the police from a neighbour’s home.
She subsequently dropped all charges against him, rationalising that it was a one-off situation, a silly argument that had got out of control. “That was a big mistake. A massive red flag that I should have listened to. It is never acceptable to use violence and if we allow it to happen it will become the norm. Over the years it got steadily worse. He loved to intimidate me by throwing things around, smashing up televisions, punching holes into the walls and doors and smashing up my phones. I am an absolute expert in setting up iPhones because he smashed up every one I owned.”
Her perpetrator also isolated her from her loved ones, including her children from a previous marriage. Her daughter was made to leave the family home and move into a caravan. “I was just so distraught. My son didn’t want anything to do with him very quickly. He saw right through him. I had ten years of my children being pushed away from me.”
The economic abuse also increased. “He took huge sums of money out of my business and placed it into accounts held by him and his daughters. He left me to pay off the substantial mortgage on the house and then claimed in court that I had no financial interest in it.”
He also gave Kathryn’s car to his own daughter without asking her permission and micromanaged her every move – even telling her off if the milk was placed back in the fridge in the wrong place.
The physical assaults continued to escalate. In 2021, he attacked Kathryn in the car, punching her repeatedly in the face after she tapped his arm during an argument. Her nose was broken, as were the bones in her face. The surgeon who saw photos of her commented that he had only seen such injuries on dead people brought into casualty, and that she could have brain damage for life from the attack.
Kathryn did not report her abuser however. “I took myself off to bed. I had two days of serious concussion. It was difficult because he always minimised the abuse. The next day I told him he had broken my nose and he said he couldn’t have, because I only had one black eye, not two. He said to stop going on about it because he felt bad enough as it was. That was the closest I ever got to an apology”
Despite the assault, the next day Kathryn put on a big hat, a pair of sunglasses, plastered herself in makeup and actually joined a photoshoot with her daughter and later met up with friends. “People asked about why I had sunglasses on. Some people told me later they noticed the bruises. But nobody asked me at the time if I was okay.”
Kathryn continued to be in denial about what was happening to her, even when - after her perpetrator had a near fatal heart attack - the abuse increased dramatically. The final attack took place as she lay in bed, leaving her with a broken back, two broken ribs, a haematoma to her kidney and a chipped front tooth after she was waterboarded with a bottle of wine. Her abuser locked her in the bedroom and thought she didn’t have a phone to call for help. Luckily, she had taken the precaution to download Facebook messenger onto her iPad and was able to summon help. Otherwise she could have been left there in her remote house for days as she was unable to walk.
Moving Forward
Kathryn says that she has spent a long time thinking about why she didn’t leave despite the scale of the abuse. By this point, she had spent a decade being emotionally coerced and physically and financially abused, as well as being gaslit into believing that none of her injuries were that bad.
“I am a real problem solver in my work. I have never walked away from a problem in my life. It had to get to that point where I was half killed before I came to my senses. We all inherently have a fear of risk, the risk of being alone, of losing the lifestyles we have built up, of starting again.”
Her perpetrator was arrested and negotiated a plea bargain, pleading guilty to four counts of actual bodily harm. “It should have been grievous bodily harm but the difference between a low order GBH and a high order LBH was about five months in prison. I was assured that he would not be bailed because four judges had seen the extent of my injuries before and not let him out. But when he pleaded guilty the judge bailed him, so that was a shock.” He and his daughters blame Kathryn for him being imprisoned and have never asked after her wellbeing – in fact the opposite with a campaign of harassment after his arrest.
Kathryn got stronger with every day she was away from him. She channelled her energy into fighting for justice for herself and her family. This was a Crown Court case so Kathryn made sure that the Crown Prosecution were provided with everything they needed to fight her corner. “You can’t just sit back and wait to be asked for evidence – feed the police with everything you can think of. Go and get statements from people who witnessed the abuse. Get medical records of your injuries. Take photographs of your injuries as they proved to be really powerful in my case”.
She also emphasised the importance of the Witness Impact Statement. “Tell the police you need time to reflect on your situation before you give them your Impact statement. I initially gave them one paragraph when I was still concussed. I later wrote 8 pages, setting out the impact on me and my family mentally, emotionally, physically and financially. I went to Court and faced my abuser, reading the statement out at the sentencing hearing. It reminded the judge of the seriousness of the attacks on me and he saw with his own eyes how my abuser refused to acknowledge his blame. The judge sent my abuser to prison for 2 years commenting it was the worst case of victim blaming he had ever seen as a judge. I got my justice but had to fight for it every step of the way”.
Lessons for Employers
Kathryn knows her experience can provide some real lessons for employers. Firstly, she doesn’t look like a ‘typical’ victim. “I think employers need to understand the prevalence of domestic abuse. They need to recognise that one in four women and one in seven men are victims. People are papering over the cracks and coming into work every day.”
Kathryn was working for some of the biggest companies in the world, she points out, yet none of them ever picked up on her situation. She wishes one of those employers had signposted her in the right direction, with posters in the bathrooms or lunch and learn sessions about domestic abuse. “I might have thought, hang on, this is happening to me. I might have found a name for what was happening and labelled it as such, and might have gone to talk to HR. I never even considered going to HR about what I was going through. I think employers need to understand that people are being controlled even when they are at work. Some victims are called every day [by our abusers] to make sure we are there, some can have their lunch money totalled up to make sure we do not have enough to spend it elsewhere.”
She points out that abusers often let their victims work for the financial gain it brings them. As a result though, “work is sometimes the only place you get away from it. It is a sanctuary,” she says.
Last year, Kathryn was able to spend Christmas with her children for the first time in a decade. Life on her own has been wonderful, and she has never been happier. She wants employers to learn lessons from her experiences. “Make sure your employees know that your company cares, give employees the support and sanctuary they need and point anyone needing help to expert resources,” she says.