Hey,
I was wondering if i could grab just 5 minutes of your time to pick your brains. I do appreciate your time is extremely important so i won’t keep you too long.
I am messaging to ask for a little help, now i promise this is not like the 100000s of emails you receive day in day out, this one is different completely and ill explain how.
Just a quick back story
My name is Sarah and i have 3 wonderful children, Ben 15, Summer 12 and Logan 7. I am married to my best friend Tom and we are an amazing team. But for the last few years our eldest son Ben has been really struggling with his mental health. Tom is not Ben and Summers dad, he stepped up and took them on and they have throught of him as dad since day 1.
Ben and summer’s dad was someone called Matt
I met Matt when i was 16 and my toxic mother had kicked me out of our family home because her new man didn’t like children. I was scared and alone and he took me in, i thought he was my hero. I was just 16 and he was 35, i didn’t think much of the age gap at the time, i just knew this was someone who wanted to look after me and care for me. Looking back now i should have realised it was not going to end well but unfortunately i was young and naive and thought he was the best thing to happen to me.
Our relationship was amazing for the first year, he was perfect and our relationship was perfect. I fell pregnant with Ben and that’s when things started to go down hill. Matt pushed me down the stairs, started hitting me on the head so no marks would show. Everytime he would promise never to do it again and promise me he would change. Unfortunately he didn’t. Then the abuse got worse, he would beat me most nights and leave me in an unrecognisable state. With no family to turn to and all the promises to stop, i stayed. We had Ben and i was convinced the abuse would stop, it did not, it got worse and worse. I endured beatings that left me black and blue, to the point where Ben didn’t recognise me most morning’s when i picked him up from his cot. He would fear my face as it was disgusting and unrecognisable.
The abuse was physical, mental and verbal, i became a zombie, i didn’t know what to do, who to turn to. I was never allowed a phone, never allowed out on my own, never allowed friend’s. I was a prisoners in my own home. I fell pregnant a year later with our daughter Summer. I endured a 8 hour beating the night, he beat me for hours and hours, he urinated on me repeatedly, spat on me and raped me repeatedly. I honestly thought I was going to die. I prayed to god to let me die as i honestly thought i wouldn’t make it, i honestly thought this was how i was gonna die.
I was strong enough to call the police and get the help i needed. Matt was arrested and sent to prison straight away. I thought i was finally free. Matt was charged with multiple charges and with the help of the police i gave statements and agreed to go to court and give evidence.
In the lead up to the court hearing, i had numerous threats and attacks on our house, i was threatened repeatedly by groups of men who threatened mine and my children’s lives if i went to court and gave evidence against Matt. I was followed daily and men would sit outside my house and threaten me and my children. I was weak, i was broken and i caved and retracted my statement and did not attend court. I know i should have stuck to my guns but i was young and absolutely scared for my life and my children’s. I wanted to protect my children. I wish i had been stronger, i wish I had the strength to be brave and him get the justice he deserved.
After he wad released from prison, the beatings got worse, objects where now his weapons of choice, i was beaten with belts, threatened with knifes, hammers, you name it, i was hit with it or threatened with it.
On multiple attempts i tried to escape, but he would always find me and the beatings would just get worse. On the last attempt to leave he took me to an abandoned woods and made me dig my own grave.
Finally one day out of somewhere i managed to finally flee, i managed to get away and stay somewhere safe for me and my Children, he didn’t manage to find me and i managed to get me and my children a house where we could all be safe and finally happy.
He left us alone, i thought this was it, he managed to turn his life around and after some civil court hearings he was allowed supervised contact with his childen. Unfortunately he found out our address from the court paperwork.
Thats when our lives got turned upside down again, he would come over every night, smash the outside of the house, smash the door, break the windows, break parts of the neighbours property. Smash my car windows, tyres and mirrors.
He would often smash the windows and cut his hands open and try to gain access all whilst Ben was seeing this and being absolutely terrified of the man who was supposed to love and protect him.
He would often bring groups of men round to the property and box the house in completely so we couldn’t leave, these men would smash our windows and doors and scare me and the childen night after night. The police were called everytime but as soon as they would arrive he would run off.
He then managed to accept that we was over and again started to get his life back on track, he attended lots of programes for his anger and wanted to become a good dad. After more supervised contact sessions he was able to see the children.
He would then ask to see them at our house, this was going ok for a few weeks until he started to show his true colours again, he told the children to say goodbye to me as they was never going to see me again, ben was a lot older at this point and understood completely what was going on. That evening he beat me again and held a knife to my throat for 4 hours until i managed to convince him not to kill me, how i really don’t know but i did. What I didn’t realise at the time was Ben had witnessed all of it.
Again the police was called. He served some time in prison. Came out and again became a better person, this time it lasted much longer, he really started to get his life back on track, again after supervised contact, we ageed he could start having the childen at his place.
I dropped the childen off at 4pm and got a telephone call from the police at 2am to say Matt had been arrested and i needed to go and get my children.
We got there to collect the childen and Ben was a mess, he was shaken and absolutely petrified. Matt had assaulted a women and held a knife to her throat, she then had called the police and when they arrived he attacked them.
Again he served prison time. At this point we all decided it was best for the children to not see Matt as it was just too damaging for them. After he got released from prison he again started to attack the property, call 1000s of times a day. Leave abusive voicemails, messages, leave illegal weapons around my property. Luckily we had built enough evidence to get an injunction and non molestation order against him. He broke this repeatedly.
1 month later we had found out from his mum that he had passed away. Obviously upsetting for the children as he was still their dad. Summer didn’t really understand, but Ben did and he wanted to attend the funeral.
A short time after that, they lost their paternal grandmother, someone who was a massive part of their life taken away extremely quickly to cancer, she found out just 3 weeks before she died that she had cancer and was on palative care.
A short time after that they lost their maternal grandad, this was extremely hard for us as a family to come to terms with as he had been there for all of us through this whole ordeal and he was our strength to keep going. He really did keep our family together, he was truly our hero and he was cruely taken from us by sepsis.
This did hit us all extremely hard but we managed to slowly cope together.
For the last 18 months to 2 years Bens mental health has really taken a toll on him, he has really struggled to get up and get dressed every day. He is severally depressed and we now believe he is suffering from PTSD. He has flashbacks every day of many incidents with his dad and things he has witnessed. What we once thought would be our safe house has turned into a vicious scary loop for him and he is being triggered daily. These last 8 months Ben has been the worst he has ever been. He has tried to take his own life on serval occasions and self harms most days, as he cannot take the feelings and emotional scars it has left him with. We are under many different agencies to get him the help that he needs. He is under a lot of mental health teams but unfortunately the waiting lists are so long and we are looking at private therapists as he is desperate need.
He no longer feels safe in his own home, he is triggered daily in his own home, although his dad has passed away he no longer feels safe here. We have been told his home is triggering him daily. Our only option is to move house and give Ben and us all a fresh start and hope to build and recover from his ordeal. We are hoping with moving and therapies we can get him back to feeling some sort of normality. We can get him back on track, because at the moment he is just a shell of a person. He is not eating, not sleeping and he just cannot stay focused. He is deeply depressed and just wants to end his life and be out of pain.
I am absolutely riddled with guilt daily and wish i had been stronger for my children and stood up to their dad, and the guilt will never leave me. I am just ashamed i allowed that man to do this to me and them.
We are currently renting our house at the moment, but we need to be looking for a 4 bedroom house, somewhere ben has his own space, his own room and some safety. To rent a 4 bedroom house its nearly double our rent at the moment. We would like to stay in our area as we are getting the support for Ben and all of our children are in school.
My husband works hard every day and does any overtime if available. Tom works days and i work evenings, i am a full-time carer to our youngest son Logan who suffers with a long list of medical conditions, so he needs one of us to be home, and with everything Ben has got going on he needs someone always to be home with him.
So we tag team, one works and the other stays home and then visa versa.
We just cannot afford to rent somewhere else at double the rent amount. We have looked into buying and with our income we would not be able to get a property in our area for the amount we would be allowed to borrow. We have also contacted housing agencies in our area and they would only be able to help us if we became homeless, then we would have to stay in a hostel until a house became available, this can be anywhere from 6 months to 3 years.
With Bens mental health and Logans health conditions this would not be good for us unfortunately.
So this is where i am asking please for your help. I was thinking if i could ask 300,000 people to pay it forward with a £1 donation we could buy ourselves a property and give Ben the happy home he so desperately needs and deserves.
Now i know what your thinking because i would be too, why? Why should i give you £1 of my hard earnt cash. Well this is where we are slightly different to everyone else.
If i get lucky enough to get 300,000 generous people to donate £1 then we will pay it forward.
There is so much lack of funding for mental heath as a whole, but especially for children and teenagers. If we was to be able to get ourselves a property, with the money we would have ordinarily used for rent we want to pay that forward. We want to use that to support families going through hard times, we want to set up a charity or something to help families and young people suffering. We want a safe space for children to be able to go to, we want a place for parents and carers to be able to have a cup of tea and speak to other parents going through the same situation and make them feel they are not alone. We want to be able to train volunteers up, so childen can access taking therapies, without having to wait months and months on end. No its not going to make a massive difference but if it helps 1 family, 1 person then its worth doing.
We are a family that loves paying things forward, we love random acts of kindness. We do a lot of random acts to help in the community, we don’t boast about them and we don’t take pictures, they are just little things we like to do to make someone else’s day a little brighter.
We would absolutely love it if you could help us, your £1 donation will literally change someones life
Thank you so much for your time and for reading this ❤
I am more than happy to speak over the phone, or via facetime/zoom, or if you are ever in Sittingbourne in kent meet for a coffee. If you wanted to get to know more about us, or our situation. I am always happy to talk 😊
I am more than happy to provide you with any proof to all of the above.
My Email is sarahcurrell11@gmail.com
Thank you again for your time, i really appreciate it, and a massive thank you if you can donate 😊
If you are able to donate we have used PayPal pool as they charge no commission or fees
https://paypal.me/pools/c/8AjQCD3LYv
Thank you 😊💓
Sarah Currell