Sandra Eshemokai Odufaderin (right) with work coach Abigail Joseph-Spence (Picture: w8 Media/Metro.co.uk)
A mother-of-three shared her harrowing journey of surviving an abusive relationship that almost killed her.
Sandra Eshemokai Odufaderin, 42, talked about escaping her violent marriage with her children and advocating for herself despite mental health struggles and PTSD.
Sandra, who lives in north London, endured ’14 years in an abusive marriage’ and coercive control which started back in Nigeria.
Sandra said she was regularly beaten. During the lockdown, her ex-husband broke her arm with a piece of wood. When she went to the local police, she was told she was ‘being rude, a woman should respect her husband,’ she told Metro.
Sandra faced physical and financial abuse in her 14-year marriage (Picture: w8 Media/Metro.co.uk)
Then three years ago, at the behest of her husband, the family moved to the UK – something that Sandra didn’t want to do as she was ‘already looking for a way out of the marriage’ but she felt forced to follow him.
She said: ‘In Nigeria, I was working in the media but he kept taking my money.
‘When we got to the UK it became even worse because everything relied on him. I was dependent on him.
‘I was working seven days a week. I made about £3,000 per month which I would transfer to him. There was no bed in my room, I was sleeping on the floor. He used the money I gave him to furnish a house for his mistress.
‘I didn’t even know my rights in the UK.’
Sandra was pushed to a corner and she attempted to take her own life. Her children were not safe from abuse either.
Despite all the suffering, Sandra kept on working night shifts, but she was ‘crying 24/7.’
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‘I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know who could help me. My mother told me to stay in the marriage. I felt like without him I was going to die, because I had left my job in Nigeria and he said he was going to deport me – I was on his visa.
‘What kind of life was I living for 14 years?’
One day one of her colleagues heard her cry in the bathroom and she poured everything out – a turning point in her journey to freedom as her colleague told her how she could get help in the UK.
Later, her daughter’s school alerted the authorities after discovering fresh bruises on the girl’s body during a PE class.
Her children were taken away temporarily by the social service. But it was her brave children who told the authorities that their mother was being abused too as …read more
Source:: Metro
