A decade after she met her now estranged husband, *Simon, *Faye struggles to comprehend just how he was able to control her from the very beginning.
Faye and Simon would go on to have three children together, with Faye having left her husband for extended periods of time on several occasions – and pressed charges against him for physical violence more than once.
In the end, however, Simon was never punished, and Faye would be lured back with threats and guilt.
After a decade of abuse and coercive control – and a horrifying incident where Simon deliberately drove heavily intoxicated with the children in the car – Faye could take no more.
While Simon was away from the house, she spent all the money she had hidden to flee with all three kids from the US to Sydney, where her only family members were now living.
“When we landed, I finally stopped shaking and the relief was overwhelming,” Faye remembers.
Tragically, Faye’s newfound freedom for her and the children was cruelly short lived.
Under the Hague Convention, an international law that allows courts to order a child’s physical return to their country of birth or residence, Simon petitioned for his children to be sent back to him in the US.
Despite Faye providing the court with no less than 150 statements of abuse – and information that Simon had refused to ever care for his offspring alone – the children were ordered back to the US.
The memory of her eldest child being forced into the car by Simon on the last day she would see them causes the loving mother heart-wrenching pain.
“He wouldn’t go to the car and started shaking and vomiting, he begged not to go with his dad,” Faye says emotionally.
It has been six months since Faye lost her children, and she has so far remained resolute in remaining in Australia – where she is not under Simon’s control and is employed full time while she prepares another legal battle for the return of her beloved kids.
“I try to call them every day but I’ve spoken with them three times in that whole time and they are crying every time wanting to come back to me,” she cries.
Source: ‘My husband assaulted me countless times – now he’s taken my kids away’ | Kidspot