My daughter took her own life to escape her abuser

Chloe met the man who would become her abuser at school (Picture: Sharon Holland)

Sitting by my daughter’s bedside, one question played on repeat in my mind: ‘How did we get here?’

For four generations, I’m sad to say, domestic abuse has been a plague that’s followed my family – and Chloe was its latest victim.

She had been silently suffering physically, mentally and emotionally for over a year, and now, my beautiful, outgoing girl was laying motionless in a hospital bed following a suicide attempt.

‘How did we get here?’ I knew the answer. She felt it was her only way out. 

According to research, included in a new report by the Woman’s Trust, at least two women a week are dying by domestic-abuse related suicide, and devastatingly, in March 2023, Chloe became one of those women. We must do more to eradicate this silent killer.

Chloe met the man who would become her abuser at school. But I only learned of his existence after he tried to add me as a friend on Facebook when she was 20.

‘Do you know who this is?’ I asked her. ‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘He’s a weirdo, just ignore him.’

I got a nagging feeling that this was only just the beginning of his abuse (Picture: Sharon Holland)

So you can imagine my surprise when, just two years later in May 2022, she announced to me that they were now in a relationship and had been since the previous December.

It wasn’t unusual for Chloe to be cagey about her relationships, she’d always liked to keep things private, but that night I think I discovered the real reason why…

‘He’s just slapped me.’ She said, sniffing, over the phone. I didn’t get a chance to ask any questions though as the line abruptly went dead.

Knowing he was likely behind the dropped call, I wanted to phone the police but, as I didn’t know where they were, all I could do was imagine what happened next.

When Chloe called me back 24 hours later, she brushed the whole thing off. ‘It’s nothing. We were drinking. We always argue when we drink,’ she said, as if that excused anything. 

As someone who grew up around domestic abuse, and who had experienced it first hand in her own relationships, my heart sank and I got a nagging feeling that this was only just the beginning of his abuse.

She even stopped turning up for her scheduled supervised visits with her son (Picture: Sharon Holland)

Sadly, I was right, and over the next few months I watched helplessly as this man slowly chipped away at her.

She stopped dressing the way she wanted because he insisted he liked it better when she ‘covered up’ and she became more isolated from her friends. 

She even stopped turning up for her scheduled supervised visits with her son – who lives with me. Sometimes she made excuses, others it was because she had a black eye or some injury, which meant social services literally couldn’t let her see him.

Naturally, I tried on several occasions to talk to her about all this, tried to get a sense of what was really going on behind closed doors and how best to help her. But when I did, she’d either clam up or get annoyed at me.

Then, in August 2022, Chloe sent me a picture of her with another black eye and a message that read: ‘I’ve left him now.’ I’m not ashamed to say that I let out an audible sigh of relief.

He threw a brick through a window and when she went out to confront him, he hit her again (Picture: Sharon Holland)

With him out of her life, Chloe was able to get a place in a women’s hostel in a new city and start over and soon, she began looking and behaving like her old self. She was happy and I felt we’d finally turned a corner.

However, that nagging feeling still remained and a month or so later, be it out of concern or curiosity, I found myself scrolling through his profile on Facebook. I learned that his nan had died and, before I even thought about it, I repeated this information to Chloe.

While I urged her not to reach back out to him, she, of course, ignored me and posted a heart on his status. I thought that was it, but then from October onwards, things started to go wrong for her again…

In November, Chloe was kicked out of the hostel. When I asked why she said he’d ‘found her’. He threw a brick through a window and when she went out to confront him, he hit her again, leaving her with a head injury and needing to go to hospital.

For the safety of the other women staying there, she was asked to leave, which left her with no choice but to move to a hotel where, sadly, the same thing happened again. He ‘tracked her down’, assaulted her and then she was asked to leave.

He gave her another black eye right before Christmas – causing the visit with her son to be cancelled – but I was confused as to how as I believed she’d been avoiding him deliberately.

At first, she told me she’d ‘bumped into him’, but when I pressed her on the matter she eventually confessed she’d been in the area he lived on purpose. 

Chloe had reached breaking point though, leading her to attempt to take her life three times (Picture: Sharon Holland)

I was so cross with her for putting herself in danger like that, unnecessarily. She just needed to walk away, she’d done it before.

It took a few weeks but eventually she did cut him off again. 

I thought that was finally it, that she’d now wash her hands of him for good. However, his hold on her seemed impossible to break and despite him constantly texting and taunting her with nasty messages, Chloe continued to see him in secret – something which caused a rift between her and her sister, Madison.

By January, Chloe had reached breaking point though, leading her to attempt to take her life three times.

On two occasions she was found or stopped just in time by members of the public or friends and family. But on February 1 2023, we were all too late.

It took the police 20 minutes to find her, and when they did, one of them had to resuscitate her on the scene.

From there she’d been rushed to hospital where she was put on life support and, at her bedside the next morning, her consultant told us that there was only a 5% chance she’d come back from this. I was devastated, heartbroken.

Over the next month I spent almost every waking moment by her bed. 

I watched as doctors ran test after test on her. The rise and fall of her chest as the machines helped her breathe became almost hypnotic. And, as I say, all I kept thinking was ‘how did we get here?’

There was only one answer though: He had pushed her to breaking point. His abuse, his control over her made her feel she had no other way out.

He may not have pulled a trigger or anything like that, but he killed her. And yet there was no way to convict him of that.

Police assured me that they would do all they could to secure a conviction though, and they’d be able to do just that with Chloe’s help as, unbeknownst to me, two weeks prior to her suicide attempt, she had given a two hour video statement to police. My brave girl.

Because of that, and the overwhelming picture and text evidence she gave them, police were eventually able to arrest and charge Marc Masterton with coercive and controlling behaviour.

Chloe’s abuser was jailed for 41 months for coercive and controlling behaviour (Picture: Sharon Holland)

While I wanted to celebrate this minor victory, on Monday March 6, Chloe was taken off life support and slowly, painfully, slipped away. I was utterly heartbroken, yet, I wouldn’t allow myself to grieve until justice was done.

During the court case, we learned that, not only had he controlled her appearance, who she spoke to and committed a host of assaults, on numerous occasions he was the one telling Chloe to take her own life.

On one occasion, following an assault on her with a dumbbell, he handed her a knife and ordered her to harm herself. And during the attack in the hotel he actually said: ‘Say goodbye to your son’.

Thankfully, in October 2023, Chloe’s abuser was jailed for 41 months for coercive and controlling behaviour but I will forever be scarred by the details we heard and the thought of what he put my darling daughter through.

Since then he has also been given a further three years and seven months in prison for the same offence against another partner.

While I’m glad he’s behind bars – and that there are now public records of the kind of ‘man’ he is and what he is capable of – it’s not enough.

I suspect Chloe felt her only other options were kill or be killed. She should not have felt she had only one way to escape, yet I’ve since learned that many women feel that way.

Currently, half of all suicide attempts by women are linked to domestic abuse so we have to find a way to change that. That’s why I welcome the news that the Woman’s Trust is calling on national and local governments to start prioritising and funding specialist and long-term mental health services specifically for survivors in order to address this significant, but largely invisible killer of women. 

I’ve seen first hand the consequences for those who are being denied potentially lifesaving support so I know more needs to be done to support vulnerable people in, or who have experienced, abusive relationships.

Perhaps if this help existed already, Chloe would still be here. I’d still have my daughter and my grandson would still have his mum. Instead, there’ll always be a part of our family, a part of our hearts, that is missing.

As Told To Emma Rossiter

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing [email protected]. 

Share your views in the comments below.