A Dumbarton woman whose violent ex-husband was sentenced following a 17-year campaign of domestic abuse has bravely spoken out as she urged other victims to speak up.
Sharon McCallion is encouraging women not to suffer in silence as figures released last week showed West Dunbartonshire has the second worst rate of domestic abuse in the country.
Two weeks ago, her ex-husband Bruce Summers was sentenced at Dumbarton Sheriff Court after pleading guilty to one charge of striking her on the head, throwing her towards a set of stairs, and pushing her on the body, repeatedly, over a period of almost 18 years.
The 47-year-old admitted the attacks, which took place at addresses in Dumbarton and Kilmarnock between January 2002 and November 2019 and was sentenced to a community payback order with 150 hours of work on November 22.
He was also ordered not to contact Sharon, with a three-year non-harassment order imposed.
Courageously speaking to the Lennox from her Dumbarton home, Sharon told how she plucked up the courage to leave him after the tragic death of her 23-year-old daughter Samantha in 2019.
Sharon, 45, said: “The attacks would happen once a week or fortnight.
“A number of occasions when he’d be arguing with me, he’d push me and keep going. He’d punch me in the stomach. There didn’t even really need to be a reason.
“It could be something simple.
“He’d do things to me and then shout ‘Sharon, wisen up. Stop doing that’ because the kids were in the room.
“Two of Samantha’s friends used to come round on a regular basis and they’d be upstairs playing and if we started arguing, he would want to shout to make it look as though it was me.
“He’d open all the windows and go ‘Sharon, are you gonna chuck it’? And he’d be pushing me and doing things to try and make it out it was me.
“He’d shout and say ‘have you had too much to drink’? And I hadn’t even had a drink.”
Sharon was just 16 when they became a couple and told how alarm bells began ringing shortly after they married around six months later.
She said as the years went on things then escalated to the point where Summers would physically attack her on a frequent basis.
“The kids saw it a number of times. They’d see me lying on the floor crying because he’d kicked me or punched me.
“I had bruises and black eyes but I’d cover them up.
“I didn’t tell anybody. I was too embarrassed to tell anybody because I knew they’d tell me to leave him.”
The couple had two children together and Sharon feared losing them, explaining: “He’d say ‘if you leave me, I’ll get the kids taken off you. You can’t leave with the kids’.
“I wanted to leave on a number of occasions. But he scared me and I thought if I was to leave and take my kids he would have made my life difficult and my kids’ lives difficult.
“He’d make out that everybody would fall out with me and I’d have nobody and wouldn’t be able to cope. I didn’t know how to deal with things and I was useless.
“The only thing that got me through was my son and daughter. When they were in school I hated going back to the house so I’d go to Clydebank and wander about or pop up to Glasgow.
“When I’d come in with the kids later on, he’d go ‘Clydebank today’? I’d say ‘why, who told you’?
“He’d go ‘it doesn’t matter, there’s folk out there watching you. I’ll always find out’. He did that for years.”
Sharon said she made up her mind to leave on numerous occasions and even packed a bag but couldn’t go through with it.
In 2019, while living with Summers in Kilmarnock, she decided once and for all she was going to leave but kept it a secret from everyone.
“I never wanted to move away from Dumbarton, where my daughter Samantha lived, but felt manipulated to move”, she explained.
“I was in such a bad place. I wanted to be near my daughter and my grandson.
“She needed her mother around her to help.
“She was a very mixed up young girl and had an eating disorder.
“When I moved to Kilmarnock, it took me a year-and-a-half to build my confidence up to leave him.
“I would get on the bus to Dumbarton to visit my daughter and started taking clothes and small amounts of money up and leaving it at my dad’s.
“I did that for about six months.”
Just before making the move, Sharon’s world was turned upside down when she received a devastating phonecall telling her Samantha was gravely ill after taking an overdose.
The mum-of-three was rushed to the Royal Alexandra Hospital but sadly died a short time later on September 21, 2019.
Sharon tearfully added: “I don’t believe she wanted to end her life. It was a cry for help.
“I told him before the funeral that I was leaving and I said ‘you’re not going to stop me’.
“It’s horrible to think it took a death for me to walk.”
Shortly after the funeral, Sharon contacted police and charges were later brought against Summers.
As well as the charge he pled guilty to, Summers, of Church Lane in Kilmarnock, denied a second charge accusing him of being aggressive, shouting, swearing and making offensive comments to Sharon over the same period, which was accepted by the Crown.
Making a plea to other victims of domestic abuse, Sharon has urged others not to suffer in silence.
She added: “Speak to someone. It’s so important.
“I put up with it for most of my life and I sit and think about how different things could have been. I hate him for everything he did.
“Nobody should put up with abuse.”
