A Labour MP has spoken for the first time about being in a controlling relationship, as she said the law must understand “emotional abuse is a very real thing”.
Shadow victims minister Anna McMorrin told how she had to imagine she was Beyonce to summon the strength to finally walk out on the relationship, which she said had left her questioning what was true and what was fake.
She told Gloria de Piero in an interview on GB News that when she first entered into the relationship, she was “at a weak point in my life” and the man “seemed to be giving me the support and the love initially”.
But the Cardiff North MP said: “It turned quickly, within a few months, to more of a controlling relationship, and that became very difficult.”
Ms McMorrin, who was elected in 2017, said her ex-partner would abuse her by “using put-downs a lot, using control of a situation, belittling me when I want to have certain opinions, telling me that I was going crazy when I tried to argue a different view, using withdrawal and silent treatment, as well, as a punishment”.
He would get angry if she was upset, rather than showing empathy, and make her question what was the truth.
She said: “You question yourself because they are constantly questioning you and criticising you, telling me I’m going mad, telling me I need mental health treatment because I lost my temper because he wound me up so much. And that becomes the norm to live with, that stress and anxiety.”
Mother-of-two Ms McMorrin said she became “trauma-bonded”, where it becomes normal to live with the trauma, and she tiptoed around trying not to upset her partner.
She said although the abuse was never physical, she wants to highlight the impact emotional abuse can have.
“As a shadow victims minister, every week most days I speak to victims. Women who are in or have been in awful abusive relationships, unimaginable circumstances, and they’re treated appallingly by the courts, by the justice system,” she said.
“It’s so important that for victims out there, the law understands that coercive emotional abuse is a very real thing that women face and take a long time to get over the trauma of it.”
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that among victims of domestic abuse, 72.6% of women said they experienced non-physical abuse such as emotional or financial abuse. In men, the figure is 57%.
Ms McMorrin, 50, said it was her friends – who “didn’t trust him at all” after seeing the behaviour – who eventually gave her the strength to leave the relationship.
She said: “I don’t understand how I stayed in this relationship. Because he had affairs that he denied completely, would absolutely deny it to me and then delete the evidence.
“Even after that I ask myself why I stayed. I don’t understand it myself, I don’t understand – why did I do that to myself and why did I do that to my children? And I don’t know that answer, quite honestly, but it took all my strength to leave.
“It absolutely did, and I think that’s the nature of the weird state that you get into when you’re in a relationship like that.”
Ms McMorrin said when she did find the strength to leave, she called a friend who told her she had to do it immediately.
“She said, ‘you’ve got to Beyonce it. Imagine you’re Beyonce, you’ve got to go in there and you’ve just got to go. Don’t worry about everything, don’t worry about your stuff, don’t worry about your things. That’s material, you’ve just got to go’. And I did, that’s what I did,” the MP said.
She said she wants other women in that situation to know it is possible to leave.
“I think what I would want any woman out there to know is that you can leave,” Ms McMorrin said.
“There are many people in these kinds of relationships, you don’t need everything in place to go. You just need to say, ‘now I need to get out’, and go.
“The other thing to remember is once you’ve gone it’s that that’s not the easy bit. It was far easier to stay, but once you’ve gone that is the hard bit.”
