***FREE GUIDE***Want to know more about sexual consent, abuse or deal with triggers, check out these leaflets or speak to someone that can help from the contact list.
This publication helps you recognise,
Warning signs and red flags
Sexual abuse a...
Helen's story of abuse in The Archers reminds me of my own
By
HELEN WALMSLEY-JOHNSON
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
It's hard to listen to Rob Titchener controlling Helen on The Archers. But a new real-life piece of legislation will hopefully make a difference for women like her - and me.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Question: at what point would you pack your bags and leave your partner?
Would it be when you notice the occasional couple of thousand missing from the joint bank account he persuaded you was a good idea (although he walked out of his job before Christmas and remains unemployed)? Would it be when you have your card rejected at the supermarket because he's emptied your joint account without telling you and bought a motorbike? Would you leave when he persuades you that it's not safe for you to drive because you're pregnant and a woman? Or would you leave when he pins you against the wall by your throat and takes your car keys off you by force? Would you leave because you're pregnant against your will with a child conceived during an act of marital rape (you think but you can't really remember because you were drunk/drugged at the time)? Or would you go when you didn't leave a friend's house immediately he told you to and when you got home he dragged you down the hall by your hair and threw you across the sitting room? What about when people start telling you that you look pale/thin/terrible or start noticing your bruised neck/arms/face? Would you leave then?
Surely all the above would make you stop and think? When you read it in black and white it looks appalling, but the main reason I ask is because of Radio 4's The Archers and the on-going abuse of Helen at the hands of her married-in-haste-repenting-at-leisure husband Rob Titchener. This man is a life-draining tick, a parasite in most senses of the word and so vivid you have to keep reminding yourself that he's not real.
Don't just take my word for it: type #thearchers into the Twitter search bar on any day he's been up to his tricks and you'll find it ablaze with exhortations for Helen to take her child and leave the bastard. The Archers' listening audience are as one. We are baffled and long for his comeuppance. We will not be satisfied until this horrible man is exposed as the manipulative and controlling bully he is, until he suffers humiliation to the max and then (scriptwriters take note please) meets a gruesome end via something sharp and pointy in the agricultural machinery line. We have spoken.
