Aimee southern · @southern_aimee
30th Apr 2021 from TwitLonger
My Story
I’ve never been in the situation to write one of these so I’m going to just issue a Trigger Warning for everyone about the abuse I’ve been dealing with for a year by someone in the R6 Community who has a lot of influence.
I knew this person outside of the Siege community as he was my best friend for 4/5 years. I told him everything about myself and felt really comfortable in his presence and like he would never ever hurt me.
We started dating when he came back from an event in Japan in November 2019, he was staying at my flat and spending weeks at a time with me. He convinced me to move out of that flat and move back home with my parents, and this was closer to him. Everything was great and I thought that we were really happy. I helped him pack and prepare for his next trip to Canada in January 2020 and even waited up to try and FaceTime him whilst he was away with no success. I’ve now found out, this was because he was cheating on me from 2am onwards. This was a few months into our relationship. I didn’t know at the time he’d been cheating and I’d waited at his house all day for his return home after the event; as soon as saw me he was cold and different with me. He was shouting at me constantly and even when I arranged for nights out for us with my friends, he would drag me off to one side to scream at me until I was a crying mess and then drag me into a taxi home. He then also started to go through my phone when I was asleep and kick off about the friends I had that were boys.
February 2020 he decided to take me to Tenerife as a late Valentine’s Day present. We ordered a hire car over there and on our drive to the hotel, he screamed at me for 30 minutes for not knowing or being able to read and speak Spanish. This got progressively worse over the week with him trying to force me to have sex with him after him repeatedly yelling at me and when I refused or said I wasn’t comfortable he would tell me “what the fuck is wrong with you? I’ve done all this for you and you’re not grateful at all!” I felt completely isolated and like I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on. There was one sole incident where he shouted at me constantly for two days to the point where I was silent and just didn’t dare say anything. This resulted in him screaming at me back at the hotel and I locked myself in the bathroom and contemplated taking my life for 30 minutes. He never checked on me once, he played Lego Star Wars on his iPad.
Coming back from this holiday, I had a night out in a pub with my friends without him present. I received horrible Snapchat’s off him through that evening of him calling me stupid, delusional, selfish and many other things. As I was upset with the way he was treating me but unable to tell anyone, I decided to get very drunk instead. This resulted in my friends contacting him to come and get me as the state I was in was horrendous; when he arrived he screamed at me as soon as we got out of the parking for the pub. I was begging him to stop shouting at me and was crying non-stop at the things he was saying to me; he was driving recklessly and knew he was making me anxious. I decided to try and get out the moving car to get away from him, to which he grabbed me by the arm violently and refused to let go of my arm until we got back to his address; my flat was also right next door to this pub so the fact he took me to his instead shows how he wanted me alone and away from even my flat mate. He shook me and screamed at me the entire drive to his and left a massive bruise on my arm with small cuts from his nails. I’d banged my head whilst at the pub and had a very large bump across my skull and was violently throwing up; I asked to go to the hospital to check these bumps out and to make sure I didn’t need my stomach pumped from too much alcohol etc. He refused to take me, continued to shout at me the whole day and treat me coldly because he wanted me to just go to his, and not see my friends.
This sudden change in him after Canada made so much sense after I found out at the beginning of April 2020 that he’d been sending explicit messages and images to underage girls. The age for these messages is 18+ in the UK and I can confirm that these girls were 16 and he fully knew that as well. I found out last night that he’d been sending these messages since we’d first got together and that he’d been messaging at least 12 different girls that I know about now. At the time, I only knew of 1 and it was enough for me to end the relationship. I told him this and he wouldn’t accept it. He messaged me constantly telling me how he would change, he’d never treat me badly again and that he’d never cheat again etc. I ignored it, I tried to move on instead. I tried to push the friends route again for us as that was obviously what we were better at.
He didn’t want the friends route. He spent months telling me there was only me and no one else; his most extreme was him telling me “I can’t live without you” and similar things like that that implied he would seriously hurt himself because I broke up with him, something that obviously didn’t sit well with me and made me feel guilty. At this point I gave in to his words and trusted that he’d changed his ways now. I was very wrong.
As he’d found out I’d been trying to move on, he would switch his behaviours towards me at least 4 times a day. So when I did everything he wanted, he’d be lovely and sweet with me; when I stood up for myself or I had other plans with family or friends, he would be horrible and nasty again. He’d call me so many horrible things and describe me as “worthless” or “delusional” or a “coward” for not doing what he wanted. I stopped seeing and speaking to my friends for a long period of time because that was what he wanted. I deleted Snapchat for him and even moved into his house because he wanted me to.
In full disclosure we did go through a very personal event at that time as well, making the relationship even harder for us to go through. Through this difficult time, I put my body through a lot of pain - to which he ignored and didn’t support me through at all. He tried to pressure me into sleeping with him when I medically couldn’t and he knew this too. He’d shout at me for not engaging in any sexual activity and made me feel worthless and crap about myself. He physically dragged me to the floor by my wrists in an attempt to stop me from leaving him one night and again tore down my confidence with the things he called me. I told two of my best friends in an Instagram picture message and one of them picked me up the following day - I do drive but he had full control of my keys so that he could move my car at this point.
This was towards the end of July 2020 when I stayed at my friends flat, originally for a sleepover. We spoke about everything that had been going on for me regarding the situation. He knew I was at this flat at the time and proceeded to go out, get drunk and then drive to this flat to “save me”. He refused to leave the flat, demanded to come inside when there was no room for him, when he was told this he insisted on trying to drive us home drunk. I refused and even told him to just sleep it off in his car that night rather than putting himself and others in danger. My friends helped to get me physically out of his house.
During this time, I again tried to move on but kept in contact with him due to him using our friendship as an excuse and saying I was “special to him” and “too important to his life” for me to leave. We had several attempts at trying to make this work, but every time I found out he’d cheated on me or he’d physically hurt me.
The most recent of these are two separate incidents. I’ve moved into a new flat and he did help me move in. At the same time he left t-shirts at my place and told me he really wanted to make things work this time. Two weeks ago, he was staying at my flat and at 1am he started screaming and shouting at me again over some pants that we’re definitely not my size. This resulted in him storming out of the flat and driving off. The next day he turned up unannounced at my flat and tried to just walk in the door. I waited 30 minutes before leaving my flat to go out, he was still there outside the flat demanding I speak with him. This was the same situation as it has been for a year, he wanted me to change and get everyone out my life to fix things with him.
The next incident was on Tuesday, he was demanding for his stuff back that he’d left in the flat. I didn’t have a key and I sure as hell wasn’t putting my friend through that situation. I agreed to speak to him outside to which he snatched my phone and demanded I speak with him in the car. He then proceeded to go through my phone and didn’t like that I was trying to move on with my life again. When I tried to get my phone back, he physically attacked me and wouldn’t let me leave the car until I had a friend come. He wanted me to completely cut ties with the person I was trying to move on with and any friends that didn’t like him because of his actions.
I’ve found out so much these last few days and that what I’ve gone through this past year has been mental and physical torture for me. I’ve tried to physically get away from that situation; I’ve blocked him on 2 Facebook accounts, 3 Twitter accounts, countless other social media platforms and 2 mobile numbers too. I know that he’s done this in the past before to so many other girls who have also supplied me their proof too. I’ve tried to help this boy out and I even asked his family for his help with anger management classes or something just to help control his temper in some way; nothing ever came about this. I’m worried for anyone else that this could happen to but I also want to raise awareness on the situation and treatment and actions of this person.