The DJ and I met in Australia when he was on tour 20 years ago. I left my home and moved to Germany to be with him and to make my career in the music industry. I am primarily a singer and I was producing my own music when we met. The first 5 years were like a dream, traveling all over the world and falling in love with a difficult, very talented and successful man. I did not recognise the signs of abuse that I was experiencing at first because of the whirlwind nature of our lives and the fact that I come from an abusive family background, I was well trained in blaming myself.

Once I became pregnant with our daughter, things became increasingly worse for me. His verbal abuse and threats became more extreme. If I stood up for myself he would punish me by threatening to take our daughter away from me and completely shutting me out of our studio so that I couldn’t work. He would criticise my voice, my musicality, my production skills as well as my appearance, how I dressed, how I spoke, what I spoke about. He would then dig himself into a creative and emotional hole, ask me to forgive him and to produce music with him again. This cycle repeated around and around in circles for 15 years. He posted on Instagram a few months ago that he has not been a good man to me. This is true and understandably understated. He has raped me multiple times while I was sleeping. I am not the only woman that he has done this to. He has physically threatened me. He confessed to me that he has sexually assaulted three other women before and during our 20 year relationship and he has sexually harassed countless women on stage and backstage while touring all over the world. Even worse than the sexual abuse and threats of physical violence was the insidious emotional and psychological abuse. The constant undermining, criticising, saying deeply hurtful things and then denying having said them, taking traumatic experiences that I have confided in him and using them to hurt me. Making plans and commitments with me and then changing his mind without telling me and accusing me of trying to control him when I reminded him of what we had agreed to. Taking tiny threads of truth and weaving them into lies to justify his choices, abusive behaviours and betrayals.

I feel ashamed that I have let myself live this way for so long, that I have not spoken out before now. I was afraid of the consequences that reporting him or leaving him would have on me and our daughter. I am deeply grateful for the support of my therapist and the women and men in my life that have helped me to see that no one should ever be treated the way that he has treated me. Nothing I have ever said or done could justify what he has done to me. I am breaking my silence because it is my silence that has allowed his behaviour to go on for so long and it is our collective silence that perpetuates the covering up of abusive behaviour.