In 2014 I sat down with Terri-Louise Graham, a brave young mum from Co Derry who wanted to share her story of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her partner Greg Logue.
She had never spoken about her ordeal publicly before and wanted to speak out in the hope it would help other women get out of abusive relationships.
Since it was published Terri-Louise has gone on to be a voice for domestic violence victims in the north of Ireland and just recently participated in a BBC show on the subject.
I’ve decided to repost the original article as official figures show domestic abuse tends to get worse at Christmas. If Terri-Louise can get out of a relationship like this, anyone can.
If you or anyone you know would like to share their own experience of domestic violence with me, my email is: patriciadevlin1986@gmail.com
By Patricia Devlin
THIS is the brave mother-of-three who today waives her right to anonymity to reveal the years of physical and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her cowardly ex-partner.
Terri-Louise Graham, 30, was subjected to depraved sexual attacks and vicious beatings by thug Greg Deyzel Logue who has been branded “violent, jealous and vengeful” by a judge.
The 33-year-old’s catalogue of violence included:
* ripping her clothes off with a knife and forcing her to walk half-naked down the street in front of strangers;
* tying a clothes line around her neck and beating her black and blue;
* smashing a TV over her head;
* beating her with a vodka bottle;
* and biting her face, arms and legs.
Shamed Logue from Derry pleaded guilty to 14 different attacks on her — including eight of indecent assault — between 2008 and 2011.
The bully is already serving a seven-year sentence for a series of other attacks on the pretty single mum during their traumatic five year relationship.
“It was June 2008 when I got my first beating and I was three months pregnant,” Terri-Louise told Sunday Life.
“He bit my face, my legs, my arms and he left me with black eyes. He beat me up and down the street until I was covered in blood.”
“The next day he said he was so sorry — he cried and begged. He had me convinced that he would never do it again. And he didn’t, for a while.”
HUMILIATING
Nine months later Terri-Louise suffered the next beating and the first of a series of humiliating sex attacks by Logue.
“We were at this taxi depot after a night out and there was this girl sitting across from us,” she said.
“He kept on commenting on her breasts, and making remarks, so I just said to him, ‘Could you just have a bit of respect for me?’
“The taxi dropped us off and on the way up to the house he was just so horrible. He kept calling me a slut, a whore, a tramp. Then he grabbed me and pushed me across a set of railings.”
Here Logue launched a degrading sexual assault on his partner.
“He didn’t finish properly, so he forced me into the house, up the stairs and did it again in the bedroom.
“I was in agony. I begged him to stop. I was crying. But he went on.”
In another attack, the brute reigned blows on the defence-less young mum as she slept.
“I remember being woken up with this huge pain in my chest. I looked up and he was standing over me, punching me,” said Terri-Louise.
“He was screaming at me saying that I should have stayed up and waited for him while he was out at the bar, that he could’ve been dead and that I didn’t care about him.
RELENTLESS
“He beat me around that bedroom until I could hardly stand.”
As her children slept, Terri-Louise was again subjected to a brutal and relentless sex attack, too disturbing to print.
But she says the most horrific incident of all was when Logue “flipped” and attacked her just metres from her mother’s home.
“I could see my mummy’s bedroom window and I couldn’t even make a noise,” she said. I knew then that it was getting worse, that it would never get better.”
After one last brutal beating from evil Logue she gained the courage to leave him.
In a fit of rage he almost strangled her after tying a clothes line around her neck and beating her black and blue.
She said: “It was the 13th of July 2011 and I was in Altnagelvin Hospital and the doctors wouldn’t let me see my face for three days. He left me looking like the elephant woman.”
With the help of Women’s Aid and the police, Terri-Louise made an official complaint against the father of her two children. He was arrested and refused bail immediately, and was sentenced for several physical assaults against her in March last year. During that case at Derry Crown Court he admitted hitting Terri-Louise with a vodka bottle, smashing her head against a tree, kicking and punching her on the head and face as she sat on a toilet and smashing a TV set over her head.
It was also revealed how Terri-Louise was forced to walk down the street, in front of members of the public, half-naked, after Logue ripped off her clothes with a pen knife.
Logue has now admitted to the degrading sex attacks he launched on his former partner, along with six charges of common assault. Seven charges of rape and one charge of making threats to kill, which Logue had pleaded not guilty to, were left on the books.
“My police statement was 19 pages long,” she said.
“And I realise now that if I had had the courage to stop it the first time he hit me, I wouldn’t have gone through everything else.”
The young mum, who hopes to start a psychology degree in the near future, urges anyone in an abusive relationship to seek help.
“It is the most horrendous, horrific, soul destroying experience — but you can move on.
PAIN
“The fact that the person you love so much can cause you so much pain, that you wouldn’t do a thing to hurt them, but they will hurt you. That its okay for them to destroy your life.
“They promise that it won’t happen again but it will. It was nine months before Greg touched me again, but he did. Are these beatings worth the lovely times?” Terri-Louise, who still gets flashbacks of the attacks, added: “If you are in an abusive relationship you need to tell someone, even just a friend.
“The Domestic Violence helpline is also free. Go to a payphone, or somewhere where you can talk to them.”
The young mum added: “I’m still trying to get myself back together.
“I tried to go back to uni, but I had to leave. It was too soon. But I will go back and I get the degree I dreamed off. He won’t stop me any more.
“I’m going to make my babies so proud of their mummy they will not care who their daddy is.”
Terri-Louise bravely faced her monster ex at Laganside Crown Court last year where he admitted to 14 separate charges of physical and sexual violence against her.
Sentencing was originally adjourned until February after a judge ordered psychological reports because a probation report had raised a number of issues, including questions about how dangerous violent Logue is to the general public.
However, after numerous adjournments since, Logue has yet to be sentenced. Terri-Louise said: “I’ll be looking forward to the sentencing because then it’s over — after that, I won’t have to think of him again.”
*** Greg Logue was sentenced to three years in prison.
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Patricia Devlin 