‘I didn’t even know I had PTSD until my work coach helped me’

A mother-of-three shared her harrowing journey of surviving an abusive relationship that almost killed her.

Sandra Eshemokai Odufaderin, 42, talked about escaping her violent marriage with her children and advocating for herself despite mental health struggles and PTSD.

Sandra, who lives in north London, endured ’14 years in an abusive marriage’ and coercive control which started back in Nigeria.

Sandra said she was regularly beaten. During the lockdown, her ex-husband broke her arm with a piece of wood. When she went to the local police, she was told she was ‘being rude, a woman should respect her husband,’ she told Metro.

Then three years ago, at the behest of her husband, the family moved to the UK – something that Sandra didn’t want to do as she was ‘already looking for a way out of the marriage’ but she felt forced to follow him.

She said: ‘In Nigeria, I was working in the media but he kept taking my money.

‘When we got to the UK it became even worse because everything relied on him. I was dependent on him.

‘I was working seven days a week. I made about £3,000 per month which I would transfer to him. There was no bed in my room, I was sleeping on the floor. He used the money I gave him to furnish a house for his mistress.

‘I didn’t even know my rights in the UK.’

Sandra was pushed to a corner and she attempted to take her own life. Her children were not safe from abuse either.

Despite all the suffering, Sandra kept on working night shifts, but she was ‘crying 24/7.’

‘I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know who could help me. My mother told me to stay in the marriage. I felt like without him I was going to die, because I had left my job in Nigeria and he said he was going to deport me – I was on his visa.

‘What kind of life was I living for 14 years?’

One day one of her colleagues heard her cry in the bathroom and she poured everything out – a turning point in her journey to freedom as her colleague told her how she could get help in the UK.

Later, her daughter’s school alerted the authorities after discovering fresh bruises on the girl’s body during a PE class.

Her children were taken away temporarily by the social service. But it was her brave children who told the authorities that their mother was being abused too as Sandra had been too scared to speak out and she felt like it was her fault the children were taken away.

Sandra feared her husband was going to ‘find and kill me,’ but she was eventually moved to a Home Office emergency accommodation.

But more than a decade of abuse had left its mark and Sandra was diagnosed with depression which made her unable to work.

‘That was the turning point for me’

Sandra turned to a local food bank where she connected with a member of staff who took her number to put her in touch with her dedicated work coach, Abigail Joseph-Spence.

‘That was the turning point for me,’ Sandra, who is now divorced from her abuser, said.

Sandra didn’t realise until getting support that she was suffering from PTSD as she had been in survival mode for so long.

Sandra’s situation was ‘one of the more extreme cases’ Abigail has seen during her career, she told Metro. It involved complex safeguarding and housing issues to ‘ensure you were safe and the kids were safe as well.’

Sandra explained how the pair formed a close bond and Abigail encouraged and told her she could picture her ‘buying a house’ and ‘becoming your own boss’ and getting a job despite the difficulties.

A week ago, Sandra celebrated moving to her new place and she has been working in a school after Abigail helped her to find the position.

‘I don’t know what came over her to love me and help me so fast,’ Sandra said, praising her work coach for ‘not wasting any time’ with her case.

‘I’m free now,’ she added.

Sandra spoke to Metro after opening up about her situation to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Liz Kendall, and Wes Streeting, the Secretary of State of Health, at the North Central London WorkWell centre in Islington yesterday.

The ministers visited the support hub to hear about the WorkWell programme and to discuss how local joint programmes and early health interventions are helping people to stay in and get back to work.

Kendall told Metro it was ‘heartbreaking and inspiring’ to hear the stories of people involved with the programme.

‘It shows that with the right support people who fell into a black hole can actually start to emerge and make a better life for themselves and their families.’

She argued that people struggling with mental health problems ‘in hugely different circumstances’ can be helped to ‘get into work and stay in work’ by bringing together the NHS services, work support, counselling and physiotherapy.

‘And that’s what the plan to Get Britain Working is all about when we publish it,’ Kendall said.

When Kendall asked about what makes the new Labour government’s approach different to the Tories, Kendall said: ‘Anything that the previous government did was too small, too piecemeal, too fragmented and it did not come alongside the big reforms we also need at our job centres.’

She said the ‘way our job centres work’ needs to change and that ‘brilliant work coaches’ need a lot more than ’10 minute sessions.’

Kendall also highlighted the need for a ‘joint up service’ that would bring work and health support together as ‘we have got to stop seeing all of these things separately.’

Streeting said he has ‘terrible memories as a child going to a DSS office with my mum – sorry, Liz.’

One job seeker told she felt she got ‘passed around’ between different people at the job centre before being paired more permanently.

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