Punched, stomped, strangled, threatened with a saw and subjected to humiliating sexual assault by her then-partner in an ordeal that lasted nearly 24 hours, when she finally fell asleep, she calmly walked down the stairs of their home, naked. from her socks. Stopping to put her clothes back on, to cover herself, would take a long time. While most of the doors were locked, he found the entrance to the conservatory open and ran. That was in August 2018. In December of that year, Vincent Grieve, now 33, was jailed for eight years at Preston Crown Court after pleading guilty to rape and assault occasioning actual bodily harm. Warning – this article contains imagery and descriptions of physical and sexual abuse that some may find disturbing Image: Photo: Mark Ashworth Beth, 32, is a musician, the frontwoman of rock band Beth Blade And The Beautiful Disasters, and says if it wasn’t for her music she believes she would have attempted suicide after her attack. Now, she’s gearing up to release her band’s third album, which includes many songs about what she’s been through. However, just four years after the attack, he is also preparing to release Grieve on licence. She is scared. A vague ban given then, he says, is “just a piece of paper”. As a musician with a public profile, he knows where he is, when the gig is often easy to find. But she is proud of her album and says she wants to speak out to possibly help others who may be facing similar situations, trapped in abusive relationships. “If it can help one person, then it’s worth feeling fear every time you speak,” he says. “And as time goes on, less and less. “I want people to know that they’re not alone. And that it’s okay to go through these terrible things and that they have someone — they might not have even met me — but they have someone who understands and is on their side and can just make them to feel brave enough not to have to suffer any more.” Beth met Grieve as a teenager and they rekindled their relationship in February 2018, officially becoming a couple the following month. She says she was “love bombarded” – meaning showing extreme displays of attention, affection and flattery, often seen as a manipulative tactic in abusive or coercive relationships – and made the decision to return to her hometown of Blackburn from Cardiff, where she had studied at university and had formed her band, to move in with him. The abuse began as he tried to dictate her work hours and appearance, telling her not to dye her hair when she wanted, she says. Soon, she was cut off from some of her friends. Grieve was initially violent after he drove her to a festival performance with her band and saw her hug a supporter, he says. When she got into the car to speak to him, he drove off with her for about two hours, hitting her throughout, including with a bottle. But then, she says she apologized and broke down in tears. “I just kind of gave up on myself” Image: Beth says her mates have been a great source of support. Photo: Megan Jenkins Beth covered her bruises with makeup and agreed to give him another chance. “I just kind of gave up on myself… my confidence was non-existent. I had absolutely no belief in myself and the only thing that kept me going was the band and the music, that was it. I had to do gigs because I was committed to them . I had to do the album because I had paid for it. And in fact, it’s what kept me alive. Because if he hadn’t been there, I’m absolutely certain that I would have tried to kill myself or he would have killed me eventually.” She says she was ashamed and embarrassed to talk to her family and friends about what she was going through. “I have a wonderful relationship with my parents… they raised me in a loving, wonderful home. I didn’t want to admit that I had allowed myself to get into this situation. I felt like a total failure. “ Grieve became violent again, she says, after the band won a contest to support Kiss on the annual Kiss Cruise, a cruise from Miami to the Bahamas. As he couldn’t go, she didn’t want to either. She says he threw a glass at her in a pub, in front of others, but she got away with it. another man, whom he knew, hit Grieve in retaliation. He attacked her a few days later, on a bank holiday afternoon in August 2018, as she drank rum at home, demanding to know the identity of the man who had hit him. “He started punching me in the face, headbutting me and putting his hands around my neck and squeezing me pretty tight, throwing me around, throwing me into doors.” After a few hours, he says he grabbed a chainsaw. “He said, ‘as soon as I get to the bottom of this rum bottle, I’m going to break it over your head and then I’m going to use it.’ anything else”. “I knew it was my only shot” Beth tried to escape after that, but the door was locked and she was caught. “He picked me up from behind with his arm around my neck and kept me hanging for a good, I’d say, 60 seconds. And I got to the point where I could feel like my brain was going to shut down and I was going to pass out. And I was just thinking: you have to stay awake, you have to stay awake.” The assault continued throughout the night, with Grieve headbutting her, “stomping” her and at one point biting her scalp, she says. Once the rum ran out, she says he carried her upstairs and made her take off her clothes, before beating her with a belt. That’s when he raped her, telling her she’d never been intimate with someone with an “open head wound before.” Beth says she was “paralyzed” with shock and fear. Finally, at about 6 or 7 the next morning, he fell asleep. “It was light outside. I was having this internal monologue, this conversation with myself. ‘Beth, she’s a very heavy sleeper’ – and there was a clock on the wall – ‘give it to 9 o’clock in the morning and she’s snoring deeply, can you do a run for it”. I knew it was my only shot, so I didn’t wear any clothes, just my socks, that was all. I walked calmly down the hall, calmly down the stairs. The key was missing from the front door, locked. The back door was locked. The kitchen windows were locked. But fortunately he had left the conservatory door open.” As soon as he got out, he ran bleeding. Early on a holiday Monday, there weren’t many people. “A gentleman saw me and the look of horror on his face. I tried to talk to him, but he was in such shock that I kept going. I ran for another two or three minutes, until there was a shop in And I saw that someone was standing at the cash register , two women and… at that point, my legs started to give out.” The women helped Beth, covering her and calling the police and a taxi to take her to the hospital. He says he suffered a depressed skull fracture as well as cuts and bruises from the belt and a bump. “My eyes were completely black and the inside of my mouth, where he had put his fingers in, was torn up.” “I chose to live my life” Image: The band played at the Kiss Kruise after the attack. Photo: Will Byington She saw Grieve again at his sentencing, having him in court to tell the judge how the attack had affected her. Now, he is preparing for his release. “I think it’s a risk,” he says. “What he did, and it’s about the legal terms, but he tried to kill me. To me, that’s attempted murder. And the prison sentence doesn’t fit the crime at all. It’s going to affect me for the rest of When he’s out of prison, he has to to worry about him, to take revenge, to attack me in some way… but I chose to live my life anyway.’ After the attack, Beth suffered horrific nightmares and panic attacks and continued therapy, which she says helped, as did writing poetry and lyrics about her experience. “I needed some kind of outlet to be able to channel all this pain. At the time, I felt like there was really no one I could talk to. My parents, I didn’t want to give them the gory details. My friends have been amazingly supportive and my band mates have been incredible, but I just didn’t want them to deal with the graphicness of it. “[Music] it’s the only thing that made me feel like myself. It felt like everything else, my confidence, my identity, everything had been stripped away from me, piece by piece.” Beth showed a song, Sacrifice, to the band’s guitarist and he encouraged her to record it. She recalls the final hours of her attack, as she waited for her escape: “I watch the clock tick down/ The blood has dried/ There are no tears in my eyes/ I’ve held my last breath, for this moment, I can’t take sound/ Otherwise I will face my torment’. “I didn’t want people to think I was weak and I didn’t want to feel embarrassed and ashamed again,” she says, admitting she was initially wary of getting the words out. “Then I stopped and said, ‘I have nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about.’ “It was a moment for me that if these songs can help people, then yes, I should definitely do it… I’m not going to let what he did to me define me. In fact, I’m going to be as bold about it and as bold as I can be. It’s important that people know it can happen to anyone.”
Domestic abuse statistics
The number of domestic abuse-related crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales rose by 6% in the year ending March 2021, to 845,734, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This…
