The 28-year-old British mum reported missing last week from Boliqueime with her children by their apparently distraught father has ‘set the record straight’, cataloguing what she claims have been ‘years of abuse’.
Christine Davies told the Resident this week that she snapped after partner Aaron Rodwell allegedly threatened to smother the couple’s baby with a pillow.
“That moment I knew ‘when he goes out tomorrow, we’re gone’,” she told us. “I put up with his abuse, God knows why, but I will not allow anyone to hurt my children.
“I took all my money he kept in his drawer,” she said - referring to the bar working wages she claims Rodwell took off her every time she was paid. “I took our documents and clothes and left.
“I would have loved to have stayed in Boliqueime,” she added, “but it is just not safe for us.”
Christine’s story was splashed over national and international media last week - 10 days after her dash for freedom on April 4.
Indeed, reading between the lines of media reports, it was clear that Rodwell had only reported his family’s disappearance a week after their dramatic flight.
“I would just like the truth to be put in the paper,” Christine told us.
Her estranged partner “told a lot of lies, and used the police, media and public” to try and find her, she said.
“He even went to the lengths of saying I had ‘disappeared’ and he hadn’t heard from me. But I contacted his family the day I left,” she affirmed, adding his mother and father “have known about the abuse for a long time. I actually confided in his mother a lot and she encouraged me to leave him, telling me the girls would be better off without him”.
Rodwell “alienated” Davies from friends and family so that she “didn’t have anyone else but him”, she said.
“I hardly ever left the house because he said I didn’t need to,” she told us.
“When I was at work, I wasn’t supposed to engage in conversations with anyone. He said they were all 'freaks'. He took my tips every night after work and, on a Sunday, when I got paid, he took my wages.”
Rodwell was apparently “physically and mentally abusive”.
“Colleagues at work started to notice big bruises and questioned me. I did try and cover them, in shame, and say I had hit my head on a cupboard, or something. But they knew,” said the young mother, who is now “safe and well and happy and doesn’t want to be found”.
She explained that she has given her side of the story to the GNR, Merseyside Police (from the couple’s former Southport home) and a leading UK tabloid, “to show we are all okay and not missing” as Rodwell has suggested (click here).
“He knew we weren’t missing,” she explained. “He knows why I left him, but when he couldn’t find me he made up his story and sat back waiting for everyone to find me, using the children as bait.”
Davies added that all the time Rodwell was telling his story to journalists and the authorities in Portugal, he was emailing her telling her she was “finished”.
“He told me he would know where I was soon, and that I was in big trouble.”
For now, all the Resident can affirm for certain is that Davies has no intention of letting her former partner know where she is.
The moment that made her snap came during her last bar shift, she told us.
Rodwell called her at work “shouting a lot”, telling her that he had “locked the baby in the bathroom and that she was screaming”.
“I asked if he had fed her and he said she didn’t want to feed. I could tell he was lying and that he had forgotten she was due food and just didn’t want to admit it.
“Then he started saying horrible things like 'Should I just put a pillow over her head. She will stop crying then, won’t she?
“I said he was being silly. I knew he wouldn’t actually do it but I was concerned he would ignore her cries, so I made my excuses and went home.
“But on the way home, I had a feeling that made me sick. I couldn’t help but think 'what if he did lose his temper and shake her or hurt her somehow, or worse'. The pillow comment stuck in my head and I ran all the way home.”
Since Davies’ flight with daughters Lily and Ruby, other papers have reported that she was seen at an Algarve campsite “in the company of other adults”, and that she and the children were all looking well.
Article by kind permission of http://portugalresident.com
Comments
Amongst so much else that is different nowadays ... Would any Portuguese abroad doing a runner for safety with their children contact their 'homeland' Portuguese Police to give their side of their story and also a major Portuguese tabloid ? For what reason if you know they would interpret the law elsewhere as being that of Portugal; "this is a Police matter" and so do nothing with this information ?