A child, even at the young age of 6, knows when things are not right. That’s why one daughter went to school one day and told her teacher that her daddy was hurting her mommy.
For more than 3 years, 36-year-old Jodie Keegans, of Doncaster, South Yorkshire, endured controlling behavior and many bouts of physical abuse by her husband, Scott Keegans. This alarm went off when the young girl told her teacher that her mother loved her father but he keeps hurting her.
Jodie met Scott Keegans at a nightclub back in 2005. They got married on Halloween day a few years later and had three children. Over the past few years, he would not allow her to have a phone or work. She was also not allowed to see her family or friends. It was so bad that he even denied her going to her own sister’s funeral in 2015 after she died unexpectedly from an undiagnosed cancer.
One judge Keegans went in front of described his behavior as one of the most Satanic cases he had ever seen. He then sentenced the man to 18 years in prison. After the man was arrested, his wife was taken to the hospital. This was the first time in those years that she was ever given any treatment for her injuries. She stayed in the hospital for five days.
During Jodie’s time with Scott, who worked as a maintenance man, he bit her, punched her and stomped on her. He broke and fractured several of her bones. And he never let her go to the hospital. In one particularly grisly encounter, he ripped off one of her ears. He forced her to glue it back together with eyelash adhesive. The beatings became almost daily, and they mostly came out of nowhere. The reasons for some of them, Jodie later said, was because she didn’t make his coffee perfect, or she was able to sleep when he wasn’t.
One week, which Jodie described as the “week from hell,” is when Scott beat her for two straight hours with a rolling pin. It left nearly every part of her body bruised. But, it was after this, that Jodie’s young daughter told her teacher about what was going on inside her home. The teacher then informed authorities.
Says Jodie: “My daughter is my superhero for being brave enough to tell her school what was happening. She really did save my life.”
When Jodie thinks back about her relationship with Scott, the 13 years she was in a relationship with him, she often thought he was going to kill her. But not all of those years were that way. As a matter of fact, she said, for several years he was a great partner. It was only about three years before when he began getting outraged and aggressive with her. And it got worse from there.
Said Jodie: He didn’t want me to engage with anyone and would always question the kids, asking ‘who did mummy speak to today. He used to tell me I was lazy and tell the kids ‘mummy is useless.’ ‘I actually used to love horror films that’s why we had a Halloween wedding, but after actually living in one I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch one again.’
When police arrested Scott, Jodie, for the very first time, showed someone outside of her home the damage inflicted to her body.
She told the officers: ‘I think I’m a victim of domestic abuse’, adding: ‘I guess that was the first time I had actually admitted what was happening to me and that I needed help.”
Scott was found guilty by a jury of six counts of assault, assault by penetration and rape. Jodie has rededicated her life to helping other victims of domestic abuse. She advises anyone going through it to stop and tell someone. And we could not agree more.
