Beth McDonald remembers seeing a clock on the wall, counting the hours until she felt she would be able to escape her rapist.
Punctured, stamped, strangled, threatened with a saw and subjected to degrading sexual assault by her then partner in an ordeal that lasted almost 24 hours, once she finally fell asleep, she quietly descended the stairs of her house, naked apart. of her socks. Stopping to put on your clothes, to cover yourself, would have taken too long.
While most of the doors were closed, 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 sentenced to eight years in prison in Preston Crown Court after pleading guilty to rape and assault. which caused actual bodily harm.
Warning: This article contains an image and descriptions of physical and sexual abuse that some may find disturbing
Image: Image: Mark Ashworth
Beth, 32, is a musician, the leader of the rock band Beth Blade And The Beautiful Disasters, and says that if it weren’t for her music she thinks she would have tried to commit suicide after her attack. Now, he is preparing for the release of his band’s third album, which includes several songs about what he has experienced.
However, just four years after the attack, he is also preparing for the release of Grieve’s license. He is scared. An indefinite removal order placed at that time, he says, is “just a piece of paper”; as a musician with a public profile, he knows his whereabouts when concerts will often be easy to find.
But she is proud of her album and says she wants to talk to help others who might be facing similar situations, trapped in abusive relationships. “If you can help a person, it’s worth feeling scared every time you talk,” he says. “And as time goes on, less and less is done.
“I want people to know that she’s not alone. And that it’s okay to go through these terrible things and that they have someone, they might not even have known me, but they have someone who understands and is in their And I could make them feel brave enough not to have to suffer anymore. “
Beth met Grieve when she was a teenager and they reactivated their relationship in February 2018, officially becoming a couple the following month.
She says he “bombarded her with love” – meaning showing extreme signs 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 he had studied at university and had assembled his band, to live with him.
The abuse started with him trying to dictate his work schedule and appearance, telling him not to have his hair down when he wanted to, he says. Soon, she was separated from some of her friends.
Grieve was violent for the first time after taking her to a festival with her band and seeing her hug a promoter, she says. When he got in the car to talk to him, he walked away with her for about two hours, hitting her all the way, even with a bottle. But then she says she apologized and burst into tears.
“I gave up on myself”
Image: Beth says her bandmates have been a great source of support. Image: Megan Jenkins
Beth covered her bruises with makeup and agreed to give her another chance. “I gave up on myself … my confidence was non-existent. I had no belief in myself and the only thing that kept me going at all was the band and the music, that was all. I had to do concerts because m “I had to commit to them. I had to make the album because I had paid for it. And that’s really what kept me alive. Because if that hadn’t been there, I’m absolutely 100% sure. I would have tried to commit suicide or he would have killed me. “
He says he was embarrassed and embarrassed to talk to his family and friends about what was going on. “I have a wonderful relationship with my parents … I was raised in a loving and wonderful home. I didn’t want to admit that I had let myself be put in that situation. I felt like a total failure.”
Grieve turned violent, he says, after the band won a contest to support Kiss at their annual Kiss Kruise concert, a Miami cruise in the Bahamas. Since he couldn’t go there, he didn’t want her either. He says he threw a glass at her in a pub, in front of others, but failed; another man, whom she knew, beat Grieve in retaliation.
He assaulted her a few days later, on the afternoon of the August 2018 holiday, while he was drinking rum at home, asking to know the identity of the man who had beaten him.
“He started punching me in the face, punching me in the head and putting his hands down my throat and squeezing me hard, throwing me, throwing me at the doors.” A few hours later, he says he grabbed an electric saw. “He said to me, ‘As soon as I get to the bottom of this bottle of rum, I’ll smash you in the head and then I’ll use this.’ I took it as he went. fingers or toes or anything “.
“I knew it was my only shot”
Beth tried to escape after that, but the door was closed and he caught her.
“He grabbed me from behind with his arm around my neck and held me suspended, for a good, I would say, 60 seconds. And I got to the point where I could feel my brain going to stop and I was I was going to lose consciousness. And I was just thinking, you have to stay awake, you have to stay awake. “
The attack continued throughout the night, with Grieve banging her head, “stepping on her” and at one point biting her scalp, she says. Once he finished the rum, he says he carried it upstairs and had her take off her clothes, before hitting her with a belt.
That’s when he raped her, telling her he’d never had intimacy with anyone with “an open head wound.” Beth says she was “paralyzed” by shock and fear. Finally, around 6 or 7 the next morning, he fell asleep.
“It was light outside. I had this inner monologue, this conversation with myself. ‘Beth, you have a very heavy sleep,’ and there was a clock on the wall, ‘leave it until 9 in the morning and snore deeply , you can run for it. ‘I knew it was my only shot, so I didn’t put on any clothes, I only had my socks on, that was all. “The key was missing. From the front door, closed. The back door was closed. The kitchen windows were closed. But luckily I had left the conservatory door open.”
Once outside, he ran, bleeding. In the early hours of a holiday Monday, there weren’t many people. “A gentleman saw me and his face horrified. I tried to talk to him, but I was so shocked that I kept going. I ran about two or three more minutes until there was a shop on the street. Main road. And I went to see that there was someone standing at the cash register, two women and … at that moment, my legs started to go “.
The women helped Beth, covering her up and calling the police and a taxi to take her to the hospital. She says she suffered a depressed skull fracture as well as wounds and bruises to her belt and was beaten. “My eyes were completely black and the inside of my mouth, where I had put my fingers, was torn.”
“I have chosen to live my life”
Image: The band played Kiss Kruise after the attack. Image: Will Byington
He saw Grieve again at his sentencing, confronting him in court to explain to the judge how the attack had affected him. Now, she is preparing for his release.
“I think it’s a danger,” he says. “What he did, and it boils down to the legal terms, but he tried to kill me. For me, this is an assassination attempt. And the prison sentence doesn’t fit in at all with the crime. It will affect me for the rest. of his life. When he comes out of prison, I have to worry about him, to take revenge, to attack me in some way … but I have chosen to live my life in spite of that. “
After the attack, Beth suffered horrific nightmares and panic attacks and went on to receive therapy, which she said helped, as well as writing poetry and verses about her experience.
“I needed some kind of outlet to be able to channel all this pain. At that time, I felt like there was really no one I could talk to. My parents, I didn’t want to give them the horrible details. My friends gave me wonderful support. and my bandmates were amazing, but I didn’t want them to have to deal with the graphics of that.
“[Music] it’s the only thing that made me feel remotely like myself. I felt like everything else, my self-confidence, my identity, everything had stripped me, piece by piece. “
Beth taught a song, Sacrifice, to the band’s guitarist, and he encouraged her to record it. He remembers the last hours of his attack, as he waited for his escape: “I see the ticking of the clock, ticking / The blood has dried / There are no tears in my eyes / I have kept my last breath, for this moment, I can’t make any sound / Or I will face my torment “.
“I didn’t want people to think I was weak and I didn’t want to feel embarrassed and embarrassed again,” he says, admitting that at first he was suspicious of making the words public. “Then I stopped and said, ‘I have nothing to be ashamed of or ashamed of.’
“It was a moment for me that if these songs can help people, then yes, I should absolutely do it … I won’t let what he did define me. In fact, I will. Be so bold and as brave as possible. It’s important for people to know that it can happen to anyone. “
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