A brave and inspirational Enniscrone woman has survived years of horrific abuse from her husband, who was jailed last week.

Kathleen Correia waived her anonymity so that the name of her rapist and harasser could be revealed.

Sergio Correia, 48, was sentenced to eight years in prison for rape and coercive control.

“Relinquishing my anonymity gave me 100% power,” Kathleen said. Western People weekend. “It’s still a little overwhelming, but I just wanted to be able to tell my story. If I had heard a story like this years ago, it would have resonated with me and made me stop and think: ‘God, this is what’s going on in the world.’ It would have given me hope and encouraged me to talk to someone.”

“Having waived my anonymity, I can explain how this happened and how no one thought this would happen. I hope this might help someone in a similar situation.”

“I don’t want to carry it around anymore. I felt like I was wearing a cloak and protecting her from everyone. I just had to pretend. I don’t need to pretend anymore. I can be myself again and I don’t need to be ashamed or shy. I definitely feel like a weight has been lifted off of me,” said the mother of three.

Kathleen, now 41, first met her future husband through a friend while holidaying in her native Portugal in 2006. Their relationship turned romantic when he moved to Ireland.

“I was very happy when I got married. I was very happy when we met. He was a very nice man and very easy to talk to and we had a lot in common. I thought, ‘I’m so lucky, I met a good man, I have a nice house and the family I always wanted.'”

But after their marriage in 2012, Kathleen noticed a change in her husband. She had quit her job to focus on raising the two young children they had at the time, and her role as breadwinner overlapped with an unreasonable demand for sex.

“The whole time I was wondering, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’ you think. You are at home and taking care of the children. I wasn’t working at the time and you were kind of isolated. You start to lose some confidence in yourself, and when your husband tells you that you’re not good enough, you start to think that you’re not,” said Kathleen, who now works in Human Resources.

Her husband demanded sex five times a week, but Kathleen’s feelings never entered the subject.

“It had to happen x times a week, when he said it would, and the way he wanted it to happen. For years, I tried to explain in a calm and nice way that this was not normal, the impact his behavior had on me, and that I did not want to live like this.

“It didn’t matter if I was sick or what was going on at home. He should have gotten what he wanted. If it had been a night where I ‘got away with it’, as he told me, he would have said, ‘Well, you got away last night, you can’t get away tonight.’ I would spend all day thinking about what would happen or what I should do. I was constantly living in fear of his demands and expectations.

“It didn’t matter if I said no because no didn’t mean no.

“He was so right. He was my husband; these were his demands, and once or twice a week he wasn’t going to cut it. He would tell me that if he didn’t get what he wanted, he would pack his bags and leave. I didn’t want him to go, but I didn’t want to live like that either. I was scared because we had a mortgage and I wouldn’t be able to manage on my own. I didn’t know what to do.” and I was stuck in the marriage because I didn’t tell anyone.

“He had a very distorted view of what a wife was. “I was treated like an object.”

Correia worked in bars and restaurants in the Ballina area for many years.

“A lot of people in Ballina thought, ‘God, he’s amazing’ and he knew more people in that town than I did. He was a very lovely person. It actually made things very difficult for me because everywhere we went people really loved it and I thought no one would believe me. Everybody knows him and thinks he’s great,” Kathleen said.

Her husband’s behavior became increasingly extreme and abusive.

“2019 was the worst year and things escalated really badly. I tried to defend myself to him and say, ‘No, it’s not happening’, but he would get very angry and I would be very afraid of him. I would have no choice and would have to surrender,” said Kathleen.

To help their troubled marriage, Kathleen took a surprise trip to Dublin to see Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder in concert.

In a healthy relationship, this would be something a couple could look forward to together. Instead, Kathleen was filled with fear once again when Correia greeted the news of the concert with the chilling line: ‘This is amazing, I’m going to do anal that night.’ That night after the concert, Correia anally raped his wife at the Gibson Hotel. She begged and begged him not to do this, but she forced him, saying it was a ‘birthday treat’.

“When rape happened in 2019, I knew it was a really bad thing. But inside I said, ‘My husband raped me.’ No. I knew I felt terrible and that he was hurting me physically and emotionally, but I couldn’t put my mind to it. When I told this to a friend of mine, she said, ‘That was rape.’ He can’t do this. It doesn’t matter if you’re married or not.”

She believes her husband never thought he would face the consequences of his heinous actions.

“I was a very quiet and calm person. I really hate confrontation. I guess he never thought I’d stand up to him. Whenever I brought up how he was behaving at home or his constant demands for sex and tried to explain that this wasn’t normal, he would tell me: ‘You came from a broken home and you would never want that. We will never leave.’ “He used this against me.”

Sergio Correia was also hiding his drug addiction from his wife.

“He was very dishonest and lied for years. “We were struggling financially and I didn’t know he was spending all this money on drugs.”

A month after the rape in Dublin, the extent of his drug addiction was revealed and he subsequently entered a residential rehabilitation programme.

“I told him, ‘I’ll support you on this, but we have a much bigger problem in your marriage that affects me much more than drugs.'”

Kathleen was with her husband while he was being evaluated for the center he entered a month later.

“During the evaluation, the counselor told him that his wife might be there on Wednesday for family day and that there would be group conversations about addiction and how it affects the family and how it causes so much trauma and problems for families. Sergio turned around and said: ‘Oh, if ‘If my wife is going to be here every Wednesday from 10 to 4, where can we go to have sex?’

“His face almost fell and I was so embarrassed I was afraid he would think I was like that too. I was very embarrassed and apologized to the counselor and told her this was a huge problem in our marriage. The things he expects from me in marriage are not acceptable, not normal. “I told him about the ‘treat’ requests and what happened at the Gibson Hotel.”

The following month, Correia returned home, but although his behavior was addressed during his inpatient treatment, nothing changed. Kathleen admits she was disappointed that the center failed to see the danger it was in.

“I was his wife and he wasn’t going to be told what he could and couldn’t do with me.”

There were times when she had to fight with her husband, and in early 2020, she managed to get him to move out.

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Kathleen allowed Correia to move back to a separate bedroom in the house so she could see her children. He would continue to scare her and try to make her uncomfortable about sex.

As a coping mechanism, Kathleen began exercising excessively and her relationship with food changed. A visit to consultant David O’Farrell to discuss these issues was another turning point for Kathleen. She told him about her husband’s behavior and rapes.

“The man almost fainted. I told him my husband had moved out. It took months to get him out, but he wants to move back in, get couples counseling and fix the marriage. David told me the marriage is over. He’s an abusive man who raped you in your marriage for years. It’s possible from that man.” “You need to legally separate as quickly as possible. This is coercive control and will escalate tensions.”

Kathleen went to gardaí in April 2021 and said she “could never thank them enough” for their help and support, adding that she would be forever grateful to the Departmental Protective Services Unit, Rape Crisis Centre, Victim Assistance and counsel. his employer, family and friends.

“Could I have made it without all these people? I don’t know.”

Correia denied all the charges and so Kathleen faced an arduous trial that caused quite a bit of damage.

“This was something I had been afraid of for a long time. The criminal complaint was filed again in 2022. When the family liaison officer told me that the case would be tried in 2024, I was very upset. I thought to myself how I would handle this for the next two years. Part of me would accept his guilt and save me from a lot of trouble.” “He hoped it would save him, but he didn’t.”

The trial took place during a sitting of the Central Criminal Court in Castlebar in May.

“Every time I go to Castlebar now, I associate it with that. I used to pass by the courthouse and it didn’t mean anything to me, now it means a lot.

“The case itself was very intense. There was no one with me in court, I didn’t want anyone to listen to the details. My family liaison officer was always there for me and gave me great support.

“I didn’t even take it every day at once. I was trying to survive from 10am to 1pm, and if I could do that, I could recover and be back again at 2pm. After each day, I would tell myself that I would never have to live that day again. “It was terrible.”

Kathleen had to take the stand for a grueling four days.

“My proof was the hardest part and it felt like it took forever. By the fourth day I was at my breaking point, I literally had nothing left to give.

“I had to bring myself back to the nights and I was reliving the rapes. While everyone there was watching me, I felt like it was happening to me all over again. I felt exposed and had to tell myself over and over again that I shouldn’t get sick.

“You feel embarrassed because you are in a courtroom full of strangers and it is your own body. You are talking about your husband whom you love and who you think loves you. In fact, you are a witness to a crime committed against you and your body is the crime scene. It was very traumatic.

“It was very difficult and you don’t want to stop other people from coming forward. Wouldn’t I change my mind now and put myself in this situation? Absolutely not. Because I defended myself no matter what. “I am very grateful to have received justice.”

Kathleen said Correia showed no signs of remorse or remorse.

“This is very difficult. He wrote a letter of apology, but only on the advice of his legal team.

“There’s no point in apologizing to me anymore. The damage was done years ago. Even the apology letter was actually all about him, and it was the life choices he made regarding drugs that made him do this. He was blaming drugs for raping his wife and asking for forgiveness. That was the essence of the apology letter. This , was not an acknowledgment of the pain and turmoil he had caused and how he had completely ruined my life.

Kathleen has been welcomed into her home with compassion and love since Correia’s crimes were revealed.

“I’ve had some lovely messages. Enniscrone is a very small place and people have known me there since my school days. They can’t believe what’s happened.”

Small but caring gestures warmed her heart, such as the local shopkeeper who gave her son a box of chocolates for his mother, or women from the Ballina pharmacy, the local church choir and a domestic violence group handing out bouquets of flowers.

“Those little things are so nice. There was so much positivity and kindness and it really helped me,” Kathleen said.

He knows he still has a long road ahead of him, but he sees himself as a survivor.

“I still have a lot to improve, but I’ve come this far and I know I will. You can get better, and so can I.”