Stories

Stories >> Stories home >> The butcher boyfriend

The butcher boyfriend

He hacked at me like a piece of meat...


Published by: Laura Hinton and Kim Carillo
Published on: 12 July 2012

Taking off my earrings, I clutched them tightly. I still got a shiver of excitement when I thought of how my boyfriend Robbie, 25, had bought them for me. ‘God, I'm lucky,' I smiled.
My thoughts were interrupted suddenly by laughter. Robbie was playing on the Xbox with my three boys.
‘Yeessss, I win!' whooped my youngest, Brendyn, nine.
‘No way!' Robbie laughed.
Walking into the room, I saw Cameron, 12, and Austin, 11, egging Brendyn and Robbie on.
I had been a divorcée for five years, so it was good for my lads to have a kind of father figure.
Robbie adored them. They'd even inspired him to start training as a counsellor. ‘I want to help kids who don't have the kind of life yours do,' he'd told me.
Bless... here was my strapping 6ft 3in hunk of a boyfriend getting emotional about deprived children.
A few weeks on, we dropped the kids off at my mum Fran's, and the two of us enjoyed a night in together.
‘This is the life,' I smiled, snuggling into his arms. But then I remembered some work I'd forgotten to do for my college course. ‘I'll come to bed in a bit,' I groaned.
‘Okay, 'night,' he smiled. An hour later, I was still tapping away on the computer, when the door flew open.
‘Why did you put battery acid in my drink?' Robbie yelled.
‘Huh?' I chuckled, as he stalked off into the kitchen. I thought he must be playing around with me. But seconds later, he was back... with a meat cleaver in his hands.
‘You put acid in my drink!' he shouted again.
‘Seriously, this isn't funny,' I replied, my voice shaking. ‘Is this a joke?'
But Robbie had become someone else. He was sweating heavily. It made my stomach knot in fear.
Suddenly, he lunged towards me with the cleaver. Instinctively, I put my hand up in defence. It sliced right through my left hand.
‘Stop!' I yelped. I gagged as my fingers dropped... they were hanging on by skin alone. Blood spurted up. He'd literally chopped my hand in half!
‘Please, Robbie,' I gasped. ‘Stop!' But my begging just enraged him more.
Shoving me on to the sofa, he held the weapon to my throat. The blade teased at my flesh.
‘If you scream, I'll chop your head off,' he spat.
I stifled a cry as the cleaver slammed down on my elbow. I heard a crack. Pain spread like burning heat through my body. He'd cut through to the bone.
As I lay there, dazed, my mind raced as I tried to work out what was happening.
This wasn't the Robbie who'd bought me earrings for my birthday, who'd told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world.
‘You shouldn't have spoiled me,' I'd giggled when he'd given them to me just a month after we'd met.
‘When I like a girl, I want them to know it,' he'd grinned, wrapping his big, strong arms around me. I'd felt so safe.
Now those same strong arms were pinning me down. I kept staring into his eyes, hoping to see a flicker of the Robbie I knew. Nothing. Instead, he sliced my arms again and again.
‘Please,' I begged. ‘We love each other...'
Suddenly, he stopped. I sat trembling as he put down the cleaver and lit a cigarette. The blood was rushing to my head, but I made myself stay focused.
I'd let him in my home, my family, my heart... but that meant nothing. I watched as his face contorted with rage again.
‘No!' I screamed.
But in one swift movement, he stubbed out the cigarette on my arm before continuing his torrent of abuse, pouring boiling water down my throat and stuffing socks into my mouth.
Every time I thought the nightmare was over, he found some new twisted way of hurting me.
Finally, I fell silent. After four hours of torture, I was too weak to protest. I just wanted it to end.
But then I imagined my boys standing at my grave with their little faces stained with tears.
‘No,' I thought. ‘I'm not leaving them.'
So, when Robbie turned his back, with every ounce of strength left, I ran out of my flat. I'd made it! I was free!
I banged on doors. Then - wham! The meat cleaver smashed into my skull, my legs and my arms.
Finally, a door opened. I felt Robbie run past me. It was over at last...
‘Oh my God,' gasped the man inside. I staggered forwards, and collapsed to the floor. He shut the door, and I heard him phone for an ambulance.
‘W-water...' I spluttered. White-faced, he grabbed a glass. I desperately tried to drink as he held it to my lips. But the water ran out of my ear. I couldn't understand.
‘Your face is messed up bad,' he mumbled. ‘I can see through your face to my fish tank on the other side of the room.' Robbie had sliced my smile away.
I felt so weak, had lost so much blood. And the pain made me drift in and out of consciousness.
Blink... there were paramedics around me. Blink... I was being airlifted to hospital. Blink... I was in intensive care.
When I finally woke up days later, my mum was there. Eyes full of tears, she said: ‘You're so lucky to be alive.'
I listened, horrified, as she told me Robbie had cut me 35 times. He'd sliced off my ear, my mouth, broke my facial bone and the bones in both hands. I'd needed 2,000 stitches and staples. He'd destroyed me.
‘How could he do this?' I sobbed through the pain. ‘We'd been so happy.'
I kept playing everything over in my mind. Why had Robbie snapped? There'd never been a hint of temper from him before, let alone violence.
I was worried about my boys,
as well. Five days later, I was allowed home. I grinned when I saw the Welcome Home banner the boys had put up.
But their faces dropped when they saw me. They were scared. I'd massively swollen in size, and I was covered in bandages.
‘I look like Frankenstein,' I whispered. ‘But it's still me.'
‘Welcome home,' Austin said eventually. ‘We've missed you.'
And I'd missed them. All because of my psycho boyfriend. Robbie had even gone back to my apartment that night and drunk a glass of Miracle-Gro to make it look like I'd poisoned him! He hadn't fooled the police, though.
When he tried to plead insanity, that was dismissed. But finally, last November, Robbie - real name Robin Chester, 26 - pleaded guilty to attempted murder. I willed him to look at me, to see how he'd mangled me. But he wouldn't.
Prosecutors said he was high on cocaine when he attacked me, and they thought his counselling training had unleashed these sociopathic tendencies. He was jailed for 10 years.
The left side of my face still has no feeling, I have limited movement in my hands and my entire body is scarred. Worse still are the nightmares.
I'll never know why Robbie did this to me. Counselling turned my angel into a devil.
Jennifer Miller, 34, Fairfield, Ohio, USA