Ben Wilson sits in the living room of the home he shares with his mother and reflects on the brutal attack on his Jekyll and Hyde dad that has ruined his life.
And after his release from prison, he says firmly and calmly: “I’d do the same again.
“I sacrificed myself to save my mam. I thought if I have to do prison for the rest of my life for my family, then I’m going to do it.”
Ben was just 22 when he snapped after nearly a decade of seeing drunken father Craig regularly beating his mother Tracey.
Growing up, he had watched in horror as booze turned the dad he loved into a monster, threatening to kill his family and himself.
Then one night, after a birthday party for his mother turned sour, Ben could take no more.
When his dad threatened to “chop up” Tracey with a six-inch kitchen knife, his son hit him eight times with a lump hammer.
The attack left Craig, 47, in a coma with brain damage and Ben facing a long prison sentence.
But the years of terror the family had faced, Ben’s good character and his guilty plea led to a judge giving him the lowest jail term possible – six years.
And even that caused a public outcry, with 55,000 people signing a petition for his release.
Now free after four years, and speaking for the first time about his family’s ordeal, Ben remains haunted by what he did.
He even believes he’s responsible for his dad’s suicide at 47 in November 2016 – just as they were being reconciled.
But there was little he could do to stop the explosion that ended his family’s years of abuse. “I used to worry every night thinking ‘What will he do next?’,” says Ben.
“You can’t wake up thinking, ‘am I going to die today or is mam going to die today?’ I was on edge.
“My dad was my best mate, but when he had a drink he was the devil. Before that I had a brilliant childhood. We’d go on holidays to Turkey and Ibiza.
“But he got depressed after his dad died when I was about 13. He’d drink, mam would challenge him and the rows would start. It became the norm.”
The bust-ups led to Craig throttling Tracey so hard on New Year’s Eve, 2007, “her eyes were popping out”, says Ben. His dad got two years jail for the attack.
After release, Craig would still regularly hit Tracey.
Ben claims police were frequently called but said: “They did f*** all.
"No matter how many times we cried for help, it wouldn’t happen. I’d hear arguments and my coping mechanism was to walk out.
"I’d seen the chunks taken out of mam’s head. One time he hit her onto a worktop. There was blood all over.
"Another time he told me ‘I’m going to f***ing strangle her’ before going into mam’s room.
"I hit him in the back with a hoover wand. He stopped, then pulled out a kitchen knife and whipped his arm. He covered it with a towel and went to hospital.
“He used to say, ‘I’m going to kill myself’. I’d think, ‘just f***ing do it’.”
The night of the attack in May, 2014, Craig had downed a bottle of Sambuca at Tracey’s birthday barbecue.
“We’d been playing a game, then dad picked up a knife saying, ‘I’m going to cut you all up and kill you all’. He went upstairs and smashed things. Mam followed. I heard screaming.
“I picked up a hammer from my toolbag and went up. He said ‘what the f*** are you doing, you creepy ****, what’s behind your back? I belted him on the temple.
“I hit him eight times supposedly. I only remember once. I didn’t want to kill him.”
Panicked, Ben ran from the house and cycled to the police station.
He says: “My tracksuit and trainers were covered in blood. I went to the desk and said, ‘I’ve just killed my dad’.”
Police interviewed him for three days. He says they refused to tell him whether his father was alive.
“I was distraught. I had just wanted to make him stop. My life was ruined but I thought ‘at least I’ve done it for my family’.”
Ben was jailed for grievous bodily harm in January, 2015.
But the judge took into account Ben’s previous good character, the year’s he’d dealt with his father’s abusive nature and his guilty plea and gave Ben the lowest sentence.
Now he wants all judges to be lenient with those shielding loved ones from domestic violence.
He said: “The law should state you’re defending a family member.”
source
https://www.ladunliadinews.com/2019/11/horror-of-son-who-left-his-father-brain.html
