A mother whose abusive ex-boyfriend beat her with hammers, made her sleep naked standing up and forced her to eat pictures of her dead relatives has spoken of her ‘appalling’ abuse.
Charlotte Rooks, 34, had to have extensive reconstructive surgery after she was almost beaten to death by her partner Craig Thomas, 33.
Ms Rooks, of Cardiff, now suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, nerve damage, Bell’s Palsy, hearing loss and speech slurs.
Jailing him for 10 years in December 2013, Judge Neil Bidder QC branded the case ‘one of the worst he had ever encountered’ and ‘an appalling catalogue of very serious violence’.
Speaking in public for the first time since her harrowing ordeal, the mother described the night he lied to police to cover up his abuse.
Charlotte Rooks (pictured in hospital), 34, had to have extensive reconstructive surgery after she was almost beaten to death by her partner Craig Thomas, 33
Ms Rooks (pictured), of Cardiff, now suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, nerve damage, Bell’s Palsy, hearing loss and speech slurs
She said: ‘That is when I knew that I was f*****. I thought I was going to die. That night I remember telling him to just kill me.
‘He said “I will either give you bleach or you can put a bag over your head”. I remember really weighing up these options because I just wanted to die.’
Ms Rooks first met Thomas at work a two years before the abuse began, when he showed no signs of the monster he would become.
Speaking in public for the first time since her harrowing ordeal, the mother-of-two described the night he lied to police to cover up his abuse.
She said: ‘We met two years before this happened. I thought he was amazing.
‘I was with someone else and it wasn’t great and we used to talk all the time.
‘He always used to sound so caring. He told me he had a flat and if I ever needed time alone I could go there.
‘He used to come into work to see me to check I was okay. I thought it was incredibly lovely. I thought he was genuinely coming in to see if I was okay.’
The pair lost contact for a while but Thomas got back in touch in early 2013 while Ms Rooks was suffering from the aftermath of a fire at her home.
She had moved into a new house with her son, who was then 13, and didn’t even have furniture.
Thomas was supportive, telling her he would cancel jobs painting and decorating to look after her.
But the relationship quickly turned violent as Thomas started to spend more and more time at her home.
She explained: ‘I hadn’t let him live with me.
‘It got to the point where I said he had to go back to his own place because I have to go to work to be able to buy beds and furniture.
‘We argued and he punched me in the face. I remember actually apologising to him because I didn’t know what I had done to make him so angry.
Thomas said to Rooks (pictured) : “I will either give you bleach or you can put a bag over your head”, threatening to kill her and ‘inject her son with AIDS’
‘That was the first time he had hit me and I remember thinking: “It must be because he thinks I’m ungrateful after he’s taking time off work”.
Early in their relationship Charlotte discovered she was pregnant, which caused the abuse to escalate.
She added: ‘Things started to happen. He would stay over and say to me that I had to sleep standing up – then if I was falling asleep he would throw stuff at me.
‘When my foster mum died he made me eat her pictures.
‘I was given a ring that was something sentimental that been left to me and he made me eat that as well.
‘I loved my foster mum. When he made me eat her pictures it was the most f***** up thing.
‘Numerous times when I was living in my house he would hit me in the stomach with the metal part of the Hoover while I was pregnant.
‘There was glass from a picture frame where he cut the back of my head. He was just waving it at me and it was the back of my head but he managed to hit.
‘When I shave my head you can see the scar.
‘Sometimes we would be in the car and he would just repeatedly punch me in the side of the face.
‘I was glad he would do it in the car because I would think that someone would see it and call the police. If someone did see it they never did call.’
Ms Rook’s injuries eventually rendered her unable to work, leaving her with no money to pay bills and her internet and electricity being cut off.
Having no money for rent, she was evicted from her home, leaving her son with her mother, she moved into Thomas’ flat – where she quickly became a prisoner.
She said: ‘I didn’t go to work because I was too hurt. From the first two weeks to four months later at least one of my eyes couldn’t open. We were living in poverty.
‘One day I ran out of the house. I don’t even remember if I was going to go to the police or my mother’s.
‘He held up my dog in the window and said he would kill her. I just went back in – I knew that was my life now.’
Jailing Thomas (pictured) for 10 years in December 2013, Judge Neil Bidder QC branded the case ‘one of the worst he had ever encountered’ and ‘an appalling catalogue of very serious violence’
She continued: ‘I left my son at my mother’s and told her that the landlord was selling the house and at the time I think she was so grateful to see me she just accepted it.
‘Then he took me to his flat for the first time ever.
‘I was saying to him I didn’t want to live with him and I would rather live with my mother and he would say that he would let me go when I had paid him for all the times he had fed me and he had missed work.
‘I told him but I had no way of going to work to give him money and that he had taken my cash card off me which was where my credits were being paid into.’
She was regularly beaten, threatened with death and only allowed to go to the toilet in a mop bucket.
She said: ‘Sometimes he would tie me up and I would lie on his bedroom floor, which was tiled.
‘If I fell asleep he would throw glasses at me so they would smash on the tiles and obviously they would cut me.’
On one occasion a neighbour caught sight of her injuries and called the police, but Thomas lied and said she was ‘mentally ill and pregnant’ and that he was just looking after her.
She said: ‘The police came in and he told them I was mentally ill, pregnant, and that he felt obliged to keep me.
‘He told them he didn’t love me but said that I was mentally ill and was carrying his baby.
‘This was the opportunity. If they had put his name in the system they could have seen his criminal record. When they left I knew that I was f*****. I thought that I was going to die.
‘That night I remember saying to him to just kill me and he said: “I will either give you bleach or you can put a bag over your head”.
‘I remember really weighing up these options because I just wanted to die.
‘I stank of p*** and I hadn’t changed my clothes because all my stuff was in my old house.
Rooks, of Cardiff, added: ‘When my foster mum died he made me eat her pictures. I was given a ring that was something sentimental that been left to me and he made me eat that as well.’
‘That night he lifted up the sofa and made me lie down and put my arms above my head so that my hands were trapped under the sofa and would then repeatedly jump on my stomach.
‘Obviously your body reaction is to curl up but my hands were trapped under the sofa.
‘If I couldn’t control my reflexes he would just stamp on my head- that went on all night.
‘I was being tortured. That is exactly what CID said. [The person interviewing me] had to take a break himself during the interview.’
Ms Rooks claims she was kept in a door with multiple locks, but eventually managed to escape because the police called round ‘by chance’.
She said: ‘After that night when he trapped me under the sofa I couldn’t walk and my whole body was broken.
‘My ears had completely closed up and I couldn’t even put a cotton bud in them.
‘Someone had borrowed his car and had bumped into somebody else.
‘The police turned up his house and rang the buzzer. This is all pure chance. He put me in the bedroom and unlocked the door.
‘There was lots of locks on the door but he couldn’t lock it after because it would have locking the police in.
‘I remember thinking that if I don’t go now I will never leave.
‘I could walk out and be with the police but they had already left me 24 hours before and I wasn’t taking that risk.
‘I wasn’t taking that risk because if they had left me again I would be dead. I just ran.’
The then-pregnant mother even managed a laugh when reflecting on the dreadful state she was in as she made a dash for freedom.
Eventually she escaped and a nurse she had met in hospital before convinced her to report the abuse. Thomas was jailed after pleading guilty to four counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, one count of unlawful wounding, and one count of wounding with intent
She said: ‘I say run but I was four months pregnant and had been stabbed in my bum as well. I use the phrase run loosely.
‘I didn’t even know where I was running – every part of my body hurts.
‘I was frightened because he would have heard the door and would have known the whole time that I had got out.
‘I had no shoes on and I ran to the local garage because I know the guy who runs it because he fixes my mother’s car.
‘He didn’t even recognise me because my face was that swollen.
‘You know in the film Drop Dead Fred when he gets his face trapped in the fridge? That is what my face looked like.
‘The police turned up at the garage and I was screaming because I didn’t know where my son was.
‘I told the police they had to get to my son and armed police turned up at my son’s school.
‘I remember being really embarrassed. They were telling me to sit down and I told them that I’d wet myself.
‘When my friends came to visit me in the hospital they kept on walking up and down because they couldn’t recognise me because my face was so damaged.
‘If that guy hadn’t bumped that car I would be dead.’
Ms Rooks (pictured) has to wear an eye patch after she developed Bell’s palsy and will soon be seeing a specialist about having a weight put in her eyelid
During her hospital stay Ms Rooks saw the nurse who had treated her earlier on in her’s and Thomas’ relationship.
She was the one who finally convinced her to report him.
Ms Rooks said: ‘When I got wheeled into hospital the first thing I saw was the nurse who was taken my statement before.
‘I remember being so ashamed because she had tried so hard to get me to report it the first time and I thought I’d let her down.
‘She was so brilliant she actually stayed on after for me so I didn’t have to go up for scans on my own.’
She had been too scared to report him in the past because of what he might do to her son, who she also feared might be taken into care.
She said: ‘He would say stuff to me like he would rip my son’s face off and inject him with Aids.
‘When people say to me ‘How do you know that he knew someone with Aids?’ I would ask them if they would chance it.
‘This is someone who had already put a hammer over my head on more than one occasion – why would I risk this?’
In December 2013 in Cardiff Crown Court Thomas, of Llanishen, Cardiff, pleaded guilty to four counts of attempting to cause grievous bodily harm with intent, one count of unlawful wounding, and one count of wounding with intent.
The judge jailed him 10 years, which he attempted to appeal the following year.
But three senior judges at London’s Appeal Court rejected his appeal bid, saying: ‘This was an appalling case of very serious violence, repeatedly inflicted by Thomas on his pregnant partner at her home.’
Charlotte carries physical and mental scars from her ordeal. She is being treated for post-traumatic stress disorder and has had extensive plastic surgery on her ears.
She said: ‘I have short-term memory loss for on by the stress – that is not to do with the hammer, it was all stress. My hearing is not very clear – I can hear but it’s not very clear.
‘I’ve got lumps on my forehead where he has banged me with the hammer numerous times.’
She also has to wear an eye patch after she developed Bell’s palsy and will soon be seeing a specialist about having a weight put in her eyelid. She has also had issues with her speech.
But despite everything she has been through, she wants other women to know that there is hope.
She said: ‘I do appreciate stuff now.
‘It sounds clichéd but it is good to be alive. It makes you value your life – although I wish I did have more money to do stuff.
‘I went to see my best friend’s child in a Christmas play and I felt so emotional because I was so proud to see this little girl who means everything to me.
‘With my son I feel so proud when my son gets As.
I’m so proud of him – he could have turned into such a d*** with everything he has been through. I would have understood if he had but he hasn’t.’
Ms Rooks also wants to raise awareness of the work of Cardiff Women’s Aid, who she says were vital in her getting away and rebuilding her life.
She said: ‘They will always do anything for you. They will phone you back and if you can’t talk they will talk to you down the phone.
‘They will never put you in a position where they will jeopardise your safety by helping you.
‘It’s not like you have to leave your partner before you go to them – they can always give you advice.
‘To be honest they were amazing and I could not have done it without them.
‘I know it’s their job but you can’t do a job like this unless you genuinely really care about people.
‘I would love to do something like this in a few years time but you have to be free of domestic violence for a number of years.
‘Even if it’s not office hours they will come to you, don’t be afraid – it can’t always be like this. I think that the stigma of domestic violence has to change.
‘I hate the thought that people believe that I just thought “f*** it, I’ll let someone live with me”. He was so calculating. When you have children you just go into survival mode.
‘When I used to sleep standing up I would do it because I didn’t want my child to wake up. It is not like you are asking for it – you just do what you have to do.’
She added: ‘If other women read this and it helps them it makes me feel like
‘I’ve got a purpose. I had lost everything in the fire and then I lost everything again.
‘I feel like something good has got to come out of this. It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got or what colour you are, if they’re going to batter you they are going to batter you and you need to get support.
‘Stereotypically you think it might happen to a certain person but it could happen to anyone.’