Should I abandon my son to my alcoholic husband? | Mariella Frostrup

The dilemma I have been married to my alcoholic husband for 14 years. We have a 13-year-old son, and two older kids from my previous marriage. I had an affair with a black man from 2007 until 2009. I had kept it a secret from my husband until he found out from my diary in 2010. Since then he has started drinking three or four bottles of wine a night and blames his drinking on me. He has been hospitalised and in rehab many times for his alcoholism.

Our son is suffering because when my husband drinks he gets aggressive and my son has to stand between us to stop him hitting me. I have seriously thought about leaving without a trace. Maybe my son will be happier without a mother who is so pathetic.

Mariella replies The current problems in your relationship are definitely connected to your husband’s alcoholism, but overshadowing all of them is the physical threat you are under. I’m surprised it took you so many paragraphs before mentioning his violence towards you.

Maybe it’s something you are ashamed of. You won’t be the first victim of a tormentor to see their own suffering as something they have brought on themselves, or as a reflection of their worth. That’s utterly untrue and I’m hoping you can see, when written in black and white, how misplaced such feelings are. Or perhaps you excuse his physical abuse as a side effect of his drinking. While the latter might to some extent be true, it doesn’t excuse or condone his behaviour. Next time he attempts to raise a hand to you it’s important you remain calm and call the police. It’s not your son’s job to stand between his parents, and continuing to foist that role on him will be doing him damage that I know you wouldn’t want to inflict.

In small steps, and with great courage, you must remove your son and yourself from this man’s grip

I’m hoping you can count on the support of your two adult children, because you need as big and as vocal a support network as you can muster. It’s an opportunity for your friends and family to provide real tangible back-up by showing him that they are unafraid and prepared to be your witnesses. You are definitely not alone: the statistics for domestic abuse in this country are staggering. You need to get your experience on the official record and the sooner you do, the quicker your rights will be established in this terrible situation.

First, you need to understand that there is no excuse at all for the behaviour you are being subjected to. It needs to stop and your future plans can be better established when you are in a place of safety. We say “until death us do part” when we tie the knot, but there really needs to be a sub-clause that exonerates us for instant departure in the event of violence, dangerous addiction and abuse of any kind. Rowing and raging may be an unpleasant sideshow in many relationships, but sustained abusive behaviour and particularly any form of physical threat is an immediate red card. If he won’t clear out of your home, you will have to.

There are many organisations that can support you, particularly the beleaguered Refuge (24-hour National Domestic Violence Helpline, 0808 2000 247) which, despite losing much of its government funding, does an incredible job in rescuing the victims of domestic abuse from harm.

You didn’t sign up for this experience and every day you accept it you are causing damage to both your son and yourself. This man’s drinking may be hard to live with, but his abuse is a total deal breaker.

In the circumstances I’m tempted to ignore you describing your ex-lover as a “black man” as though it was his skin-colour, rather than your affair, that provoked your spouse. Instead, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt; like the spouses of many abusers you are probably just trying to find blame in yourself for your abuser’s crimes against you.

If your husband considers your choice of lover a further insult then he’s even more montrous than you have described. We’re not living in apartheid South Africa now, or in one of the many countries today where abuse at home is considered the divine right of husbands. Your lover’s racial make-up has absolutely nothing to do with the problems you are enduring today and it’s time you stopped looking for excuses.

In small steps, and with great courage, you must remove your son and yourself from this man’s terrible grip and, if you can, enlist friends and family to help you on your way. Most importantly contact Refuge who, with the sobering statistic of one in four women experiencing domestic violence in their lifetime, are pretty well qualified to give you practical help and advice.

If you have a dilemma, send a brief email to mariella.frostrup@observer.co.uk. Follow her on Twitter @mariellaf1

Should I abandon my son to my alcoholic husband? | Mariella Frostrup

Oregon might abandon broken healthcare technique for federal exchange

Following months of deliberation more than what to do with Oregon’s botched on-line well being exchange, an advisory panel on Thursday recommended that the state drop the internet site for private policies and have Oregonians instead shop for them on the federal on-line marketplace.

A prime Cover Oregon official, Alex Pettit, explained repairing the present technique would be as well costly at $ 78m, would get as well lengthy to apply, and would be as well risky. He stated switching to the federal system would cost $ 4m to $ 6m.

Oregon would proceed employing its recent technological innovation for Medicaid enrollments, but not for individuals who are getting personal policies.

The complete Cover Oregon board will get up the recommendation Friday, virtually 7 months after the state’s website was supposed to go live.

Oregon’s exchange is seen as the worst of the much more than a dozen states that designed their own online wellness insurance coverage marketplaces. The state is the only one where the general public nevertheless can’t use an online enrollment technique to sign up for coverage in a single sitting – despite an early start constructing the web site and hundreds of thousands of dollars from the federal government.

The website was supposed to go reside 1 October, but Cover Oregon and the technology vendor that created it, Oracle Corp, have been unable to work out all the glitches. As an alternative, Oregonians must use a expensive, time-consuming, hybrid paper-online method to indicator up for insurance.

The state has invested virtually $ 7m on the paper processing efforts, in addition to $ 134m in federal funding paid to Oracle.

Oregon was the only state to receive a month-prolonged enrollment extension because of the technology difficulties.

The federal Government Accountability Workplace has announced an investigation of Oregon’s exchange, such as hunting at no matter whether the federal government can reclaim grant funds given to Cover Oregon if taxpayer funds had been mismanaged.

Separately, former Overall health and Human Solutions Secretary Kathleen Sebelius asked for an inspector general’s investigation into troubles with the rollout of the well being care law.

An independent investigation ordered by Governor John Kitzhaber discovered state managers repeatedly failed to heed reviews about technical issues that prevented the exchange from launching. It also discovered that Cover Oregon’s major technologies contractor, Oracle Corp, did a shoddy occupation in creating the exchange. Four Oregon officials connected to the portal’s growth have resigned.

Kitzhaber has insisted that communications about the portal’s troubles by no means reached him as the planned 1 October launch neared.

Oregon officials have been weighing their possibilities about what to do with the beleaguered exchange.

A preliminary report by Cover Oregon consultant Deloitte Advancement LLC created public in April located the least costly fix for Oregon’s overall health exchange would be linking it to the federally run marketplace.

Earlier this month, Maryland – another state with a glitch-filled exchange internet site – chose to revamp its exchange by making use of technology that has proved productive in Connecticut. Maryland mentioned it chose not to switch to the federal exchange, in spite of much decrease fees, simply because Connecticut’s exchange has worked much better than the federal one and since the move allows the state to use some of its present technological innovation.

But Oregon has rejected that selection, with officials saying that transferring engineering from yet another state would be also costly and take too extended.

So far, about 240,000 Oregonians have enrolled in coverage by means of Cover Oregon. Much more than 69,000 of these enrolled in personal overall health strategies, although 171,000 enrolled in the Oregon Health Strategy, the state’s edition of Medicaid.

Oregon might abandon broken healthcare technique for federal exchange