Kathleen Correia’s home is fragrant with flowers. There are bouquets everywhere, sent by horrified friends, neighbours and strangers since her husband, Sergio Correia, was jailed for eight years on Monday for raping and coercively controlling her.
A pot of chrysanthemums on the kitchen table came from a group of women she met at a domestic violence support group before the trial. The delivery man cried as he handed her the flowers.
Now legally separated with a divorce pending, the Enniscrone, Co Sligo woman met the Algarve native during a week’s holiday in Portugal in 2006. That week they remained no more than friends.
The relationship turned romantic after he moved to Ireland a month later. The wedding reception in 2012 was held in the Portuguese restaurant where he had been waiting tables the first time they met.
“He was very charming,” she recalls. “We had so much in common. We both loved music. It seemed like the fairy-tale. There was never anything at the start that I was worried about.”
After the second of their three children was born, Kathleen, who works in human resources, felt “something wasn’t right”. He became angry and demanded sex “five nights a week – or I’m packing my bags”, he told her. He watched porn on his phone.
“He would say: ‘You’re my wife – give yourself to me.’ I might be washing the dishes and I’d say: ‘I’m tired.’ He’d pull the pyjamas off me. I felt like he owned me.
“He made me feel inadequate, saying a husband shouldn’t have to beg his wife and that other women would love it.”
She searched on Google the average number of times couples have sex and showed him that it was 53 times a year.
“I said: ‘That’s once, maybe sometimes twice, a week.’ It made no difference,” she said.
“There was no love in it. It was always very degrading. If I resisted, he would get angry and start shouting. I’d keep the peace so that the kids wouldn’t wake up. My mind wouldn’t be there. I’d distract myself, make it go somewhere else but he’d stop and give out to me for that and then he’d keep going.”
She says that sometimes when she went to bed, he left lingerie on the pillow that she’d have to wear.
“If I was going out with a friend, which wasn’t often, he’d pick out lingerie for me and say: ‘Your make-up is lovely. I can’t wait to ruin it when you come home.’
“Or the next morning [after sex], he’d say: ‘That was good last night. A little bit more now tonight.’ I would spend the day dreading what was to come,” she says.
One way she coped was by keeping diaries, including dates and details. Those diaries were to become evidence in securing his conviction last June.
In October 2018, after she found he had been concealing a cannabis addiction, he was admitted to a treatment centre. At their introductory session as a couple, Sergio asked where they could have sex during his wife’s permitted weekly visits.
That was the cue for her to reveal that his sexual demands were “a far more serious problem” than his drug use in their marriage. The following month, he returned home with the matter unresolved.
“I was disappointed about that,” she concedes. “There was a plan for his return but he didn’t comply with the rules. There were supposed to be no demands for intimacy.”
It was never suggested that she go to the gardaí.
“I wish they could have given me better advice,” she says.
In desperation, Kathleen proposed the family move to Portugal in the hope that proximity to his own family might sooth Sergio but, after no improvement, they returned to Ireland six months later, in January 2019.
“He returned angrier than ever,” she says. “He was smoking a lot of cannabis. After we came back, he wanted anal sex as a treat. I said I didn’t want that,” says Kathleen, who had undergone bowel surgery in her early 20s.
For his birthday in July 2019, she bought tickets for an Eddie Vedder concert at the 3Arena in Dublin and booked two nights in the Gibson Hotel for both of them. When she told him about it in February so that he could book time off work, he replied: ‘Anal that night.’ She lived in dread for the next five months.
On the night of the concert, he said: ‘It’s my birthday. You’re my wife. I deserve a treat.’ He raped her anally. Throughout, she pleaded with him to stop. He continued until she bled. When he eventually stopped, he was angry. ‘It’s my birthday and you won’t even let me finish,’ he said. Instead, he ejaculated on to her face. Afterwards, she went to the bathroom to wash and weep. When she emerged about an hour later, he was asleep.
The weekend after the concert, she confided in a friend. “That’s rape, whether he’s your husband or not. You have to leave him. You have to go to the guards,” her friend urged. Still, Kathleen was reluctant to “get him into trouble”.
I knew I was going to have to fight for my story to be believed. On Monday, the judge made some very strong remarks and I was very glad
— Kathleen Correia
She was the main financial provider in the family. Sergio’s sole obligation was to pay the rent. When she learned a week after the Dublin trip that it had not been paid, she told him to leave.
“I knew after the Dublin trip I couldn’t stay with him any more. I was so worn down from so long living with him and not being listened to. I was like a robot going through the motions. I had a husband who was addicted to drugs and raping me.”
Her mental health started to break down. She stopped eating, became obsessive about exercising and lost nearly 20kg in weight. She was driven to change the appearance of the body that had endured the abuse. She was referred to the adult mental health service but it was when she contacted Bodywhys, the Eating Disorders Association of Ireland, that her recovery began. Her “brilliant” counsellor explained what is meant by coercive control. He suggested she get a solicitor and go to the gardaí. She also got support from Women’s Aid and the Rape Crisis Centre, which she continues to attend every week. The gardaí she dealt with in the western region’s Special Protection Service were “kind and compassionate and treated me with dignity”, she says.
He was charged in 2022. Before the trial began, she told her two oldest children the facts in what was “the hardest conversation of my life”. She has told the youngest his daddy is in Portugal. She braced herself for the courtroom and the “hell on earth” cross-examination.
“I knew I was going to have to fight for my story to be believed. On Monday, the judge made some very strong remarks and I was very glad.”
[ Assailant given eight years for rape and coercive control of wifeOpens in new window ]
At the end of the trial, she sent a message from the Central Criminal Court to her lifelong friends on their WhatsApp group called The Young Ones. “I’ve been waiting a very long time to tell you this but due to circumstances I couldn’t ...,” she wrote. “Sergio has been convicted of rape and coercive control ... It has been very hard to conceal this part of my life from you.”
At the sentencing, she waived her right to anonymity because she wanted no more secrecy, only to live “authentically” and to let other women know “there is hope” if they “just talk to someone”. One woman has already told her “you could be describing my life with my husband of 36 years”.
“The trail of destruction continues. My children have lost their father. Their birthdays and Christmases – there will be no daddy. I’ve lost my marriage and the life I’d hoped to live. But I stood up for myself and I was believed. I wasn’t inadequate. I wasn’t a bad wife,” says Kathleen.
Do you think he loved you?
“I used to think he did but you can’t love somebody who would do that to you, so, no, I don’t. It was all about control.”
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article you can contact the Rape Crisis Helpline (1800-778888)
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