‘I stood up for myself and I was believed,’ says Kathleen Correia, who was raped and coercively controlled by her then husband, Sergio Correia
‘I knew ... I couldn’t stay with him any more ... I had a husband who was addicted to drugs and raping me’
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. 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.
She says that sometimes when she went to bed, he left lingerie on the pillow that she’d have to wear. Kathleen Correia speaking to the media on Monday outside the Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin, where her husband, Sergio Correia, was sentenced to eight years in jail. Photograph: Collins 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.
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”.
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