Nicola Adams has revealed that slept with a hammer under her pillow as a child to defend herself from her mother’s abusive partner.
The boxing champion, 39, grew up on a council estate in Leeds and suffered abuse from her father, Innocent, before her mother, Denver, started dating another abusive man.
She has now told The Sun: ‘It was horrible. I couldn’t understand why it had happened, and I remember asking my mum: “How have we ended up in this situation again?” I’d been through a lot already, and this guy was a lot bigger than my dad. I knew there was no way I’d be able to stop him if anything serious happened.’ It was then that she decided that she would have to sleep with a hammer under her pillow so she could defend herself and her mother.

Although he wasn’t abusive towards her, Nicola still felt scared. She went on to say: ‘One night I’d just had enough. I went downstairs and took the hammer and said: “You need to leave the house now or I’m going to use it.” ‘I remember I was scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen, I just knew I had to do something. As soon as I had, I was thinking: “Oh c**p, I’m here now, and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”‘
After this, she followed him to the car with the weapon and made sure he wouldn’t come back to their home before throwing a brick through his car window as he drove away. Nicola spent most of her childhood scared of her father because he would lash out at her with a fist or belt for just being late home. It was because of this that she got used to feeling scared and sadly most of the time, and has since had to have trauma therapy.

Author: Andrew Collins
andrewc@gmail.com
London, UK
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