My loving mother was secretly a psychopath who force-fed me toxic substances. I thought I'd escaped her as an adult - until she tried to POISON my husband: KAREN TEASDALE

'Karen, listen,' the voice at the end of the phone said. 'Mum is planning to poison Kenny. She's going to put poison in his coffee.' Then the line went dead. The caller was my older brother Brian, warning me that our 72-year-old mother – yes, mother – was planning to poison my partner of five years. His warning came in good time; Mum showed up at my front door 20 minutes later and soon offered to make Kenny a coffee. Standing by the kettle, I saw her clutching something. I grabbed her hand and, peeling back her fingers, saw she was holding some white tablets, which she shoved in her pocket and claimed were hers. You might read this tale and think Brian or I are fantasists – that there was a perfectly innocent explanation for an older woman carrying medication. I only wish that were true. Because this was not my mother Isobel's first attempt to harm a family member. My childhood had been indelibly marked by her abuse. And, as shocking as it sounds, I'd long had my suspicions that my mother had deliberately been giving me toxic substances to make me ill, in a twisted bid for the power and attention she craved. At 46, I had long left home and was trying to shake off the lingering effects of my traumatic childhood. But, clearly, my mother had not lost her taste for inflicting agony on those closest to her. Karen Teasdale says her childhood was marked by her mother's abuse. She even suspected that she was deliberately giving her toxic substances to make her unwell Aged 74, Karen's mother ended up in hospital, where experts said her brain scans showed all the hallmarks being a psychopath Karen was just four years old the first time she remembers being attacked by her mother. Even though she knew it was wrong, she soon learned to keep it secret – or else face further abuse Almost three years later, when she was 74 and had ended up in hospital, I would be told by experts that her brain scans showed all the hallmarks of her being a psychopath. They also told me they believed she suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy – a mental illness in which a caregiver fabricates or actively causes the illness of a child or vulnerable person in their care to generate attention. Sadly, it all came much too late to protect me. As a young woman, Mum was beautiful, petite with blonde hair and blue eyes. She met my father, also called Brian, at a dance in 1956 and they'd married soon after. My brother Brian was born in 1959 and I came along six years later. Dad owned a building business and my mother ran her own successful boutique near our home in Newcastle upon Tyne. To her customers, neighbours and friends she was the always immaculately turned-out business owner. A loving wife who adored her two perfect children. The first time I remember my mother attacking me, I was four. Playing in the bath with Brian, then ten, she stormed in, furious at the noise and lashed me viciously with a belt, ignoring my screams. It would be the start of decades of torture, both physical and psychological. Every little 'fault' on my part would be greeted with a torrent of abuse. Even as a young child, I knew this was wrong. But I quickly learned the importance of keeping it a secret. Aged five, I'd blurted out, 'My mummy doesn't love me' to my favourite teacher. When Mum was called into the school office a few hours later, she turned to me with her sweetest smile. 'Why on earth would you say that? Of course I love you. What an awful thing to say about your mum.' The smile lasted until we were out of sight of the school. Then I was dragged through our front door and thrown against the wall before she rained down blows upon me. As a young woman, Karen's mother was beautiful, petite with blonde hair and blue eyes. She met Karen's father, also called Brian, at a dance in 1956 and they married soon after Yet despite having no qualms about beating me into oblivion, Mum was obsessed with my health, constantly taking me to the GP or hospital and insisting there was something wrong. She pointed to a non-existent lump on my neck, the stomach pains she claimed I suffered from, a headache that she was certain was a tumour. I felt fine but went along with it out of abject fear. To her fury, a succession of doctors told her I was perfectly healthy. Yet to her friends, she'd sigh, 'They don't know what's wrong with her', lip trembling, drinking in the sympathy. When I was six she began spraying a horrible green liquid into my throat daily. Dragging me to the GPs, she convinced the doctors that I needed to have my tonsils removed. I was too terrified to tell them the only time my throat hurt was when she was spraying me. To this day, I have no idea what the liquid was. At seven, a daily teaspoon of white powder replaced the liquid. It tasted foul and, within hours, I was vomiting, in agony and dizzy. Declaring I needed more 'medicine', there was another teaspoon and I was kept home for weeks. You may be wondering what my father was doing all this time. He was a gentle giant and regularly a target of both her words and her fists. Yet she managed to hide most of her abuse of me from him, explaining away the rest. I was too scared to confide in him; Mum had told me that if I did, I'd be taken away. As I became increasingly unwell, Dad became very worried about me. But Mum was so dominant that he went along with her judgment. Karen and her brother Brian were once close, but her mother pitted them against each other, even forcing Brian to join in with her cruel abuse by hitting his sister if she misbehaved My only source of comfort came from, perhaps surprisingly, my mother's parents, especially my grandma. I'd spend weekends and school holidays at her house and loved her dearly. Sometimes, Grandma would talk about Mum as a child, telling me how she'd have tantrums and tell lies for attention. But I don't think she had any idea of the extent of what Mum was doing to me. The fact that I wasn't ill when I stayed with Grandma didn't seem to register with anyone. As soon as I was home, Mum would declare I was looking unwell and reach for the teaspoon. While she eventually stopped giving me 'medicine', my spates of vomiting continued into my teenage years. I suspect she was putting it in my food. But this wasn't her only form of torture. As young children, my brother and I had been close. But Mum saw this as a threat to the control she had over us, so used a toxic mix of favouritism and cruelty to instil jealousy and tear us apart. Though Brian suffered from her physical abuse too, he became her golden child. She'd tell everyone he was a musical genius, playing the piano, guitar and drums, who would one day be famous. I, meanwhile, was the failure, paying for even the tiniest of rebellions. After hitting me, she made Brian do the same – a cruelty that deeply affected both of us. Yet by far the sickest of her punishments came the day when I was 13 that she discovered that I'd skipped school with a friend. Thrusting a spade into my hands, she pointed to the garden. 'You're going to dig your own grave,' she hissed, her face purple with rage. In abject terror, and having urinated on myself in fear, I dug for what felt like hours as she watched me from the window, before screaming at me to go to bed. Not that long after this, when I was 14, I became terribly ill. For weeks, I vomited green bile until, one day, unable to get up from the sofa without being sick, Mum suddenly loomed over me and screamed, 'I wish you'd just hurry up and die'. In that moment, I truly believed she wanted me dead. In her fury, she'd forgotten that a family friend was visiting. He stared at us in shock. Nowadays you'd report such behaviour but the concept of safeguarding simply didn't exist back then. Clearly, though, Mum was worried about the fact she'd let her guard down in front of someone else. The friend's obvious horror at what he'd witnessed gave me the courage to tell a friend's mum: 'I think my mum is poisoning me.' But rather than listen, she was appalled. How dare I say something so shocking about my own mother? Her words left me deeply ashamed and I told myself that clearly my mother was right; I was the problem. Though I left home at 18, I was still a cowed and battered child, terrified of disappointing Mum and craving her approval. My lack of self-esteem led me into unhealthy relationships. In my 20s, I spent eight years with a man 17 years older who treated me badly. I didn't think I deserved any better. In 1994, aged 28, I met Steve, who charmed me with the promise of starting a family. Ten months after meeting, I gave birth to my beautiful twin boys Christopher and Stephen. I was overwhelmed with love and a fierce instinct to protect them. When I married Steve at 33, when the boys were four, I told myself we'd be a happy family. But Mum hated my happiness and independence. She started turning up at the house whenever she wanted and I felt powerless to stop her. When Karen got married and had children, she told herself they would be a happy family. But her mother hated her newfound joy and independence... She began to suggest that Steve was cheating on me. Not long after, I found strange make-up and underwear in our bedroom, which Mum crowed were proof of his infidelity. She then declared he was trying to poison me, insisting on bringing her own coffee for us both. Soon, I started to feel ill again. Believing that Mum was right and that the twins and I were in danger, I took the boys and left. Steve, of course, fiercely denied any wrongdoing. With the benefit of hindsight, it's obvious Mum was behind the underwear and the 'poison'. But then, I was still so traumatised from years under her influence that I couldn't see it. Mum was triumphant about the divorce; I was back in her power again. A few years later, aged 40, I reunited with a childhood friend, Kenny. We fell in love and for the first time I felt safe enough to share my life story. I knew if Mum found out about my new relationship she'd be furious, so I tried to keep it a secret. Of course, my efforts were in vain. I told her not to visit on a day Kenny was over, making some excuse about why I'd be busy. She ignored me and, turning up at the house, was met by the sight of my boyfriend. I knew she was furious but even I couldn't have dreamed what she'd go on to try to do about it. I later received that phone call from Brian warning me that Mum was moving her poisoning campaign onto Kenny. Astonishingly, she'd explicitly told him of her plans, believing – after all those decades of manipulating us both – that he'd never dare to warn me. Thank goodness she was wrong. After she turned up and I wrestled those white pills out of her hand, Mum made her excuses and left. Kenny was horrified. 'She's evil,' he told me. And yet, I still couldn't cut the cord. Deep down, I still wanted her love. From then on I never ate or drank anything she brought over. Mum realised her grip on me was slipping – and it made her furious. Dad, then in his 70s and frail, became her primary victim. I was terrified, knowing he was completely dependent on her, but when I contacted social services they didn't seem to be able to help. Despite begging him to live with me he refused, saying he didn't want to be a burden. Then, 11 days before my wedding to Kenny in 2011, the police called. Dad had been found on the floor of their home, having suffered a huge bleed on the brain. The damage was so severe that he would need 24-hour care for the rest of his life. Mum, then 73, and Brian – who was back living at home after getting divorced – were both arrested, which indicates the police thought the circumstances were suspicious. Because they both insisted Dad had just fallen over, and he couldn't speak to give a statement, they were let go. But social services were concerned. I told them that Dad had been worried for his life, that Mum's sweet little old lady act was a farce. They started looking into Mum's mental health, which in turn brought a social worker and a psychiatric nurse to my door. After Karen's father died from a suspicious brain bleed, which her mother insisted was simply due to a fall, social workers finally began to show concern and investigate  'Now aged 61, I have worked hard to become a woman that I'm proud of,' writes Karen. 'I still have moments of deep hurt for what Mum did... yet I refuse live in anger' To this day, I don't know what went on in Mum's assessments but the revelations were shocking. 'Karen,' one said carefully, 'We believe your mother is suffering from Munchausen's by proxy.' I sobbed as years of pain came pouring out. I felt grief too. In the end she was my mother, the only one I'd ever had. And unbelievable as it might seem, I still loved her. She ended up being sectioned in January 2013. I still don't know what triggered it. It was then that the second bombshell dropped. I received a call from her psychiatrist, who informed me that a scan had showed that Mum, by then 74, had extensive scarring to the frontal lobe of her brain. They believed it had been there all her life but didn't know what had caused it. The doctor explained this is the part of the brain that controls emotion and empathy. 'It's the same area that is affected in the brain of psychopaths.' I nearly dropped the phone, my mind flashing back to the decades of unspeakable abuse I'd endured. This explained it all. You might think that hearing there was a medical explanation for her behaviour made it somehow more forgiveable. But I thought back to a conversation she'd once had with my husband Kenny. 'You can do anything you want to your own children,' she told him smugly, 'and they will always love you.' Whether her behaviour was the result of brain damage or not, these were calculated choices she had made. She was responsible for every horror she had inflicted. Around this time, I went back to her house and found drawers containing ant poison, painkillers and amitriptyline – a heavy-duty antidepressant. The carefully crafted arsenal she'd tortured us with for years. It made me sick to see it. Soon after she was diagnosed with dementia and transferred from the psychiatric unit to a secure care home for people with complex mental health issues. I only saw her a handful of times. A year later, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and given just days to live. Even on her deathbed, I felt compelled to tell her I loved her. She was completely unmoved. The next morning, aged 75, she was gone. She was mourned by nobody. People say you must forgive in order to move on but, 13 years later, I don't agree. I still have moments of deep hurt for what Mum did to me, to Dad and Brian, who died eight and 11 years after she did. Yet I refuse live in anger. That would just be another burden for me to carry. Instead, now aged 61, I have worked hard to become a woman that I'm proud of – one who no longer lives in fear. I see now that I was reborn the day that Mum died. Poison Kisses by Karen Teasdale is out now (£12.99, amazon.co.uk)