Belinda's Domestic Violence Story

In her domestic violence story, Belinda tells of years of emotional, verbal and physical abuse in Jamaica, finally being faced with the need of fleeing abuse or being killed by her husband. This is her story:

I grew up in a small country town in the majestic mountains of Jamaica. Born to an English ex-pat Mum and a Jamaican Dad, I had a very comfortable upbringing. I lived in a large bungalow with my brother and one of my sisters. My two older sisters were away. One was studying nursing in the UK. The other was in the US military. We all attended the most prestigious schools. I was the baby of the family.

I don’t remember a time in my life when my parents had a normal loving relationship. They never got on and their lengthy arguments were an accepted part of our lives. My father hated my maternal grandmother’s alleged interference in their marriage. My mother complained constantly about everything and yet seldom did anything to change things. She remains the same to this day, constantly pessimistic and still complaining about my father even though he has been dead for 6 years now.

They did eventually get divorced and my father remarried. My mother says she can’t be ‘bothered with men’ and is her elderly mother’s carer. They divorced when I was 16 but the damage had been done. I had spent my entire childhood witnessing nothing but the negative side of relationships and the impact had been made.

When I was 16 I was allowed to have some sort of social life while attending boarding school and visiting my older sister on the weekends. I began socializing with a group of middle class kids from decent families and it was in this circle that I met my abuser.

He was the ‘rude boy’ of the group. Riding motor bikes and winning endless trophies for motor cross races. He was very handsome and very charming. I liked him but my father had a strict ‘no boyfriends’ policy for his daughters. I was almost 18 before we became a couple. I saw the first sign of jealousy only one week into our relationship. I was flattered, a near fatal mistake.

My older sister expressed some concern but I dismissed it as her being over-protective. He had gotten quiet and sulky for me talking to another guy on only the second date! Things rapidly got worse from then on. He wanted to go everywhere I went, needed to keep tabs on my whereabouts at all times, and constantly accused me of being unfaithful. He started breaking down my self esteem almost immediately, asking me if I didn’t think I should have an exercise program [like his mum and sister] to stop me getting any fatter. I was 5 feet 6 inches and weighed 115 lbs. He told me if I didn’t take any pride in the way I looked he would cheat on me. I was a stunningly gorgeous, exotic young lady but when I looked in the mirror I was not longer happy.

He gave me a nick name which referred to me looking like a duck.[Muggy quacks.] He called me this in a ‘loving’ manner and manipulated me into thinking it was true. He began discouraging me from attending my hotel management course classes and had 1001 ‘good’ reasons why I should stop seeing all my friends. He drew power from the strong views of morality present in the Caribbean to discount my mostly American friends as being ‘druggies’ or gays [batty man] or sexually promiscuous. He was in fact the one with the raging marijuana and alcohol addictions and it wasn’t long before I joined him.

I began missing my classes and no longer wanted to hang out with my school friends. We were out clubbing constantly and I was drunk 4 -5 times a week. At one point I was popping illegally obtained prescription drugs in my tequila shots. He didn’t know about this, but ‘prince valium’ made thing better for a few hours. I was very lively and bubbly and soon won the hearts of all his friends. This opened a whole new can of worms.

It wasn’t too long before he was accusing me of sleeping with all his friends. His campaign of degradation intensified. He stopped being ‘nice’ about it and started calling me a whore, slut and ‘skettel’[patois for cheap prostitute] These words went through me like a hot knife through butter. Taking into account that a ‘good’ woman’ in the Caribbean is one who is pure and chaste when single and monogamous and loyal when in a relationship.

This verbal abuse continues even now two years after leaving the relationship and has severely impacted my ability to resume dating without feeling intense guilt and shame. For the time being, I basically isolate myself from potential relationships. I am stubbornly optimistic however that I will one day meet the ‘right’ person and remarry.

The relationship carried on getting more and more aggressive and 3 months on I decided to end it. He broke down completely into a sobbing wreck and began spinning a sad tale of neglect, poverty and being adopted and never really ‘fitting in’ I was the first person who made him feel loved and wanted and without me he had no reason for living. He would kill himself.[a promise that he has made several hundred times since then but has failed to fulfill] He reeled me back in, told me he loved me for the first time. I was sold.

There were a few months of the kind of intense bliss that you can only get from your first true love. He was just about the best he could be. I began spending most of my time with his family and neglecting my own. My grades suffered and my life began to revolve entirely around him. My father had rented me a great apartment in a prestigious neighborhood overlooking Kingston. He moved in, although I can’t remember ever discussing this with him or agreeing to anything. This was kept secret as I could never have admitted to my family as they did not like him and saw him as unsuitable due to his lack of a college education as well as the changes I had gone through since seeing him. This was 1 year into our relationship.

Soon after him moving in he began to change not just back to his old self but into a cold and frightening alter ego. A real life Jekyll and Hyde. I remember having an argument in the kitchen of his parents house and being pushed gently by him as his sister watched. It was as though he was testing the waters to see what he could get away with. She scolded him to no avail and later pulled me aside and whispered, ‘leave him, get out!’

He soon began controlling me financially and this was not hard as he used to collect my fairly generous allowance for me from my sister’s office. He simply would collect it and pocket it. Saying he needed it more than I did. There were days when I went without lunch at college as he refused to give me my own money.

I remember when I first felt intense fear of him. He had started one of many jobs to come. It entailed him waking up early, he insisted on me waking up before him to get his breakfast ready and his clothes ironed before he arose for work. I am not a morning person and the first morning when I objected to being woken up so early, I was tipped from the bed the mattress landing on top of me. I was dragged from under the mattress by my feet resulting in carpet burns to my face and body. I was terrified. I got up and did as I was told in a state of total shock and disbelief. I was from an uptown family. This didn’t happen to girls like me. I didn’t even consider telling anyone. The shame was too great. I set my alarm and was up before him everyday from then on. The physical abuse had begun.

He began insisting on the house being run according to a strict regime. He was a dictator who could not be pleased. Everything had to be perfect. I stopped going to college in order to have everything perfect for him. He rang constantly throughout the day to find out what I was doing. If I took more than 2 rings to answer the phone then I ‘must have been cheating on him’ and so couldn’t reach the phone in time. I went nowhere without him as he convinced me that it was not safe for a ‘country girl’ to be out and about alone in the city. He would show up unexpectedly several times a day to see if I was ‘ok’. I dreaded friends popping by in case he ‘caught’ them there, for I knew there would be hell to pay if he did. I spent all day cleaning, ironing and cooking to his liking and inevitably I would always screw up somehow.

On a few occasions he locked me in the house while he went to work. I would panic and shout for the landlord who lived upstairs and when he questioned my abuser he would have the keys planted somewhere obvious and say I was a bit ‘stupid’ and hadn’t had the sense to find them. He convinced me that I was ‘not right in the head’ and constantly asked me if I had been sexually abused as a child as I showed signs of being dysfunctional and I was very promiscuous.

One weekend I was invited to go on a mountain retreat with my sisters. I agreed, realizing I needed a break. I decided that through hell or high water I was going and on my own. He protested but I stubbornly insisted and when they came to pick me up, he resorted to grabbing my weekend bag and locking himself in the bathroom with it. The only way I could get him out was to allow him to come with me. He did so, despite not being on the guest list. Saying he had to know who I had been intending to sleep with that weekend. In retrospect this act is so pathetic and shameless that it gives me some insight into just how little he thinks of himself. At the time it was just plain scary.

On that trip, he selected my alleged ‘lover’ from the group we were with. I barely knew the person and his campaign of violence intensified over the next few months centering on this person and another mutual friend whom had actually introduced us. By now I was regularly being slapped across the face for ‘answering back’ and had become the most skilled makeup artist on the island. Violence soon became an accepted part of my life. I always fought back and always lost. Fighting back only made it worse and the violence escalated. My alcohol addiction spiraled out of control and my drinking skills were unrivalled by anyone but my abuser. He always got drunker than anyone else and smoked more weed too. I was actively practicing disassociation by now. I had learned the trick of escaping my body during attacks by curling up in the corner, rocking and humming with my hands over my eyes and ears. This just fueled his insanity argument and he convinced me I was crazy and should be glad I had him as I’d never get anyone else. I was lucky he put up with me.

Over the next few years I was degraded in every imaginable way. By now I was a typical battered woman. Always walking on eggshells. Suffering all the side effects of stress and doing everything my abuser said. I ‘knew’ that I was fat and ugly and deserved no better. I was a promiscuous slut and was lucky he would even touch me. He spoke highly of all his past lovers and constantly threatened to cheat on me. I do remembering him commenting on the only other serious relationship he had been in before, saying that, ‘after she ended it, the only way she had managed to get rid of him was by sleeping with another guy at which point he no longer wanted her.’

The next few years became a blur of alcohol, marijuana and violence. Our life was like a hip hop video gone wrong. A flashy lifestyle funded by drug money hid my middle class secret. Exclusive parties led to excess alcohol and marijuana use, which led to more accusations and beatings. Most of our friends seemed willing to turn a blind eye to the violence and those that didn’t were quickly excluded from our lives.

He always seemed to be in an altercation with some bad character or the other and everywhere we went we were involved in some form of trouble. On several occasions I received threatening phone calls from unknown persons whom he had ripped off or owed money to. Then one day he brought home a gun. I knew he had applied for a licensed fire arm but it had not been granted. He’d just bought a gun off the streets and brought it into our home. I was shown how to use it if a ‘situation’ arose. I knew I was most likely to be the ‘situation’. His father intervened and convinced him to get rid of it. I was relieved as I was sure the gun had a dubious past. It looked suspiciously like a police issue hand gun. They are frequently missing from the bodies of police killed during drug wars in West Kingston. What was the limit for this guy?

I stood faithfully by him through all he did and was subject to shocking brutality at the drop of a hat. I can remember cooking a lovely Sunday breakfast and presenting it with great pride, only to have him look me in the eye and tip it onto the floor before the plate whizzed past my head and shattered against the wall. I was ‘wasting money’ cooking like that and it tasted like crap anyway.’ This despite my budding talent in culinary arts which had been cut short by his insistence at me leaving school.

I was being beaten now at least twice a week and verbally abused everyday. I was thrown to the floor, choked, kicked and bitten. I remember him throwing me to the floor and stepping on my neck with his boot. As I struggled to breathe he leant down and spat in my face. Blackness closed in and I remember him saying, ‘I will kill you one day, I promise you that!’ In his eyes was pure evil. I didn’t know who that man was. He was a stranger.

On several occasions I was pinned to the wall and I had glowing cigarettes held so close to my eye that it singed my eyebrows. I had him once ask me my worst fear and I foolishly disclosed that it was having my throat cut. On several occasions he pressed the blade of his hunting knife so firmly to my throat that it left a mark.

I was hit in the head with a flash light once and a baseball bat another time. I received a broken tooth from being head butted [I have kept this as a reminder] and was psychologically tortured on many occasions by him waking me every single time I fell asleep for the whole night. I have been dragged across the floor by my hair and a few time had my head crunched between the door and the door frame more than once with him gradually applying pressure until my screams were the most primal sound of an animal losing the fight for survival.

I have felt physical pain that was so intense it caused me to black out momentarily. My injuries were unfortunately never seen by a doctor but I’m sure there would still be signs of abuse if I was examined today. I was punched in the nose in the early days of my abuse and that was the first time he drew my blood. He seemed to enjoy it. I have been punched in the stomach and had a rope noose tightened around my neck. A large sharp machete raised over my head and I have been hog tied with ropes resulting in very painful rope burns. I have been slammed into walls and sent head first into a large mirror breaking it. I have been raped for refusing sex and forced into sexual acts I did not want to participate in, only to be degraded later for having submitted to them. I have had a bottle of bleach poured into my aquarium killing my pet fish given to me by my sister. I have had my head slammed into the passenger window of our car while he skillfully managed to stay on the road. And he insisted on driving recklessly at high speeds in a bid to frighten me into submission.

About 3 years into the relationship I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke it off with him. I changed my locks and put his things out. He became hysterical at the thought of losing his control over me. His campaign of stalking was far more terrifying than his campaign of abuse. He lingered outside my flat 24 hours a day. The police were not trained to deal with domestic violence and were no help at all. They were hours in coming and once there, simply escorted him down the road told him to behave and then released him. Everywhere I went he was there. One night he turned up drunk, ripped down my phone wires and unleashed a myriad of threats describing in great detail what he would do to me and my family if I left him. He filled a beer bottle with lamp oil and made a Molotov cocktail which he lit and and tried to force through my window. The bottle wouldn’t fit through the security bars and my screams alerted the landlord who made him leave.

I tried my best to cope with my new life as his ‘prisoner’ but it wasn’t working. I knew that this way of leaving would not work. He was going to murder me in the end. I had no doubts about that. It was either now or a few years from now. I chose to have a bit longer to live. I went back to him.

However the most shocking part of this story was four God awful years later, when he asked me to marry him and I said yes! Six weeks after the wedding, I was pregnant. I remember showing him the positive pregnancy test. He just nodded and said absolutely nothing more about it that day. We were off at the beach for the day and I decided to tell him in public in case he had a ‘bad reaction’. That evening when he got home, he discovered that two of my Alsatians, the apple of my eye and only source of happiness, had killed several of his pigs. I was unpacking the car when I heard a blood curdling shriek followed by an endless animalistic bawling. I dropped my bags and ran to the source of the noise. My abuser had my two dogs in the pig pen beating them relentlessly with a 2 inch x 4 inch piece of board. I tried to stop him but he pushed me to the ground and carried on with his massacre. It was raining heavily and I picked up the smaller of the two dogs who was already unconscious and carried her, skidding through the mud, to the back of the house. I hid her under a bush and quickly returned hoping to save the other larger dog. My abuser had stopped beating him and disappeared to search for the second dog. My dog lay on his side covered in blood and gasping for air as blood bubbled from his mouth and nose. I fell to my knees and held his badly broken body in my arms as he took his final breath. Sobbing, ‘I’m so sorry boy, I’m so sorry.’ Once he took his last rasping breath, I buried my head in his fur and screamed, ‘ NO!’ repeatedly for what seemed like an eternity. It was at that moment that I accepted that this man was a sick, brutal killer and I couldn’t raise my baby like this. I had to make an escape plan.

During my pregnancy I was rarely allowed to visit the doctor. Nothing changed in his attitude towards me although he was seemingly pleased about becoming a father. He still spoke down to me and teased me for being fat. The house was never well stocked with food and I struggled to eat healthily. I formulated a plan to give my baby a chance in life. My mother is English and I have the right of abode in the UK. For my son to be a British citizen he would have to be born in the UK. I knew that when I finally left him I would have to leave everything behind and restart my life where he couldn’t reach me. I told him that if I was allowed to go to my mother in England, all the medical bills would be paid for by my family.

Being so unwilling to spend his money on anything else but drink, he quickly agreed. Arrangements were made for me to go o the UK in October when I was 5 months pregnant. Not before however; being pushed over the side of the bath for mismatching his socks. I left as planned and finished off my pregnancy in the safety of my mother’s home. While I was away, he was challenged about his behavior by one of my sisters who had been through a similar relationship. I wished she had known better, as this caused severely escalated levels of violence when I returned with the new baby. [It is worth mentioning that it can be dangerous to challenge an abusive partner while the person you are concerned about is still in the abusive relationship.]While I was away, My abuser also got a local barmaid pregnant and my family kept that a secret until 6 months after I left him.

Life with the baby was very bitter sweet. He was the apple of his father’s eye, but that meant grave consequences for mummy if things weren’t perfect. The abuse had been fueled by my sister’s uncalculated interference and things were deteriorating faster than ever. He said he no longer needed me as he now had his son. I was told almost daily that he was going to kill me. He seemed to think of little else lately but ways to make me unhappy. He missed work and disappeared nearly every night.

His breaking point came when he lost his job. Now we really had no food on the table and with a new baby to take care of, things were drastically worse. Now he had all the time in the world to abuse me. He stayed in bed late and the shouting started from the moment he opened his eyes to the moment until the moment he left to go ‘wherever’ it was he spent his evenings nowadays. He said he couldn’t stand the sight of me in my post natal condition and that I bored him. He called me a fat slut, said the baby was not his and said how much he hated my body. I disgusted him. I was nothing. I deserved nothing.

One Sunday afternoon he promised to take the baby and I out for the evening. He was out as usual and told me he would pick us up at 5pm. 5 came and went and no sign of him. I rang his mobile repeatedly. He didn’t answer. I began to get worried and continued ringing. He finally answered his phone at around 3am. He said he was at a friend’s house, but there was loud music in the background. Then in the background the DJ said the name of the club. It was a sleazy strip joint. He staggered in at 5am the next morning.

Things worsened after we had a category 5 hurricane and lost our roof and most of our belongings. We moved into my brothers half built house as my abuser was still jobless and unable to provide another source of accommodation. It was little more than a construction site at the time and for 6 months life was very rough. He blamed me for everything and the abuse was unbearable. What’s more, he was now directly involving the baby in the abuse now. He would pick up the poor thing and shout at him, ‘look at your stupid mother, she’s a whore, she’s no good, we’ll get rid of her.’ The baby would scream till he was red in the face but dad felt no sympathy whatsoever. He got some kind of a sick thrill from controlling two people instead of one. At Christmas time, he threw a fit and smashed our Christmas tree and all our presents. That was my baby’s first Christmas.

One day out of the blue, he said, ‘your days are numbered bitch , I’ll slit your throat and dump your body where no one will find you until you stink!’ I waited for him to go into the shower and then grabbed the baby and his diaper bag, jumped into the car and drove away. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going. But I headed for the city and went to his mother’s house. I told her what was going on and begged her to get him some counseling. I was flabbergasted by her response, when she said, ‘It takes two to tango honey! Stop provoking my son and he will treat you better. You must be a submissive wife and stop arguing with him.’ She then phoned him to come and get us. I needn’t tell you that there was hell to pay in the months to come.

The death threats worsened and I didn’t think I had very long left. He stopped hiding his abuse and was now degrading me in public and in the presence of friends. People drew away from us. Not knowing how to handle the situation. I was so isolated. I was miserable and getting desperate. I seriously considered suicide and was actually contemplating what method I would choose. I remember on a particularly violent day, cowering in the wardrobe clutching a bottle of pesticide. I was ready to drink it, when the doors opened and there he was, holding the baby. He said, ‘look son, she’s going to kill herself because she’s a whore, we will be better off with just you and me anyway.’ I looked at my son and changed my mind. I had to get him away from that monster.

My life carried on getting worse and I was now contemplating killing my abuser. I was so messed up that this seemed like an actual, valid option. I was willing to sacrifice my life and take my abuser’s life to give my son freedom. One day he was changing a tire on the car and was crouched with his back turned to me. He had called me and I hadn’t heard him due to his music being so loud. He started shouting, ‘come here you stupid slut! Get off your fat ass and come here!’ His back was turned and I crept up behind him holding a large wrench. I didn’t think I would hit him, I just got a kick out of standing right behind him armed with a weapon and having him totally oblivious to how vulnerable he was. I realized then how far I would go in my fight for freedom. It was frightening but also liberating. I had had enough. I was going to get out!

A few weeks later he was changing the battery in his newly acquired land cruiser jeep. This is a vehicle of considerable size and being an older model, was very heavy. As he reached in to get at the battery, he knocked the hood catch out of place. The hood came slamming down on his arm trapping him. He was stuck! I couldn’t believe it. I was peeping through an upstairs window and watched him panic. I didn’t run to help him even when he started screaming for me like I was his mummy. Then I realized, I was laughing! I didn’t fear him then. Just then I saw him for what he was. A pathetic coward, who needed me more than I had ever needed him. My psychological liberation had begun.

About a month later, carnival came around. I got a bit of work at events in the city, so we packed up and made the trip to the capital. I did 3 full days work and then we decided to attend the parade on the Sunday before returning home. We attended and had a good day , however the conversation turned evil as usual on the way home. ‘ why were you looking at Adam like that? You’re sleeping with him aren’t you? You filthy little whore!’ I looked straight ahead as he drove and simply said, ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that in front of my son!’ He laughed and said, ‘I’ll speak to you any how I feel! You are my wife and you belong to me!’ The biggest argument we had had to date began at that moment. It didn’t take long to become violent and he was shoving my head repeatedly whilst driving.

I had enough of his crap. I punched him in the side of his head. He veered off the road and stopped the car. ‘What did you just do?’ he asked. ‘You’ve done it this time , I’m going to kill you!’ Then he was on me, slapping me and grabbing my hair. I kicked him and he grabbed my throat. He reached for his knife and I felt around under my seat desperately for my chef’s knives. I found my paring knife and cut him on the leg, then twice on the chest and across his cheek. He was stunned. He started screaming, ‘you’re killing me, oh my God stop, your killing me!’ I jumped over to the back seat of the car and undid the baby’s car seat. He had witnessed all of this and was screaming hysterically .I grabbed up the baby and alighted from the car. As I ran, I made two hysterical phone calls. One to my brother and one to my mother in law. I told my brother my location and what had happened. If I was going to be murdered, he wasn’t going to get away with it.

We were on a dark isolated road, there were some lights in the distance maybe a quarter of a mile away. I could see many cars and hear faint music. If I could make it there I would be safe. I knew they would protect me and my baby and my abuser would be in big trouble if they chose to confront him. Jamaican men are very protective of mothers and babies and vigilante justice is not uncommon. I saw head lights from behind me as I ran. I looked back and to my horror, it was my abuser’s car. He was only superficially wounded and was following me. He jumped out of the car and caught up with me. He was holding his knife in his right hand as he grabbed the baby’s arm with the other. ‘Give me my son!’ He shouted. He raised the knife and just then I heard another car approaching . He put the knife down, and I opened my eyes which had been tightly shut since he raised the knife. Now look what you’ve done, it’s Babylon.’ He said. A police car was approaching and before it even stopped, the door of the highway patrol car were flung open and three heavily armed officers jumped out. They were in full combat gear including M16 machine guns. They pointed there guns at him and shouted, ‘Hands up, hands up! Get back from her!’ He let the baby go and put his hands up. They searched him and began questioning him. In the mean time they told me to get into the patrol car with the baby.

As I said before, the police in Jamaica are not specifically trained to deal with domestic violence and the laws are a bit vague. They however took us back to the police station and both families were called. After what felt like an eternity my brother and his Mother and step father turned up. While we were waiting the police men interviewed him outside, while I was brought inside. A police woman provided a drink of juice for us. A police man came to talk to me. He told me that he saw this kind of thing all the time and the women always went back. Then a couple of months later someone would report a body and it would be the body of the woman he had tried to help a few months before. He literally begged me to leave my abuser. I asked if they had been called and he said, no. They were passing by chance, the car that had picked up the call from my mother in law was searching an area a couple of miles away when they found us. We were both allowed to leave the station with our respective families and a report was to be filed the following morning.

My brother had picked me up from so many places each time I had gotten into trouble, and now here I was at a police station, covered in blood. I’d had enough. This was my chance and I had to take it. The next day my family asked me what I wanted my next move to be. I drew a blank and they suggested, ‘go away for a bit.’ It was either England or Miami. My US visa needed updating and so since time was of the essence, I came to the Uk.

No turning back now. It’s been almost two years and I’ve done quite well. I initially rented a room from a cousin but soon felt strong enough to move out on my own. My son is now 3 and attends nursery. I am a full time chef and am excelling at my job. I have made friends there and am quite happy. I am often desperately home sick but will stick it out for my son’s sake at least until my divorce and child custody case is complete and even then, no rush. I have returned home once and the harassment and stalking started immediately although not as intense as the first time I left him. I had allowed the baby to visit him via my father in law, but he removed him from the house and failed to return him on the agreed day. Although I was aware of his whereabouts, he did nit hold up his side of the agreement showing that he still did not deserve his respect.

I have a good quality of life and my son is a bright and happy boy. He seems to have no emotional damage from witnessing such appalling violence.

I hope to complete my divorce by this summer so I can gain some closure and move on with my life. I would hope to meet the right person someday and marry again. Some days are easier than others. Sometimes I feel so proud of myself for getting out and staying out. Other days I’m so homesick that life doesn’t seem fair at all. I used to have a lot of panic attacks and be paranoid a lot. But these common symptoms of PTSD are gradually fading.

I don’t think I will end up in another abusive relationship as I know the warning signs and am a lot more confident now. I keep myself busy with my son, work and also attend college. I am adjusting to British society slowly and with some difficulty but each day is a bit easier than the one before. Most of all I just constantly thank God and all those who helped me in my transition from victim to survivor.

~ Belinda

Return from Belinda's Domestic Violence Story to Domestic Violence Stories