Why is No one Listening?

by Spiritual Survivor

I have contemplated walking with every weapon I can think of that can be discreetly hidden in my handbag or in a large shopping bag. Up until yesterday I thought of wrapping a cutlass in cloth and walking around with it. Tasers and pepper spray are both illegal in my country.

I am afraid I will hurt myself, throwing acid and I cannot get a gun, legally, in my country.

Would it be sufficient for me to defend myself against the bullets or chops from a man or his friends, intent on murder or murder/suicide?

I don't know.

I pray I never have to know.

Presently, I score the news, which isn't hard to do as I am a member of the media in my country of Trinidad and Tobago, for one woman whose story ends differently.

I am thirsty for one story that says, someone rescued a victim from her attacker. One article that says the police acted proactively and a domestic violence report was treated as "assault to do grievous bodily harm or attempted murder" and not just "domestic violence.

I am hungry to hear that the Domestic Violence Act is properly amended and not just that IT IS GOING TO BE!! I hunger to hear of the political will to enforce mandatory rehabilitative counselling for abusers and possibly GPS tracking bracelets and alerts to survivors/victims.

Some means, any means, that alerts the abused and the protective forces,  that the abuser is approaching.

I pray it's done in my lifetime or in my daughters'.

Right now in my lifetime, I call myself a survivor, but I am still a victim. 

You see, my family is in crisis because of an on-going Court matter involving my ex husband, who up until August 29, sent death threats to us. I am the mother of seven, two of which are young adults.

He knows where we live and where our children goes to school. So we are like sitting ducks.

When he was charged in 2017, we where not relocated and I had neither the resources or a clue how to even begin to relocate myself.

On August 29, 2018, we had a court hearing and immediately after he contacted my eldest daughter and told her he "would put a gun in his waist and go on a rampage" and kill all of us at my home or wherever he saw us. He went so far to threaten if he was re-arrested or was convicted he had "put things in place to get rid of us".

Since first making a report in December 2017, about my then 14 year old daughter's sexual abuse, I have conveyed in every form I knew how, except going to the media, my fears of this man and what I KNOW he is capable of.

WHY IS NO ONE LISTENING?

No one listened to Anita Bahudarsingh, to Abigail Chapman, to Tehilia St Clair and maybe even countless others.

They are all dead.

They ended up statistics, the reason for investigations to be launched, words of sympathy to the loved ones of those murdered.

They all all have one thing in common . They all tried to tell someone how dangerous, how much of a threat their abusers were to their lives.

Ms Chapman's daughter, her best friend and their landlord were also murdered in that attack. Ms St Clair's five-year-old son was also attacked when his mother was chopped to death.

WHY IS NO ONE LISTENING?

I wonder is this the same feeling that walked around with Abigail? Did Tehilia, when she saw the first swipe of the cut-lass coming at her, did she think she would survive?

No one knows how they will feel facing an attacker intent on hurting or killing you, unless or until they too ever live through this. 

Survivors/victims of abuser often try to convey to the protective forces how instilled our fears are, not because we are cowards but because we know first-hand what our abusers are capable of.

WHY IS NO ONE LISTENING?

I sit here, praying that they re-arrest him, long before I ever have to face him alone or with my children next to me, practically defenseless. I know that my entire reason for still being alive, surviving being bounced down, head-butted, cut with a knife, is truly only through divine protection.

The questions are often asked.

"Why didn't you leave?"..."Why did you stay?"

I would say because in my mind I felt, based on his threats, his acts of violence, that it would only be to my detriment. That even mere words indicating any intent to leave, would, could result in more violence or death.

I did leave, more than once, but the system is so flawed that it offers no sustainable support. 

I want to ask, though, would you wrench you hand from inside a lion's mouth or would you slowly, gently ease it out?

PLEASE, someone, anyone, listen to the cries for help, listen and take seriously when survivors/victims, exhibit real fear for their abusers, even when they are behind prison walls.

I pray my story ends differently, so I can be the sliver of hope to another woman filled with fear to either leave or left and dreads ever facing her abuser alone.