NICE DAY FOR A WHITE RIBBON

Domestic violence is a spreading red stain on our society. Every day more horror stories are told, and the broken bodies pile up.

We can look from the outside and wonder why women stay with abusive partners. We used to think the answer to that was the women were weak. But it is much more complicated than that.

I was in an abusive relationship. It was over ten years ago and it lasted at five years. Now, for those who know me now, but not then, it will come as a shock that I would have stayed. It was simple, you always wake up thinking things will get better and that somehow it is your fault. I have had a career that has spanned many areas of interest and have been pretty successful. But I allowed myself to get into a relationship with someone who had counsellors who told me privately , that he would kill me if I stayed with him. They said he did not love me - his was an obsession. I should have seen it - I was working in a prison and had seen so many times the results of obsessive "love."

Sometimes the violence was obtuse, drunken rages, punching seventeen holes in the walls of a house I had just redecorated. It was when it involved my son that the tide turned. He was drunk, we argued and he pulled a carving knife on me and my son stepped in between us. I called the police and left him that week. He spent a year doing anger management and stopped drinking.

His family and friends said he was ok and maybe we should give it another go. I did.

It was the dumbest decision of my life. He started drinking again - never with me but I smelt it on him. I knew I had to go. Someone offered me a job in Wellington in October and I literally ran away - I went home for Christmas and we went away on the boat. I told him that it was really over and I needed to make a new life. He pulled a gun on me. There was just him and me in a quiet inlet. I talked him down. The next day I got to a plane and flew out and never looked back. I have seen him from time to time and now wonder what I ever saw in him.

So why do we stay with abusive men? I don't know the answer to that - for me, I just thought he would change and it would come right. I think that some men do get a handle on their violence and can change. But if they continue to drink and take drugs no manner of counselling will change anyone.


So White Ribbon day is the day I remember an ugly chapter in my past and know I wont ever let it happen to me again.