‘It took me 20 years to get out’

Shame, is probably the reason I cannot write about my hell under my own name.

Shame, because I let it destroy my soul for a full 20 years.

Shame, because I let him financially ruin me and physically and emotionally break me.

But perhaps the biggest shame, because I can’t say his name: the man who flung me across rooms, pinned me to walls with a knife against my throat and beat me mercilessly.

Cleverly so and, yes, we all know this about abusers: after the first couple of beatings, he learnt to avoid the face, left bruises hidden under my long-sleeve top and polo neck.

There was no evidence for a camera, unless I stripped. No alarms raised for my friends… I now know addiction is the red flag with abusers.

Mine’s drug of choice was gambling. It wasn’t always that violent.

The first 10 years it was a push here, a shove there. But the more money he spent on his gambling, the more I “got it”.

And oh, the irony. It was my money he spent feeding his habit because he hadn’t held down a job for years.

Hundreds of thousands of rands got hammered out of me so he can lose at the tables.

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So why didn’t I just walk away? I tried, many times. I even moved out of my house for a year to escape him – but went back because I simply couldn’t afford to keep up two households.

And once, just once, I nearly succeeded.

I’ve heard “I’m going to kill you”, many, many times during the beatings but of course he won’t, I thought – until I woke up one night with him standing over me with a stick.

“Told you you’re going to die,” he smirked and laid into me. I had enough.

Despite a massive doempie (lump) on my head, I got into my car and drove to my friend’s house – a safe place.

She’ll understand the doempie, I thought, because she’s shared her own abuse over many glasses of wine with me.

She suffered for a year – always when her husband was drunk – until the day she hit him back.

“The tables turned. He stopped right there,” she said. “In fact, I became a bit of a husband beater after that but he never lifted a finger again.”

She gave my doempie one look, took pictures of it, fed me sweet, sweet tea and convinced me after hours and hours of pleading to open a case with the police.

I did – or tried to… I told my story in a full room, all listening, to a male cop who studiously wrote it all down, but then matter-of-factly told me he couldn’t open a case before I went with him to the house to identify that man I wanted out of my life.

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I just couldn’t face him. My “case file” landed in the bin. I’ve never felt so humiliated, helpless, trapped, lost.

There was no escaping him… I knew I was a victim. I researched abuse endlessly on the web. I knew there were ways to leave.

I recognised that I was living with a malignant narcissist who will never change.

It was up to me to make that change. And I took the first step a year ago.

I quietly searched and found a safe place for me and my dog.

I quietly started the process to sell the house – and when it all fell into place, I simply packed my bags and left.

A third party stepped in and negotiated a “deal” with the narcissist. He can stay in the house until it is sold and I’ll pay him a lump sum for my freedom.

I blocked him on my phone, moved far enough away so I’ll never “bump” into him and have never been back to that house, although I forgot many precious belongings.

But that’s the price for my freedom. I still live in fear. “What if he finds me?”

But I’m slowly getting used to the fact that my new space is safe; really, really safe.

“You can relax here,” I tell myself constantly.

I’m trying to be normal now. I joined a gym, meet friends for coffee, actually visit them at their homes and I, surprisingly, laugh more. I never talk about it.

Even penning these words makes me physically ill. I just want to forget: it; him… I escaped – but have I healed? Probably not enough. I’m not brave enough to say his name – yet.

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Crying ‘rape’

• Many men are falsely accused of gender-based violence (GBV) with the onus on them to prove their innocence. But what if they’re dead and themselves a victim of GBV?
• US waitress Jodi Arian, 24, gripped the nation during her trial in 2020, for viciously killing her ex, Travis Alexander. She stabbed him, slit his throat and shot him in the head ‘in self-defence’, she claimed.
• ‘I feared for my life,’ she told the jury, spinning a web of lies of ‘body slamming’ and ‘fists flying’.
• No evidence of GBV was ever found. The blood in the apartment was all Travis’, not one drop of blood belonged to her.
• ‘She’s a chameleon who reads the room,’ one expert testified. ‘She manipulates facts to suit the narrative, whether it is for TV or the court. The fact is, she slaughtered him.’
• The jury unanimously found Arian guilty of ‘a cruel murder’. She was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Not crying ‘rape’

• A case that shocked South Africans was that of the son of the late human rights lawyer George Bizos.
• Alexis Bizos, 63, was slapped with a R100 000 fine or one years’ imprisonment for beating his ex-wife, Monique van Oosterhout, breaking her ribs.
• More than nine years after punching Van Oosterhout at their Johannesburg home, Bizos was convicted last year of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
• Van Oosterhout testified that Bizos had attacked her in his study on the evening of 15 March, 2015. He punched her ‘with fists on both sides of her ribcage repeatedly’ and rammed her into a bookshelf. She suffered six rib fractures.
• Bizos, who had pleaded not guilty to the assault, claimed that she was the aggressor and he had acted in self-defence.
• Handing down the sentence in February, magistrate Tshepo Twala said he had shown no remorse and failed to acknowledge the wrongfulness of his actions.

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