By Kamal Singh

Who is a battered woman? What does she look like? It is hard to tell, as we, the battered women of the world, have learned to mask our bruises and pain. We protect those who hurt us.

Millions of women around the world have suffered some kind of abuse. Sadly, many of these victims can no longer speak¾the abuse has escalated to the point of being fatal. We will never know exactly what happened in the last moments of their lives, the fear they felt, how they fought back, whether they pleaded for another chance.

Violence against women is a major problem in every culture of the world. It affects everyone. It does not discriminate. The abuse can be physical, mental, emotional or sexual, often a combination of all four. Domestic violence is a misuse of power to control a woman and keep her in extreme isolation. When that woman begins to stand up for herself and perhaps tries to leave the relationship, then she is in the greatest danger. The abuser’s power has been threatened, and this makes him even more violent.

In my forthcoming book, Finally a Princess, I talk extensively about the enormity of the violence in my relationship with my husband, the lack of support from family and friends, and the isolation in which I was kept.

I grew up in a stable home. My father, a Sikh from India, and my mother, a Hindu from Fiji, had nine children. I was the sixth. There was no abuse of power in our home, no alcohol or drugs, no violence, no hint of trouble other than minor disagreements. The only thing I disliked about my upbringing was that my parents were very strict with the girls¾the boys had much more freedom than we did. My parents even sent us to a private school for a better education.

When I was fifteen, we emigrated from Fiji to Vancouver, Canada. A couple of years later, some serious marriage proposals started coming in for me. I was glad that my parents had good taste in men.

Then a proposal from a prominent family came. I was eighteen, and my prospective husband was almost twenty-six. He was wealthy, handsome, educated and soft-spoken. In his family, I knew I would be a princess.

A week later, we were engaged. In six weeks, we were married.

A few days after the wedding, my mother-in-law sat me down and gave me the rules. The conversation was one-sided. She began by telling me how wealthy and influential her family was back home in Fiji, how many businesses they owned and how much people respected them. Then came the rules. There were many of them. Some of the most prominent were:

• I must never speak unless I was spoken to.
• I must cover my head in the presence of my elders, especially my father-in-law.
• Whatever happens in the house stays within the four walls of the house.
• I must respect my husband and treat him like a god. Every morning, I must wake up early, touch his feet and seek his blessing.

What I couldn’t understand were the demands my husband and his family placed on me, yet they drank and smoked and fought with each other. What kind of god acts in this manner? A week later, my in-laws went back home to Fiji. I was convinced that now my husband and I would start a new life together, and he would show affection to me.

Instead, several weeks into our marriage, my husband broke my nose¾because I had asked him to stop drinking. Instead of apologizing, he told me never to speak to him in that manner again¾unless I wanted to be hit again.

That was the beginning of a life full of fear and misery. I always suspected that my husband was having affairs, although I could never prove it. He drank every day and was a chain smoker. Often he would comment that I wasn’t good enough for his family. He constantly asked why he had not received a larger dowry and said that I should be grateful to be married to him. I kept doing things better and better in the hope that he wouldn’t fight with me. The harder I tried to fall in love with him, the more he abused me.

Days before my first child was born, my husband took a gun to the house of some of my relatives in order to scare them. Fearful for my safety and the baby’s, I had to protect him from the police.

My baby was born with a large birthmark on her arm. That gave my husband a further reason to pick a fight with me. He said that the mark was a sign of evil and it was there because of me. The second pregnancy went the same way. My husband had beaten me so badly with his belt that there were marks all over my body.

We moved often, as no landlord wanted my husband as a tenant. By now, he had begun to abuse me sexually.

Nothing I did was ever good enough. We had opened an auto body shop where my husband’s friends would often come to visit, and they would end up drinking. I worked long hours¾sanding and masking the cars, sweeping the floors and staying away from him while he drank.

Finally one evening, my husband was arrested when he beat me up in a parking lot and made threats to kill me. After his arrest, both sides of the family reconciled. He apologized to my family and asked them to tell me not to provoke him. I went back home with him.

A few days later, my husband took me to the body shop and started beating me up¾throwing me from one wall to another. Blood was dripping from different parts of my body. Shaking in fear, all I could do was to beg him to stop. Reluctantly, I agreed to all his demands. Still not satisfied, he plugged in the arc welder and began touching me with it, all the while asking me if I liked it.

When the case for his threatening charges came closer, my husband insisted we go away for a holiday to Hawaii. I couldn’t understand why he was packing so many things and putting them away. Just before we left, he took me to a deserted place and beat me so badly that I couldn’t turn my head. We left for Hawaii a couple of days later. I was too frightened to tell anyone what he had done to me.

Once we were in Hawaii, my husband suggested a visit to his parents’ house in Fiji. I thought that might be a good idea¾since they were well-respected people, they might discipline him. This wishful thinking turned into a nightmare. My husband’s parents blamed me for his arrest and for bringing shame and disgrace to the family.

• I spent the next four and a half years in Fiji and had two more children there. I survived many more painful experiences:
• My husband pushed me into shark-infested water on more than one occasion.
• My husband tied my sari around my neck and tried to hang me.
• My husband poured kerosene over me and then handed me the matches so he wouldn’t be blamed.
• There was a marked increase in the number of incidents of physical and sexual torture. Many nights, I was choked, tied up and made to sleep on the floor in a corner.

Finally, I had to make some tough decisions. I had so much hatred for my husband that I wanted to hurt him badly, so badly that he would never be able to hurt me again. Instead, I asked his father to send me and the children back to Canada. But only I was allowed to return. Over the years, I had made myself numb so I wouldn’t feel much. I made the unbearably difficult decision to return alone.

My husband, too, returned to Vancouver, leaving the children in his mother’s care. After a few months, the older two children were returned to me on the condition that I live with my husband. The abuse stopped for a while, but slowly it started again. One night, my husband beat me up and raped me.

That was the last night I spent with him. I fled with the children and was determined never to look back. When we went to a women’s shelter, we took with us only the clothes we were wearing. My husband was arrested a few times for making threats, and then he fled the country.

As I was struggling to raise my children in a safe home, my new friends at a local Christian church were praying for our safety. For over two years, my children and I prayed we would be able to get the younger two children back with us. Miraculously, one day I heard God say to me that I should go and get my children. I was able to pick them up at their school in Fiji; and with the help of some prominent politicians, I escaped the country and brought them home.

Some time later, I was asked to give an interview on deadbeat dads to a local TV news hour. I agreed, since my husband was definitely a deadbeat dad. I had been hearing from my husband frequently while he was back with his parents. But the calls suddenly stopped, even though he had promised to call again.

A week or so later, I received a phone call from my husband’s family saying that he had drowned. At the funeral, I struggled to recognize him. During the final ceremony before the cremation, I could hear God speaking to me and asking if I would forgive him. This thought had come up many times before, but I had not been ready to forgive. Then a verse from the Bible came to me: Forgive. Vengeance is mine. I immediately forgave my husband¾not so much for his sake but for mine.

It has not been easy raising four children with little money. But God has been faithful, and we never went hungry. Today, by the grace of God, we have all that we need. I continue to tell my story, to expose the evil of domestic abuse, and to tell the many abused women in many cultures that there is hope.