As the pub­lic con­tin­ues to ex­press out­rage over three do­mes­tic vi­o­lence mur­ders since the start of 2020, more sur­vivors are speak­ing out about the abuse they en­dured.

One such sur­vivor is 41-year-old Rachel Ed­mund.

Rachel sat down with the Sun­day Guardian to tell her sto­ry for the first time pub­licly Sat­ur­day.

She said at the ten­der age of 18, she went against her moth­er’s wish­es and got mar­ried. When her hus­band turned vi­o­lent, there was nowhere for this young woman to turn.

"There was a lot of emo­tion­al and men­tal abuse as well as phys­i­cal and sex­u­al vi­o­lence, every­thing you can think about, I ex­pe­ri­enced it," she said. "It was dif­fi­cult to deal with be­cause I was so young, I got mar­ried when I was 18.

"Dur­ing that pe­ri­od from 18 to 22 years old, it was that pe­ri­od of my life when I didn’t know what to do with my­self, one of the oth­er rea­sons was I was very iso­lat­ed, I didn’t have the sup­port of my par­ents, I grew up with a sin­gle moth­er and she did not ap­prove of the mar­riage, so I was ba­si­cal­ly on my own."

To be a ‘good wife’, Ed­mund stuck with her hus­band, en­dur­ing un­speak­able acts of vi­o­lence.

"Com­ing from a Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist home, I wasn’t taught that di­vorce was an op­tion," she ex­plained.

When the abuse be­came too much, she broke out of her shy, sub­mis­sive per­sona and be­gan to re­tal­i­ate. But that on­ly made mat­ters worse as her abuser would meet her words of de­fi­ance with blows.

"When I said some­thing, I would get an­oth­er lash, cuff or kick un­til I re­alised that was not work­ing. Then I de­cid­ed to get phys­i­cal too but that didn’t work ei­ther be­cause I was just about 100 pounds and he was much big­ger."

Though un­suc­cess­ful, her brave at­tempts to de­fend her­self even­tu­al­ly gave her the courage to speak to her then-pas­tor about her prob­lems. His words, she said, saved her life.

"I told him I didn’t know what else to do, I didn’t know how else to be a wife. H e said to me, 'Rachel if you think that be­ing a Sev­enth-day Ad­ven­tist means you have to live this type of life, you are wrong.'

"Those words turned a light bulb on in my head, I thought once you were mar­ried, you were not sup­posed to get di­vorced and you have to work at it, take what­ev­er hap­pens, just con­tin­ue, and at the end of the day, you would be mar­ried for 50 years and have a great tes­ti­mo­ny. He just shat­tered that idea for me."

At that time, Ed­mund said she had just re­turned to the mat­ri­mo­ni­al home, her then-three-month-old daugh­ter in her arms, af­ter flee­ing a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad beat­ing,

"I re­mem­ber it was rain­ing and my clothes were still in bags on the floor. He start­ed at­tack­ing me while I was hold­ing my ba­by in my arms and I just thought, 'This is it, I can’t take it'."

She fi­nal­ly left that night.

Her jour­ney has not been an easy one as Ed­mund ad­mit­ted that every re­la­tion­ship she has been in since had turned abu­sive.

"I am sin­gle now. But in sev­er­al re­la­tion­ships when I would see cer­tain red flags, I would file them away in my mind. When they turned vi­o­lent and hit me, that would be the end. It has not been easy."

She is now a pas­tor and the founder of the Glob­al Net­work for the Ad­vance­ment of Sin­gle Moth­ers.

Even as she called on the State to do more to help women es­cape do­mes­tic vi­o­lence—such as prop­er­ly fund­ing women’s shel­ters, she called on men to do more for them­selves.

"Peo­ple tend to triv­i­alise gen­der-based vi­o­lence, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, on all fronts, when we are talk­ing about women, they talk about men should be men­tioned. But men are the per­pe­tra­tors, that is a fact, there is noth­ing to change those facts, those are things that have al­ready hap­pened.

"I am not say­ing we shouldn’t talk about men in that re­spect be­cause they too ex­pe­ri­ence do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, but they (men) need to start that con­ver­sa­tion."

She said over the years, bat­tered women and their al­lies have formed mul­ti­ple or­gan­i­sa­tions to help them­selves and it is time for men to do the same.

"It is not easy for some­body to come in front of a cam­era, in front of the world and say, 'yes, I have been a vic­tim of do­mes­tic vi­o­lence,' when no­body in my fam­i­ly knows the ex­tent to which I have en­dured. It is not an easy un­der­tak­ing but if we as women can do it, why can’t you do it?”

She is al­so urg­ing those who know of cas­es where some­one is be­ing abused to in­form the po­lice.

"Let us get back to be­ing our broth­er’s and our sis­ter’s keep­er. Make that phone call, I know you see the bruis­es, you hear the mid­night beat­ings, you can save a life if you pick up the phone," she said.

If you know of any­one who is be­ing abused, you can con­tact the Na­tion­al Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Hot­line at 800-SAVE (7283).