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).
