PROFILE : One woman’s escape from hell

One night in December 2000, Esther woke up to find her husband of nine years straddling her. She could see the knife that he held in his hands gleaming in the semi-darkness. He was aiming for her chest. Terrified, she started fighting him but with his knees firmly planted on either side of her stomach, she was stuck.

He was a man on a mission. He was intent on stabbing her but first, he wanted to humiliate her so he pulled her by her hair and dragged her against the rough exterior of the bed, bruising her skin. Esther’s sister-in-law, who was sleeping in another room in their Kileleshwa house, heard the commotion and came to her rescue.

Esther’s husband was upset by a week-long trip she had taken to Mombasa. When she returned, he accused her of prostituting herself and of neglecting their child. “That night was my turning point. Surviving that incident was what spurred me to action,” Esther says.

Early the next morning, she went to the Milimani SDA Clinic which specialises in treating gender-based violence victims. After getting the tests and the medication she needed, she went back home with her mind set on leaving her marriage.

“I was 26 years old when I married him. Like every young woman, I believed that mine was going to be a happy marriage. I was wrong. Very wrong,” Esther says. In retrospect, she sees that the signs of violence were always there. She recalls how easily he got angry and how he reacted to situations by banging doors or hitting walls.

Red flags

“There is one particular red flag that I should have seen. Before we got married, he took a sick relative to the hospital. When they weren’t attended to as fast as he wanted he got furious, breaking down a door at the hospital in the process,” she says.

While he didn’t hit her during the dating phase, her husband was a controlling boyfriend. He would want to know where she went and who she met there. She put it down to loving concern. Once they got married, the abuse escalated fast. A year-and-a-half in when she was pregnant with her son, the psychological abuse began.

“He started the process of breaking down my self-esteem. He made sure to remind me that I was nothing and that nobody would want me if I wasn’t with him.”

By the fifth year, he had started hitting her. It was easy for Esther to hide the marks because he rarely ever hit her in the face. When he did, he made her take sick leave from work. “At this point, the abuse was chronic. I was walking on eggshells. No matter how much I did, there would be something to tick him off. He would hit me, apologise and then we would start the cycle again,” she says.

All through, Esther remained silent about her situation. Why? Because everyone else was also silent about domestic violence. “There was no visible help out there for women in my situation. I didn’t know any programmes that I could join,” she explains.

Also, outside the confines of their home, her husband was a charming and sociable person. If she accused him, she imagined that it would be hard for those around them to believe her. In fact, some of her in-laws had witnessed the abuse. “They minimised it,” she says. “I also think that they kept quiet because it would taint the family name. He came from a prominent political family.”

Eventually, Esther went to the only place she felt she could unburden her heart – the church. Although she was received with open arms, the pastoral counselling she got reinforced the notion that it is a woman’s duty to keep a marriage together. “I heard a lot of wrong interpretations of Bible verses. I was told that had I been submissive, we wouldn’t be here in the first place,” she recalls.

Getting away

Despite the lack of social support, Esther was determined to leave. “After that night where he almost stabbed me, I went back to my faith to look for answers. I started searching for Bible verses that said that violence was wrong and sure enough, I found more than enough,” she says.

One morning in early 2001, while her husband was away on a business trip, Esther packed her clothes and those of her then seven-year-old son and made her escape. That year, the courts granted her full custody of her son.

But the violence was not over. “I thought that leaving would be enough to keep me safe but it wasn’t. In fact, it aggravated him. Even as our divorce case was ongoing me, he came after me. One time, he came to where I was living and when he wasn’t let in, he broke the gate.”

He also went to her employer with an affidavit which saw her lose her job. Feeling unsafe, Esther took an opportunity to study at Boston University in 2004 when it came up.

Here, she got to study about domestic violence as an aspect of public health. When she wasn’t studying, she worked with domestic violence victims in shelters and transitional homes.

After four years, she came back home and founded Rose Foundation. Her mission? To preach about domestic violence prevention. “I noticed that outrage from the society comes after the abuse, when there are physical scars. I noticed that perpetrators are dealt with after the fact. There wasn’t a lot being done to prevent it from happening,” she says.

In 2015, Rose Foundation was finally registered as a non-profit foundation.

“Ninety-five per cent of domestic abuse perpetrators are men and most of these cases are fuelled by our cultural beliefs. Women are still seen as lesser beings so society turns a blind eye to wife beating. Also, if at all we are to break the cycle of violence, we have to reach out to the perpetrators, not just the victims. If a man batters a woman and then goes free, he is likely to get into another relationship where he can batter another woman. This needs to be stopped,” she says.

She has been effecting her prevention campaigns through trainings and seminars for adults and especially youth, because domestic violence is inter-generational. She has also reached out to churches.

“I still get a lot of hard stares and silence, especially in churches. Some people see me as someone who is trying to break marriages. Domestic violence is still a very uncomfortable topic for the church,” she says.

She has healed from her experience and she has dedicated her life to reaching out to others going through a similar experience and telling them that there is help out there.

Email: [email protected]