A young mother was on Monday night beaten in the streets of an East Coast village by her common-law husband because she left their house without his permission.
Akeila Abrams, 23, a mother of three, has since vowed that she would see the man pay for his actions even though she is now faced with the prospect of not having anyplace to live with her children.
“I want the police to find him. I sorry for he before but I know he got to go to jail this time because the next time I might dead,” Abrams told Stabroek News yesterday, while adding that she was still suffering from dizzy spells hours after the attack.
The man, with whom she has a son, is believed to have used a padlock to hit her over the head in addition to dealing her several blows about her body. Towards the end of the attack, the man was dragging Abrams down a road towards the home they shared.
Last evening, she said she was afraid to go back to their house as she believed that he would return and finish what he started. In addition to her fear, they had been told to vacate the premises due to some contention over the property.
Abrams recounted that her partner, who is in his early forties, had just left the home when she realised that she had nothing in the house to eat.
As a result, she left two of her three children-one does not live with her-in the care of a neighbour and went to make a purchase.
She was later returning to her Friendship, East Coast Demerara home in the company of a teenaged resident when the man approached her and asked her if he did not tell her not to leave the house and not to leave his son with anyone.
“And is just suh he scramble me and start cuffing me and beating me and he tear down me clothes and we start to fight,” Abrams said, adding that her teenage companion, afraid at the man’s actions, stood from afar and told him to leave her alone.
According to the young woman, some other persons came out and also told the man to leave her alone but they did not intervene as he continued to beat her. He warned the onlookers that she was the mother of his child and he could do whatever he wanted to her.
Abrams was attempting to run away when the man hit her with a hard object, which persons later said was a padlock. As a result, she fell to the ground and momentarily passed out. It was at this point that the man started to drag her down the road while urging her to get up.
“I could hear people saying in the background ‘leave the girl alone’ and ‘cover up the girl’ and dem things but I didn’t really conscious,” the woman said, noting that she was in a state of undress as a result of the attack.
The man later pulled her up and she was stumbling towards their home with him holding her when she saw a male relative and she ran and held on to him.
Her partner instructed the male relative to let her go but the man refused and said he was going to call her aunt to come for her. But her partner picked her up and threw her over her shoulders, from where she fell to the road way.
Eventually, she got away from him and retreated to their home even as her male relative and others kept the man on the road, where he remained until her relatives came and removed her from the home and took her to the Vigilance Police Station, where she made a report.
Abrams was later told that her relatives were taking the man to the station but two men pulled up on a motorbike and rode away with him.
The man is a fisherman and Abrams described him as an alcoholic who abuses her every time he gets drunk. She said less than a month ago, he beat her and threatened to kill her while holding a knife to her throat.
She reported that attack and the police arrested him but he and his mother begged her to drop the matter and she eventually relented. She listed many other times when the man physically abused her.
“I does study my son. I not working nowhere and I don’t know what to do but I know I can’t go back with he,” she said.
Abrams, who attends hairdressing classes paid for by her father, said her partner did not take care of her but she had in the past been willing to give him another try. “But not anymore!” she declared last evening, while adding that she hoped the police arrest the man quickly.
Abrams, who lost her mother when she was just 12, became a mother herself at a very early age.
She is hoping for a new start in life. “I want a better life, I want something for my children,” she said. But her first hope is that her abuser is arrested soon.
