The Story of Rosa Christal, Victim of Domestic Violence
My name is Rosa Christal; I was happily married for more than 10 years with my husband called Hernandez Perez; from Mexico. We were blessed with three kids. We were living in the city of Silver Spring in Maryland. We escaped from Mexico as a result of community violence. We lived successfully in our marital home until 2010, the same year we were all granted political asylum in the United States. Both of us were working, my husband suddenly changed and started asking me to hand over all my pay checks over to him to managed. That was a difficult decision for me to accept because my husband was hardly supporting me at home for food money and other house hold chores. I was the main person taking care of the children’s school needs for our children in the Middle School. He only helped once a year, I was tired of complaining, however to worked extra hard to take care of all responsibilities. He was always dinking and getting drunk and some times will sleep outside.
This was very traumatizing to me and the children, each time that I asked him why such an irresponsible attitude, he will give me serious beatings, while I was still in pains, he will try to force me to have sex with me. When I refused, the situation will degenerate into more violence. In January 2016, he returned home drunk and could not open the door, though he had the key, the level of drunkenness was so high. When I open the door in the morning after the neighbors alerted me, I took him in, helped to give him a shower, dressed him up, washed his dirty dresses and gave him a delicious meal of his choice to eat. Two days after I brough up the topic to discuss it with him, so that he could draw lessons from it. Our neighbors had used the incident to rebuke me. He did not want me to talk about it, he started beating me as usual to a level where my neighbors call 911 for immediate intervention. I found myself in the emergency room in the hospital to treat the injuries I sustained during the beatings. The police sent me reports and asked that I should take the report to the Maryland social services. That is how the matter continued to the court, we were really on the verge of a divorce, luckily enough I friend from El Salvador, referred me to Voiceless Advocacy (VOCAD). My husband and myself appeared there in 2017 and met with some expert psychologists, and a trauma specialist who counselled us and I saw my husband apologizing repeatedly to me for all his blunders. After establishing peace between us Voiceless Advocacy VOCAD sent us to see officials of the social services and we ended up settling our domestic issues amicably. We all appeared in court to withdraw the case. Now peace, love, unity and collaboration has returned to my marital home thanks to the timely intervention of Voiceless Advocacy (VOCAD).