‘I’m a different woman now’

TRIGGER WARNING: This story contains recollections of abuse, including childhood abuse and physical violence, that may be triggering for some individuals.

THE night 33-year-old Avorina Hall’s partner rapidly punched her face six times, everything faded to white before she slumped to the floor unconscious. He was a serial cheater who abused her relentlessly, and now he had quit paying rent. That night marked an escalation.

When she woke up, Hall grabbed the nearest knife and lunged, but it sliced through a jug her partner raised to defend himself, and he fled. She knew he would return later, intent on killing her. So, she huddled in the front room with her three sons, a heavy wardrobe braced against the door. Later, he returned, kicking and pushing with all his might, but the wardrobe held strong.

Three nights later, he was back.

“He wanted to sleep with me and when I told him over my dead body, he got upset and threw the TV off the wall and took a hammer to my serger,” she remembers. The serger, a specialty sewing machine that gives a finished look to her clothing, is her pride and joy. In a rage, her partner scattered its valuable parts across her dressmaking studio.

In that crucial period of Hall’s life, something stirred.

Hall was at the time enrolled in a small business and life skills programme under the European Union-United Nations Spotlight Initiative, soaking up lessons on her personal value, how to grow her business, and how to deal with abusers. The women’s economic empowerment programme implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi Country Office in Jamaica in partnership with municipal corporations in Clarendon and St Thomas, trained 80 survivors like Hall.

The 33-year-old fashion designer is seated around one of three sewing machines she owns, tracing her journey from victim to the recommitted and determined boss of her own business.

“I realise the reason he was so aggressive is because he saw my progress and he tried to stop it,” she says. “He knew about the Spotlight Initiative, so he knew what was going to happen.”

Then other lessons started to click.

“I never knew there was something called financial abuse. I was going through all the five abuses, and never knew I was going through so many. He called me names, he told me bad things; some things made me feel less than myself … so the Spotlight Initiative helped me a lot…”

Hall pauses and tears flow as she processes painful memories of lifelong abuse, the last at the hands of her ex-partner. Now she has newfound hope.

“When I met the Spotlight Initiative it opened my eyes to many things as it has helped me to push my business further. It (taught) umy eyes to many things as it has helped me to push my business further. It (taught) us how to manage our businesses, what to do, what not to do, and how to dress to impress. It also taught us that whatever we are doing, be serious and don’t go halfway and stop. As females we learned we can be independent and help ourselves financially.”

Today, the abusive partner is out of her life, stricken with mental illness after repeatedly threatening to curse Hall. Business has never been better after applying lessons learnt in the Spotlight Initiative-funded programme, and she now employs one person.

“Business is good so far to be honest, because the community challenged me, right now, I never knew I could do wedding dresses, jackets, suits. Now I’m doing all that. I believe I can do ALL things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me. I’ve only been to high school, I never went anywhere else to learn sewing, so that’s when I realise it’s a gift,” she says.

“[Through] the Spotlight Initiative I realise there are great things within me, and I need to explore them. That’s when I decided to take my business serious and wanted to move further. With the grant I bought another sewing machine. I would like to employ more persons in need and also train them free of cost and employ them after.

“People can testify and see the difference within me, because the woman you see today you wouldn’t have seen two years ago. It’s a different, different me. The group [fellow students] has opened my eyes to see that there is greatness in me.”

Jamaica has a 27.8 per cent prevalence rate of gender based violence according to the 2016 Women’s Health Survey which revealed that more than one in four women aged 15 to 64 years experienced intimate partner physical and sexual violence in their lifetime.

Hall’s journey to liberated business owner is in her words painful, but she wants her whole story told, no holding back. She says in order to understand her trauma, she must start at the beginning.

A painful journey to victory

When Hall was a little girl, her mother sent her to live with friends and relatives no less than five times. In her words, “My mother gave me away,” the only one of her 16 siblings to be treated this way. It was years before she could process her feelings of pain and bewilderment.

She was two years old when it started. By four, she said the husband of one caregiver started to molest her.

“She used to let me sleep with him. I had to make sure at nights to sleep in tight skorts (skirt and shorts combined), because if I didn’t do it, he would molest me all through the night,” she remembers.

While her caregiver went to market in the days, Hall stayed out of the home to avoid abuse, but would be beaten on her return.

When she told her mother what happened, her reply was, ‘hush, he did the same to me’.

“At age 11 she (mother) gave me away again,” Hall recalls, shaking her head. The husband also molested her, and she said they used her like a slave, demanding she cook, clean and do their grocery shopping.

“When I was 13, she gave me away again. That lady abused me very badly and her brother also used to molest me.”

Later she would pass her exams for Thompson Town High in Clarendon, but a bad sore foot prevented her from attending regularly, so she was placed in a class for slow learners. When she placed first in her exams, everyone realised she was a high performer.

Her mother placed her in another school in Clarendon’s capital, and sent food on the weekends. “Nobody was there to protect me. I could go anywhere I wanted to go. I tried suicide two times because I felt nobody loved me. When my monthly (menstruation) came, I had to cut up clothes to make pads to see me through. I had nothing, no roll-on (deodorant), until I met my son’s father at age 16,” Hall recalls.

He gave her money, sent her to school and bought her a sewing machine. Later she took her regional exams and earned a grade two in clothing and textiles. That was the beginning of her journey into the dressmaking business.

Reflecting on her choice of an abusive partner, Hall points to the childhood trauma that left emotional scars and wounds and reinforced feelings of worthlessness.

Now she wants victims of abuse to know that they are valued and that there is life after abuse.

From troubled child to confident woman relishing her financial freedom, Hall is determined to put the past behind her and is focused on taking her business to new heights.

The above story is one of three we’re sharing from the UNDP on domestic violence survivors who did business and life skills courses funded by the Spotlight Initiative, under a programme run by the municipal corporations of St Thomas and Clarendon. In stories told exclusively to All Woman, these women have successfully and triumphantly risen above abuse, and their stories could help others do the same.