Life after abuse

Late November after dismounting a plane from Miami and packed with treasures to sell at her Princess Street vending spot, 35 year-old Nicola Richards opened the door to her home and to hell.

“Daddy don’t hurt me”, she heard her 10 year-old daughter plea, before she saw him towering over the child, shoving his penis in her mouth. “I was behind him, so I knelt down, took up a stone and hit him with it. I then grabbed my daughter and our one-year-old and ran next door,” says Nicola.

That night her husband, a welder, threw her and her children’s things outside, burnt them and threatened her and their helper.

“He told the helper that he would kill her if she spoke and told me that if I went to the police, like I was threatening to, he would kill me and dump my body in the Riverton City dump,” recounts Nicola. Later she was surprised when the don for the area called and threatened that he would kill her mother if she went to the police. “I didn’t even know that he talks to the don,” says Nicola.

Scared by this new side of her common-law husband, Nicola scooped up her six children that night, December 1 and fled their inner-city home. A sympathetic childhood friend who lives many miles away took her in.

But that did not last long as her friend’s husband objected to her prolonged stay.

“My husband and the people in the district turn ‘gainst her because they say that she came here to beg. But she doesn’t have anything so she walks around and look for work. It was causing too many problems between my husband and myself, plus the small place was cramped,”says her friend who wishes to remain unnamed. She, however, still wants her friend to be comfortable; “She needs financial help, her children can’t go to school because she doesn’t have any money or job.”

Speaking from her second and more dingy hideaway, Nicola says that through radio talk show host, Antoinette Haughton-Cardenas, she got $7,000 in January. But she is moneyless and almost hopeless. “None of the children are going to school. The 10 year-old girl says that she wants to go but I can’t even buy shoes or clothes, much less pay school fee.” she says.

The threat around her still determines her movements. “I got a $2,000 cheque from a lady, but I haven’t been able to change it, since that bank does not have a branch where I am and I’m afraid to go to Kingston and be spotted, because he (her former spouse) still doesn’t now where I’m staying” says Nicola.

Nicola’s Christmas was stark since her former spouse burnt the clothes she was planning to sell downtown.

But there is hope as she still has the piece of land her mother gave her.

“I need zinc and ply to build a shack to live in,” she said.

Her friend describes Nicola as someone who was always industrious.

“The way she talks and what she says plus her determination to build a small house despite her circumstances, tells you that she is not a careless woman. She decided not to tolerate slackness and is paying for that,” added Haughton-Cardenas.

According to Nicola, her common-law husband never displayed any violent behaviour or seemed sexually deviant. “He never beat me or the kids before and I never suspected him of anything like this, but now I will tell every mother to be careful of who they enter into relationships with,” says Nicola.

Nicola met her former spouse nine years back, after her legal husband with whom she had four children- the 10 year old girl, a 13 year-old boy, a 15 year-old girl and a 16 year-old boy, died of cancer. They moved in together adding their five year old and one year old sons to the family. She thought all was well until after her walk-in when her helper disclosed that she too had caught the man forcing himself on the girl over a year ago.

“She said that he threatened her with a gun, so she didn’t tell me, but she carried her to a hospital and she recently gave me the medical examination paper and prescription,” said Nicola as she handed over the paper. The word rape is quickly identified, but the medication written in the typical physician’s crawl is harder to decipher on the paper dated May 12, 2003.

Says Nicola of her daughter, “About a year ago she started getting aggressive and now I think that the abuse was the reason,” says Nicola. She also says that her daughter is now nervous and wets her bed as a result. The girl who seems shy, says that her step father has ‘done this to her two times’.

While the fifteen year-old daughter says that he never abused her, Nicola’s sons vow vengeance.

In December Nicola vowed that her ex-spouse would go to prison, but she ran away before reporting the case to the police, leaving this task up to a neighbourhood friend. And now defeated by her current bleak circumstances, Nicola says, “I’m not bothering to report anything, I’m trying to get mine and the children’s lives together.” she sighs; “I never believed something like this would happen in my life.”