Growing up in an abusive home and becoming a victim of domestic abuse from just 14 years of age by a man she was forced to marry, Angleha Dhuman of Corentyne, Berbice is now a proud survivor and is enjoying her independence.
The 27-year-old mother of three girls, ages six, 11 and 12, who works at a Chinese restaurant, willingly shared her story of the nine years of horror she endured at the hands of her husband.
She told Stabroek News (SN) that he beat her with wires or anything he found at hand, threw plates at her and even pushed her down the stairs, especially when he was drunk.
The most horrible memories she has was of her drunk husband raping her on their wedding night.
Dhuman said, “I am really happy that I left him and I can give my kids a good life. Now I don’t have to worry that on the weekends someone will come home, stressing me and my kids out…I thank God for peaceful days and nights…”
She wished if she could have done more for her children though because “they’re getting big and things getting harder… They have a lot of needs.”
Besides, disaster struck on October 26, 2019, when they lost everything in a fire that gutted the house they were sharing with her mother, her brother and his daughter.
“It was hard because I had to start all over again,” she said.
They moved to a small house on a plot of land belonging to her father.
Kindhearted individuals came forward and provided assistance including school items for her children.
A US-based Guyanese woman got someone to build the family a one-flat concrete house, which has been left incomplete.
The woman also started a GoFundMe on FaceBook and managed to raise US$6,790 on behalf of the family. She has still not handed over the money.
Dhuman also found it strange that the woman and her husband called her brother suddenly and told him that they would stop the project.
She is now distressed about where they would find the money from to complete the house.
She was unable to work for three months because of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and only turned out a few weeks ago.
During the time she was not working, she said the children’s father was “but he didn’t even send anything to help for them…”
She had left him on many occasions but “he would come and beg and cry and because my mom was very poor and did not have a good life, I would go back. I tried my best to get him to change, but he would only change for two weeks…” Then he would continue to torment and abuse her.
Freedom
She finally found her freedom after he attempted to abuse a young female relative.
The girl’s father gave him a sound beating and took him to the police station but the matter was never pursued.
As a child, Dhuman and her siblings looked on helplessly while her father abused her mother.
But she never realized that soon after she too would become a victim of abuse in a marriage where she never found love.
When she was 12-years-old her mother decided to leave her father.
But instead of finding happiness, her mother got involved with another man who turned out to be twice as abusive. This drove extreme fear into Dhuman and her two siblings. An older sister had already gotten married at age 14.
To get them out of the situation, her mother thought it best to start “making match for me and my small sister without finding out more about the people.”
Her mother found a man, 10 years her senior and told her she had to marry him.
She protested but her mother insisted, saying that the man’s family owns a house and a fishing boat, which he operated.
But according to Dhuman, “he always made broke trip.” He now works as a carpenter.
A few days before the wedding, her mother ran away from her abusive partner and left Dhuman and her siblings at a friend’s house.
With just two days remaining for the wedding, the woman then called Dhuman’s brother-in-law to be for him to pick them up and take them to their (her intended in laws’) house. Her mother showed up the day before the wedding.
Soon after, her mother found a much older man for her 12-year-old sister to marry.
Even though the man “never short her for anything,” he too was very abusive.
She got pregnant but suffered a miscarriage and her mother-in-law kept abusing her verbally for that.
A few years later when another daughter-in-law became pregnant “the abuse got even worse.”
Sadly, her sister, who was 18-years-old by then, died by committing suicide.
Misery
By the time Dhuman was 16-years-old she already had two children and was living a life of misery.
According to her, the man “never showed me love and never did anything for me even if I got sick. I was like his maid. He never bought new clothes for me and my kids because all he did was drinking out his money.”
She said too that her children “never drink any proper milk or ever eat baby food. My big daughter drink black tea and sometimes we does credit cow milk for her. She didn’t breast feed because I was so young… The second girl breast feed until she was six-years-old because we never afford to buy milk. It was the same thing for the small girl until I left that monster…”
His mother lived in a house in front of theirs, in the same yard and provided food for them when the man “drink out the money.” She was also abusive to Dhuman.
The woman would even prevent Dhuman from leaving the yard to report her son to the police “after he misbehaved…. At one time a neighbour reported him and his mother cursed up the police and the neighbour.”
The man would stay out and consume alcohol until after midnight, whenever he got paid. He would start to verbally abuse her from the street while going home and would continue until around 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning.
He would also blast music “from a big big music box in our small one-bedroom house. He didn’t care if the kids couldn’t sleep and if I said anything he would start cursing and breaking up things in the house.“
The neighbours would “report him for loud music and he would go to jail for a day or two.”
After she got her third child he became even more abusive. He would leave for work but would end up drinking with friends.
Refused to support children
After she separated five years ago, she struggled to make ends meet. The man refused to support his children when she asked him and he told her to go to the court instead.
The court ordered him to pay $2000 per week for each child “but he told the judge he could not afford that much so the judge settled for $1500.”
He started to pay for about two months but left to work in Suriname. He promised to send the money to his mother to make the payments.
But that only happened for about two months as well. He called and told her that he did not make enough money.
“He returned from Suriname and paid $20,000…. Whenever he called he was always drunk. Then one day his mother called and said that both of them going to Trinidad and they will send the money but they never sent any. Five months later they called and asked how much is the money so I went and find out at the court and it was $300,000,” Dhuman stated.
The man has stopped making payments and the amount has increased to a lot more.
Dhuman was his third wife and the first to have children for him. He remarried for the fourth time and that wife, who is pregnant, also suffered abuse and left him a few months later.
“When I left my husband, my little girl was just one-year-old and nobody was working. Some days we had nothing to cook or eat and the two big girls have to go to school. It was really hard,” she recalled.
Determined to bring an end their situation, she told her mother she was going to look for a job. Her mother discouraged her because “my little girl was too small and was breastfeeding.”
She nevertheless went out and searched but “got turned down.” She eventually secured a job at the Chinese restaurant even though her mother had told her “people would look down on me…”
Dhuman, whose life was centred around poverty and the abuse of alcohol, said she would not like any other women to suffer like she did.
Reflecting on what she “passed through in life,” she told SN that becoming independent was the best thing that ever happened to her.