“I never thought that I would have been living the life my mom once lived, of being a domestic violence victim.” These poignant words from 23-year-old Savitree Mahase in a Facebook post on May 9, 2024, caught the attention of Stabroek News. The third-year nursing student used the popular social media platform to plead for help and warn women of the dangers of staying in abusive relationships.
Speaking with Stabroek News on Saturday, Mahase shared that she had spent her early to mid-teens in a group home and longed to feel loved. In her quest, she met a man she initially believed to be perfect, but who ultimately wasn’t. “I met him when I was 19. I was staying at a hostel,” she explained. She added that he had just had a baby, and the mother of his child had died. “This pushed me even more as I was softened by the thought of the baby not having a mother figure in their life.”
Mahase recounted spending considerable time away from the hostel, which led to her being kicked out. She said this was due to her staying with her then-partner to help take care of the baby.
This marked the beginning of a three-year-long abusive relationship, as she then moved in with him and his mother. However, this was a short-lived arrangement due to grievances between Mahase and her boyfriend’s mother. They ended up moving into a hotel where he worked as a handyman and she as a bartender.
Mahase said the abuse began; “at first it was a slap and an I’m sorry and we moved on from that. … When he started hitting me, I reached out to family,” she related, but was shunned and told, ‘when you make your bed hard you gah lay in it’.
With the realization that family wasn’t an option she continued to live with him in the hotel and worked as a bartender. “When we would have problems he would hit me, take away my books for school and phone, he even hide my computer.”
Web of lies
During that period, Mahase said, she was under the impression that they were both contributing to their livelihood “I buy all the groceries and stuff for the home and he would pay rent. This was the arrangement we had,” she recounted. But unbeknownst to her he actually never paid a cent. “I found out from the owner of the hotel that they had a deal that if he fixed stuff around the hotel we could stay for free. But he would tell me he is paying a rent every month and he never has money for anything,” she added.
When they moved from the hotel and started renting an apartment, he waited until she furnished the home by herself. “I emptied my bank account,” she said. This was in addition to him stealing money from her daily. She said she decided to let him be hoping to make a run for it when she finished nursing school. However, the abuse escalated until she could no longer take it.
When asked if she had any friends to confide in, she said that his controlling manner made that hard. “If I have a friend he would bad mouth me to them. He blocked half of my family. He would even change the password to my phone and Facebook account,” she recalled. This was coupled with even more disrespect as he would flirt with other women in front of her.
She recalled one of the abusive encounters where she feared for her life: “He had a gun magazine that he took and pushed down my mouth and threatened to take my life. When I made the police report and the case was called in court, the police said they did not have this in evidence.”
She said the police said that it was a toy magazine. “It was not a toy,” she reiterated. “I know. I felt it before. He would hit my head into the walls, drag me up the staircase, burn half of my clothes. If I looked at someone, is a slap or kick. If I go out and come back he would smell my privates.”
She said she reached out to the Ministry of Human Services but they opted to place her in a shelter. She said however that this arrangement would make her feel unsafe. She is pleading with anyone that might be able to help with her situation to please reach out to her.
