Mom fears she could be the next murder victim

Jennifer Oliver lamented these words as she relayed her traumatic experience of domestic violence to Newsday yesterday.

Oliver, 34, mother of seven children, has been abused by a man whom she has been living with for the past year. She claims that a few months after she moved in with him, he began abusing her. “He got angry with me one day and hit me with a concrete block on my hip.” After that incident, she decided to make a report to the police. In December last year, she was granted a restraining order against the man for a period of 12 months. The restraining order, which was issued by a Tunapuna magistrate, stated that the respondent is “prohibited from assaulting, beating or any way using violent language towards the applicant.” The order was however breached when Oliver, who is employed as a live-in maid caring for an elderly person a few blocks away from her assailant’s home, was attacked around 7.30 pm last Thursday at Warata in the Maracas Valley, Maracas.

She said after work that day, she was awaiting a taxi to take her to a friend’s house. “He approached me and asked me what I was doing out there. He beat me all over my body. He kicked me in my head and my ribs. It was so painful,” Oliver related as her eyes swelled with tears.  “He then dragged me from where I was to his home. He took me by my neck and start to choke me then pull out a knife, pressed it into my chest and said that he would kill me. I got so frightened because I thought he was going to kill me. I started to scream.  “Somebody heard the commotion and called the police because they (the police) pulled up the same time. He quickly put the knife in his pocket.” While she related her story, she displayed the many bruises that she sustained during the beating. Her left arm, back, hip and leg were swollen and red. Her rib cage was also injured as she pointed out on the x-ray that she received from a doctor. Oliver went on to explain that the officers did nothing about the incident. She claims that they released him. Meanwhile, Oliver is pleading with women who are in her predicament to come forward. “Most women are ashamed to tell their story for fear of being victimised by others. But the only way that they can get help is to speak out.” There have been many incidents in Trinidad where women who have been battered by men met their ultimate fate: death. The most recent being that of Juliette Victoria Cumming, 41, of Princes Town, whose throat was slit by a man against whom she had taken out a protection order three months before her death.