Domestic violence survivor tells her fellow women

WEEKS after her ordeal, Onika Kingston can still feel the heat of the boiling pot of rice being thrown over her body by someone who was supposed to love her, protect her and cherish her. Every time she stares at the healing burn wounds about her body, anger, fear and distress trickle down her spine; all mixed together to trigger her tears to flow.

But even with all this pain, Onika is still filled with hope which reminds her that she is still alive.
“I thank God to be alive,” she said. Those words, many Guyanese women, more than 10 for 2018 alone, were not fortunate enough to say such, because death snatched them away through the hands of an abusive partner. Onika is scarred mentally, emotionally and physically, but she is alive and is using the opportunity of the gift of life to tell her fellow women to get out now! For Onika, it’s no longer about empathising but about strengthening and creating the needed change to break the cycle of domestic violence.

AS HER STORY GOES
Trying to hold back the tears, the visibly distraught Onika sat only mere feet away from the very spot she was mercilessly scalded by her partner Leslie Woolford. “I know this person in 2016. I was in the interior for the August holiday. I went on a six-week work and we exchanged phone numbers. The friendship started to develop and when I came out back, I started doing his business.

He would send out money and I would have to give his children and so. He said he wanted to come and spend Christmas, so he came and two weeks he spend,” Onika reminisced on how the relationship started. On his first visit to the home, she said that the first sign of violence that became evident was control. “He started to have an issue with my kids and saying that the kids making a lot of noise but the two weeks fly out and I ignore it,” she said.

OTHER SIGNS
In 2018, Woolford told Onika that he wanted to come again and stay at her rented apartment in Silvertown, Wismar, Linden, where she and her five children reside. He told her that he was not feeling well since he suffers from acute diabetes and needed to come out of the interior to seek medical attention. “The same day he came out I had to take him to the emergency because he was not feeling well. His sugar was very high plus his pressure, whole night we were there plus the next day. When he came home we were going back steady at the hospital and he kept saying he in feeling good, he in feeling good.”

The Linden Town Week was approaching in April and Onika’s cousins from Berbice were coming to visit. Onika revealed that Woolford then again became controlling by keeping her away from her family. “Then again he said he has a problem with the children, they keeping noise and I told him he can’t come and make me and my children uncomfortable because is we living all the time. Then he told me that my cousins can’t come and stay here and I told him no I cannot ‘don’t’ them. He told me he gon mek me run and go at the station, and that is how I know you don’t take certain things for granted because he wanted to control me,” Onika shared.

Despite not knowing that Woolford would have committed the act, she still had a fear in her and took her three daughters and slept at a friend the night. The next day she came home and the arguing continued and Woolford broke up her phone, then asked her eldest son who was home at the time to run an errand. “By the time I walk and come by the blind I see he coming with the boiling rice and I push the door and mek sure I push in me face because I know is my face he coming foh burn and he throw it all over,” Onika reflected, showing the visible burns still about her body. She spent weeks in hospital and even though many times she felt like she was pulling her last breath, she grappled on at the thought of her five children and that gave her the tolerance to bear the pain.

STILL SENDING THREATS
Woolford was charged with attempted murder and damage to property and was remanded to prison. Even as Onika was on her hospital bed, he kept calling her daughter’s phone which she had at the time, since her phone was destroyed. Onika was forced to take out a restraining order against Woolford since he kept tormenting her, even calling her landlord. “When I hear his voice I just getting flashes about what happen,” she said.

Her worse fear, however, was when he was released on bail at his second court appearance. “I was very scared, like a frighten to sleep in the night. Every minute I peeping to see if the door lock, jumping out my sleep, it is not easy,” she said.

Despite all the turmoil she continues to face, Onika is remaining positive that she can now use the opportunity to let other women know that they should not take threats for granted and should not encourage a controlling partner, because that is the first step to violence. “I thank God that I am alive and to come home to my children and to let others know what I went through,” she said. She is also calling on magistrates to desist from granting bail to men who attempts to murder their partners since it places the victims at higher risk of losing their lives altogether.