Enough!

“He never stop from hitting me even if I just gave birth to our child… One day I visited him to his post in Isabela and I found out he is seeing another woman. They have a 3-year-old child, while I’m pregnant with our first child then. That night, we were lying on the same bed. Before we went to sleep, he punched me on the face.”

Thus recounts a battered cop’s ordeal in the hands of her husband, whom she eventually stabbed and hacked 59 times when her sanity momentarily snapped in 1990.

Carmelita (not her real name), a former cop recalls how she went berserk when her husband tried to plunge a nine-inch fan knife into her chest.

“He tried to stabbed me. I fend it off. I got the chance to hack him and hit him in the neck three times. He ran away but I was able to catch up with him and then stabbed him more. It was the first time that I fought back. I was a battered wife for a long time. ” Carmelita recalls of her husband’s murder in 1990.

Carmelita, then in her 30s, surrendered to her colleagues who placed her under technical arrest.

Experts said Carmelita suffered from the battered wife syndrome (BWS).

BWS, according to a lady pscyhologists at the National Center for Mental Health (NCMH), is a symptom of physical abuse.

From being a good provider, the ill-fated husband reportedly turned into an alcoholic and perennial womanizer.

The battered wife said her partner also had bizarre sexual demands.

Two years after killing her husband, Carmelita was meted the penalty of reclusion perpetua and was incarcerated to the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) in 1993 where she served 10 gruelling years.

Her story served as one of the bases of lawmakers in ratifying Republic Act 9262, or an Act Defining Violence Against Women and their Children, in March 8, 2004.

Six years ago, Carmelita was released from prison and was reunited with her only daughter.

This is an excerpt of my article ‘Battered cop’s murder memoirs’ published by People’s Tonight in Oct. 15, 2006.

Website of Organizations Addressing Violence Against Women (in the Philippines) http://unifem-eseasia.org/projects/evaw/vawngo/vamphil.htm

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