‘The day my husband raped me was the final straw’
A Cape Town woman spent 18 years trapped in an abusive marriage, but fianlly put aside her fear for her life and the lives of her children when her husband raped her.
|||Cape Town - For years Fatima Adams* wanted to leave her husband of 18 years because of his violent behaviour towards her and their children. But the day he raped her was he final straw, and Adams found the courage to leave.
For years she tried to leave but he threatened her with violence every time.
“He would say: You are not taking my kids from me, you are not taking my home, you are not taking you away from me.”
She said she was raped earlier this year in her own home by the very man who vowed to honour and protect her.
The children had left for school and she was about to get ready for work when her husband, Imraan* told her she was not going to work and they were going to spend the day together. He locked the front door and confiscated her car keys and phone.
“He pulled me to the bed and pinned me down with his knees. He is much bigger and stronger than me. I told him not to hurt me. I told him I did not want to have sex but he continued,” Adams recalled.
Her husband owned a licensed firearm, she said, and although he did not threaten use it on her she had acquired a protection order fearing he one day would. “I was too scared that he would hurt my children. He once threatened he would take them from me.
“As long as I was around he would not get to the children,” she said. Both their families knew about the couple’s troubled marriage.
Adams said she had sought help from religious leaders who advised her to stay. Over the years she had hoped she could make her marriage work. “After each child, things would be normal for a bit and then the violence would start again.”
In 2000 she obtained a protection order against him and in 2014 she reported him to the police for beating their son, but later dropped the charges.
The day of the rape, police officers came to their home to hand him an order to appear in court over another violent outburst.
She kept busy, cleaning and cooking. “I was crying the whole time. How can he not show any remorse for violating me like this? How could he not see I did not want this?”
After the police left, a neighbour asked her for a lift to a local hospital. At this point she found the courage to call the police and asked her sister to accompany her to the police station.
The police wanted to know why she had not told the officers at her house earlier, to which she replied: “When you go through something like that, you do not know what to do.”
After making a statement, she was referred for counselling and a medical examination, an experience she described as difficult and invasive but necessary.
* Real names were changed to protect their children and because the case is still before the courts.
noloyiso.mtembu@inl.co.za
@NoloyisoMtembu
Weekend Argus