The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

Tribune Staff Reporter

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

A DOMESTIC abuse survivor has spoken out about her experience, saying urging other people in similar positions to simply leave their abusers is not good advice alone.

Tina Gay Foster said survivors need safe spaces to escape their partners so they are not subject to more abuse.

The issue has been in the forefront of public discussion after young mother Heavenly Terveus was shot dead in front of her infant son by her boyfriend in late January, police said. The man, Delano Ferguson, then turned the gun on himself and died in hospital two days later, police said.

While others have advised abused persons to leave their abusive partners, the 33-year-old survivor said telling persons to leave is not good advice alone. She said victims need help, because often perpetrators are “coming and killing them”.

Ms Foster reflected on her own experience recalling her abuse escalated after she left. When she walked away, she said her abuser headbutted her.

It has been reported that the young mother left her abuser about two weeks before her death and moved in with relatives on Miami Street, where she was killed.

The fact the deceased left was a point Ms Foster highlighted.

“Women, men, and girls who are being abused, we don’t have nowhere to go,” she told The Tribune. “Where could she have gone? The justice system, the government, the Crisis Centre, Zonta, and all those persons who are advocates for domestic violence, even me. Are we just advocates because we are just speaking but where’s the action because at the end of the day Nassau is 21 by seven.

“She left that man for two weeks. Where could she have gone but home? Where are the shelters? Where is the protection? We don’t have those things. I feel as though now women are going to be even more scared to leave because she left and now she’s dead.”

It was claimed that on both the Monday and Tuesday before her death, the 21-year-old was the victim of hostility and confrontation from the man.

According to National Security Minister Wayne Munroe, on January 16 a patrol car was dispatched to the Miami Street home where Heavenly lived with her mother in response to a complaint of damage to a vehicle by Ferguson.

However, when police arrived, Ferguson was long gone and Heavenly declined to make a formal complaint against him at a nearby station despite the urging of a friend who was there at the time, Commissioner of Police Paul Rolle further revealed.

At one point, officers even spoke to Ferguson to try to have him return so that he could be arrested. But aware that police were searching for him, Ferguson evaded authorities and was never caught. He was on bail after he shot at Heavenly’s older sister and another person last year.

Mr Munroe also told reporters outside Cabinet that Heavenly also tried to get Ferguson to return to be arrested.

The incident has reignited calls for stiffer penalties, but Mr Munroe argued the concept that greater penalties will stop someone from committing a crime overlooks the fact that people need to have self-control and take personal responsibility for their actions.

For her part, Ms Foster said mental issues, which includes anger, need to be addressed.

She said she was not just blaming men, as women commit domestic abuse, but said the statistics show men are more commonly perpetrators in these incidents.

“If you have someone with a mental issue they need help and most of these men that are doing these abuse and stuff they have anger issues. They had their issues from when they probably grew up from when they were home and they want to take out on females,” she said.

Ms Foster filed a complaint against her abuser, but later dropped the charges.

She said he stopped tormenting her but found someone new who he started to be violent towards.

Asked if she felt she should have followed through with the charges to prevent him from hurting someone else, she said she felt that way at first but because he never did anything she deemed drastic, she did not think he would have ended up in prison.

“At first I was beating myself up about it but slapping me, punching me in my belly, sitting on me, and bursting me with things. Then he dragged me in the road one time - they wouldn’t have sent him to prison or he would’ve already been out,” she said.

“I went to her (his new partner). She had her baby the three months when he stabbed her in the back and she was in the hospital on chest tubes. I’m a nurse, so when I went to her that’s when I found out who she was.”

She added: “When I went to her, I talked to her and I begged her. I say to her ‘let me help you. Let’s try to do it together. You gotta leave.’ But the thing about it is that she had that baby for him... She made a comment to me and she said ‘He could be sweet you know but when he get mad… I can handle him though.’ When she said that I knew she was going back.”