My ex abused me so badly I was left in a coma & hid my face for 12 YEARS, I see his torture each time I look in a mirror
WHEN SAUNDRA Crockett, a mum from California, caught her husband of, two years, getting cosy with another woman she reacted like most people would. She was disgusted.
But instead of starting a row in her local bar, she said ‘I don’t want to deal with it,’ to the man who she thought would love her for life and walked away.
Little did she know that was the moment that’d change her life forever and haunt her every time she looked in the mirror.
It was her 28th birthday and deciding it was time to go home, Saundra went to meet her husband to take him back but instead found him with his arms around another woman.
“I said, ‘I just didn’t want to deal with it’ I walked out of the bar, he followed me and he was so angry and I don’t know why he was so angry I’m not the one that had my arm around some guy,” The mum-of-three told Unfiltered Stories.
Saundra recalled her husband, who was an ex-marine, screaming in her face while she was backed into a wall.
But his reign of terror didn’t end there – he began punching Saundra in the face multiple times before she fell unconscious.
“I don’t know how long I was knocked out,” she explained. “When I woke up again I was on the side of the street near the gutter.
“I woke up, I didn’t know what happened and I was just so shocked that he would just leave me, I’m the mother of his son we’ve had horrible things but he’s never left me unconscious somewhere.
“That was just a total shock for me more so than the violence.”
Saundra met her ex-husband, a single mum-of-one, in a nightclub, and the pair dated for three years before getting married.
The pair eloped to Vegas to get hitched, but Saundra was never keen to go through with it.
She revealed the abuse began before they got married – with her being left black and blue from his punches and fingerprint marks along her arms from him holding her down.
He would be so apologetic, he would hit himself with the frying pan or do crazy things to show how remorseful he was.
Saundra Crockett
“We had gone to Vegas and I thought I could talk him out of it,” she explained.
“However he went out one day and he said ‘Oh I got the papers, I got the limo, we’re going to go do this’ and I felt trapped.”
Saundra revealed he would often leave her for days at a time and get aggressive before apologising for his sick behaviour.
She revealed: “He would be so apologetic, he would hit himself with the frying pan or do crazy things to show how remorseful he was.
“I would fall for that, like, who does that kind of stuff unless they’re sorry? So I kept thinking ‘He’s sorry, he does care about me, he just has a little bit of an anger problem.'”
But the night of her 28th birthday would show just how unremorseful he was as he beat her to the point of unconsciousness.
When she awoke, she went to meet her friends who were horrified by what her husband had done to her.
She decided to go home with them and saw herself in the mirror for the first time.
Saundra was left black and blue and her face was completely swollen.
The mum then headed home in the early hours of the morning where her husband asked ‘What happened to you?’
Throughout the day her face continued to keep swelling and she knew she had to go to the emergency room.
HOW YOU CAN GET HELP:
Women's Aid has this advice for victims and their families
- Always keep your phone nearby.
- Get in touch with charities for help, including the Women’s Aid live chat helpline and services such as SupportLine.
- If you are in danger, call 999.
- Familiarise yourself with the Silent Solution, reporting abuse without speaking down the phone, instead dialing “55”.
- Always keep some money on you, including change for a pay phone or bus fare.
- If you suspect your partner is about to attack you, try to go to a lower-risk area of the house – for example, where there is a way out and access to a telephone.
- Avoid the kitchen and garage, where there are likely to be knives or other weapons. Avoid rooms where you might become trapped, such as the bathroom, or where you might be shut into a cupboard or other small space.
If you are a victim of domestic abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s email support service is open weekdays and weekends during the crisis – messageinfo@supportline.org.uk.
Women’s Aid provides a live chat service – available weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You can also call the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
Near Death
When she arrived, her family joined her, but Saundra was in a comatose state and couldn’t talk.
Her family was warned she would likely die from the attack as it had caused an infection on her face that was spreading rapidly.
While she lay in the hospital unable to move, her husband came up with the excuse that she was mugged by a stranger earlier that day.
She was then moved to another hospital for emergency surgery and thankfully survived, but she would stay on the ward for six months for 26 different surgeries. Her face was left disfigured for life.
“My little boy he was only three or four and it freaked him out, he just screamed and cried, he wouldn’t come near me because I was so scary to him,” she recalled.
Her husband had disappeared after the incident and Saundra moved in with family while she healed.
Knowing that things had to change, Saundra had the courage to divorce her abusive husband and never heard from again.
Saundra also didn’t press charges at the time and kept the domestic abuse a secret for years.
Saundra hid her face behind a surgical mask for 12 years as it was ‘the only way’ she could cope and didn’t want to look at the reminder of what he had done to her.
After the ordeal, Saundra had a third child with another partner but became addicted to drugs because of the trauma and lost custody of them.
New Beginnings
Saundra made her way to a Women’s home for several years as she came off the drugs and rebuilt her life.
She managed to find peace with herself deciding she would not ‘feel guilty’ for her ex-husband’s actions and took her mask off for the first time in 12 years.
“I’m not going to feel guilty for the rest of my life because of something someone did to me, I didn’t do this,” she said.
Now, Saundra lives with her mum, her son, and grandchildren and has made the best out of her trauma by helping other women living through domestic abuse.
This is a thousand times better than what I looked like when this first happened to me.
Saundra Crockett
Saundra was given free surgeries by an initiative called Face Forward, which has provided free reconstructive surgery to hundreds of people worldwide who have been physically abused.
Deborah Alessi, a former victim of domestic violence started the non-profit and said: “They have to look in the mirror and be reminded this man or this woman or this mother did this to me,” she said.
Saundra was able to get her teeth fixed so she can eat properly again as well as surgery on her eye which wouldn’t close after the abuse.
“This is a thousand times better than what I looked like when this first happened to me. I don’t think I could even describe how awful it was,” she said.
Speaking on those who might stare at her, Saundra said: “If someone has a problem with it, that’s their problem, not mine.”
Now, the mum spends her time advocating for other domestic abuse victims to show that there is a way out and a better life ahead of them.
“If I can speak to one person and give them hope that this doesn’t have to happen to you, I think that it’s my job to do that,” she said.