AT JUST 17 years old, Elizabeth thought she had met the man of her dreams, the perfect person to spend the rest of her life with.
Little did she know the charming and well-presented Tom was anything but and would become the man to blame for 30 years of violence, abuse and fear.
It all began when Elizabeth decided to visit Tom interstate for a two-week holiday – a holiday she would never return from.
“It was during this time that he first hit me – I was talking about something and I remember he slapped me hard across the face,” Elizabeth said in an interview with The Border Watch.
From there the pair started their life on the run, as Tom – who was a wanted man – did anything to escape being captured and keep Elizabeth by his side.
Soon falling pregnant, her fear of Tom began to grow.
“We stayed in caravan parks and Tom always used a different name everywhere we went,” she said.
“He told me not to tell my family and friends where I was and that he had a gun under the seat of his car – I was a scared, pregnant 18 year old girl.”
As a devoted Christian, Elizabeth felt like she had to stay with Tom even though the situation was getting worse as time went on.
“My childhood affected my choice to stay – my parents are divorced, they would fight and yell at each other and were unfaithful to each other when I was younger, so when I got married I vowed it would be forever,” she said.
“When I met Tom he was going to church and said he was a Christian – the big thing about being a Christian and being in a marriage is that you do the right thing and stay with your husband and be a good wife.
“Tom couldn’t care less about those morals – he had affairs.”
Quickly becoming more violent and jealous, Tom would beat Elizabeth and follow her whenever she tried to get away.
“He gave me permission to contact an old friend so I was down the road in a phone box and he pulled up and dragged me from the phone box by my hair,” she said.
“I was about six or seven months pregnant at this stage and he had me on the ground, laying into to me, kicking me, punching me and pulling my hair.
“My mum came and got me from the caravan park the next day and hid me – I was bruised, beaten and had big chunks of hair missing.”
However, the escape from abuse was only brief and a few weeks later Tom and Elizabeth had resumed their relationship.
“I wasn’t entirely happy, I was still very much afraid of Tom,” Elizabeth said.
“We eloped two months later, but I wasn’t allowed to tell any of my family until the time of the wedding came when Tom made me call my parents – they weren’t happy and still, to this day, it was the unhappiest moment of my life.”
Twenty days after the wedding, their first child was born and Elizabeth was thrown into isolation.
“Tom wouldn’t let me tell any of my family and when I was in hospital, I wasn’t allowed any visitors,” she said.
“I didn’t bond with my baby for the first two years of her life because I refused to, knowing that at any time she might be taken away from me.”
The couple went on to have four more children and Tom’s behaviour towards Elizabeth escalates.
“I would leave Tom often and take our children with me, but he would always manipulate me and and make me so afraid of him that I would return to the marriage,” she said.
“On one occasion when the three eldest children were very small, things got worse – Tom whipped me with a spear gun, smashed a phone across my legs and punched and broke my nose.”
As it became all too much, Elizabeth thought she could seek protection through a restraining order against her partner and protection at a refuge, but found she was living under “false hope”.
“Tom tracked me down in the refuge and would contact me while I was in there,” she said.
Resuming her relationship with Tom for the sake of their children, Elizabeth spent many more years enduring the abuse until the family moved to the Limestone Coast.
Local police identified Elizabeth as a “red flag” – her domestic violence situation was so bad they helped her seek support from a local service.
“They were a part of helping me leave my ex with a friend of mine – without their help I probably wouldn’t have left in one piece – I know I would be dead by now if I was still with him,” she said.
The service helped Elizabeth to secure other accommodation and introduce her to a women’s education course with others who had been in similar situations.
“I fell into a heap afterwards because my identity was gone,” she said.
“Because I had been in such a tight confined box where I knew what I could and couldn’t do, when I came out of that, all boundaries were gone and I didn’t know what normal was.
“Learning to be normal and happy was terrifying.”
However, with the help of the service and her new partner, Elizabeth is now living the life she had always hoped for.
“I have met a beautiful man, I am engaged, I have a job and I have some wonderful grandchildren,” she said.
“I know if I saw Tom down the street I would want to go the other way, that fear is still there, but I have forgiven him and I’ve moved on.
“That’s all a part of the healing process.
“I don’t feel like I am a strong woman, but I do consider myself to be a survivor.”
