Karen Brock was sitting on the bedroom floor, her back pressed hard against the door; her feet bracing against a chest of drawers opposite. “And my husband was pushing on the other side,” she tells The Weekly. “I could hear the door cracking around me, and I was trying to work out how I was going to break the window to get out of the room. I knew the net curtain would stop whatever I threw at it and I didn’t have anything in the room to throw anyway. There was no phone to call for help. He’d already broken that. And if he got through that door, with the adrenaline rush he’d get, I wouldn’t have survived.”
Karen, her husband and their two little ones (her son was five years old and her daughter three) lived on a wild and windswept property in Tasmania. There was nowhere to run and no one would hear her scream.
Karen had weathered brutal treatment in the past. She had been beaten and raped throughout her five-year marriage. “And there was a mental war going on that, at first, I didn’t realise was happening,” she says. “That person wanted to control you. Slowly, like an acid erosion, you lose your self-esteem, you lose your self-worth, you lose sight of any hope. You get yourself down to where you just exist.”
This attack, however, was particularly vicious. “It was the war of the worlds,” Karen adds, because days earlier she had summoned the strength to tell her husband that he had to leave.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 2021 من The Australian Women's Weekly.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May 2021 من The Australian Women's Weekly.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
Hitting a nerve
Regulating the vagus nerve with its links to depression, anxiety, arthritis and diabetes - could aid physical and mental wellbeing.
Take me to the river
With a slew of new schedules and excursions to explore, the latest river cruises promise to give you experiences and sights you won’t see on the ocean.
The last act
When family patriarch Tom Edwards passes away, his children must come together to build his coffin in four days, otherwise they will lose their inheritance. Can they put their sibling rivalry aside?
MEET RUSSIA'S BRAVEST WOMEN
When Alexei Navalny died in a brutal Arctic prison, Vladimir Putin thought he had triumphed over his most formidable opponent. Until three courageous women - Alexei's mother, wife and daughter - took up his fight for freedom.
The wines and lines mums
Once only associated with glamorous A-listers, cocaine is now prevalent with the soccer-mum set - as likely to be imbibed at a school fundraiser as a nightclub. The Weekly looks inside this illegal, addictive, rising trend.
Jenny Liddle-Bob.Lucy McDonald.Sasha Green - Why don't you know their names?
Indigenous women are being murdered at frightening rates, their deaths often left uninvestigated and widely unreported. Here The Weekly meets families who are battling grief and desperate for solutions.
Growing happiness
Through drought flood and heartbreak, Jenny Jennr's sunflowers bloom with hope, sunshine and joy
"Thank God we make each other laugh"
A shared sense of humour has seen Aussie comedy couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall conquer the world. But what does life look like when the cameras go down:
Winter baking with apples and pears
Celebrate the season of Australian apples and pears with these sweet bakes that will keep the midwinter blues away.
Budget dinner winners
Looking for some thrifty inspiration for weeknight dinners? Try our tasty line-up of low-cost recipes that are bound to please everyone at the table.