A young mother is completely blind because of injury inflicted by her abusive policeman husband in a violent three-year marriage that ended in November last year, reports the Post Courier.

She is Elsie, who lives at the Bumbu Police Barracks in Lae with her family. Her father is also a policeman based in Lae. A mother of a beautiful nine-month-old baby girl, Elsie was forced to flee from her home at the Taraka Police Barracks, at the outskirts of Lae city, where she lived with her rogue cop husband and fled from him to live with her parents at the Bumbu Police Barracks.

Her tale is similar to that of another young mother, Joy Wartovo who bravely went public with her story of suffering abuse, beatings and burns from her police husband in December last year. In the case of Elsie, the three years of marriage to this member of the Lae Police Task Force was, like Joy’s marriage, hell on earth.

Of all the beatings and abuse she received at the hands of her husband, Elsie had to put up with them for the sake of their child but the last attack on the 28 November 2010, changed her life completely.

In one of his jealous rages, the policeman husband attacked Elsie and threw his mobile phone at her, hitting her in her right eye.

Elsie had only one good eye. When she was in grade six in school, she was playing with her friends and had a freak accident, which resulted in her losing sight in her left eye completely. She had depended on her right eye, which became the target of her husband’s rage. 

Elsie was rushed to the accident and emergency ward at Angau Memorial Hospital and after couple a of days, the opthomologist declared that her right eye was completely ruptured by the impact of the cell phone.

She was devastated with the news. Her father, who is also a policeman, was at her bedside and he was also devastated by what the doctor was telling him.

The news hit them hard for the father and daughter slowly realised that she was now completely blind and would not even see the beautiful face of her nine month old daughter and watch her grow up into a young girl and womanhood.

The father said Elsie had reported the matter to Lae police and three months later, the abusive husband was yet to be arrested and charged formally.

Elsie said she had suffered abuse at the hands of her husband in their three year marriage for no good reasons. She said he would always accuse her of extra maritail affiars and would fly into jealous rages even at seeing her talk with male friends or even his police work mates. 
She said the incident that led to her losing her eyesight was trivial, and it all arose from the installation of a security light at their barracks unit. 

“I had been asking my husband to install a security light at the back of our unit but he has been giving excuses, delaying the work. So I asked one of my friends at my church, who is a domestic electrican to install the light,” she said.

She said the young man who refers to her as “big sister” came to their unit on a Saturday, did the assessment of the work and gave her a list of materials to purchase for the installation.
“I left the list on the table for my husband to have a look at when he returned from duty,” she said.

She said he came from work and when she told him about the list of materials to purchase, he started accusing her of having an affair with the man.

“I tried to explain but he became abusive so I took my daughter and went to bed but he dragged me out and threw me down the house and kicked me in my face,” she said. She said another policeman, a neighbour came to her aid and told him to stop but the man would not listen.

She added that her husband ordered her to leave the house so she packed her bag and got onto a police vehicle that was coming into town so they could drop her off at her parents’ house at the Bumbu Police Barracks.

But the husband demanded for her to return to the house and she reluctantly got off the vehicle and went back to their house.

“If only the policeman had not listenesd to my husband and driven off, I would not have met this fate,” she said from her parents’ home.

At this time, she had only received bruises and a swollen face from the assault. On Sunday, 28 November, she had gone to her aunt’s place at Tent City police barracks and on her way back, she met her husband with their daughter at Igam Barracks road junction.

Elsie said her husband insisted that they go to his family’s block at Igam and she reluctantly followed him. 

After the visit, they returned home to Taraka Barracks and she was lying on her left side, breast feeding her daughter when her husband walked up to her, standing at her feet, attacked her and threw his mobile phone hard at her face. When it connected with her eye, she lost consciousness.

“I could feel coldness creeping up my leg and into my body, I was going numb but I could hear movements and voices near me,” she said. “The sign of coldness creeping up her feet was death but God saved her life,” said her father, a God fearing Christian.

Her father said he would leave everything to his colleagues to handle and would not do anything to influence police action. 

Today, the young mother is completely blind and cannot see her daughter’s smile or the members of her family that she loves so much. She is living with the memories of the people and places she saw only three months ago.