WHEN Saundra Crockett caught her husband of two years getting cosy with another woman in a bar she was disgusted.
But instead of starting a row with the man she thought would always love her, she walked away.
Little did she know that moment would 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.
Instead she 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, from California, recalled her husband, an ex-marine, screaming in her face while she was backed into a wall.
He began punching her in the face multiple times before she fell unconscious.
“I don’t know how long I was knocked out,” she said.
“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.
[bc_video account_id=”5067014667001″ application_id=”” aspect_ratio=”16:9″ autoplay=”” caption=”Danielle Secker bravely shares her story of horrific domestic abuse” embed=”in-page” experience_id=”” height=”100%” language_detection=”” max_height=”360px” max_width=”640px” min_width=”0px” mute=”” padding_top=”56%” picture_in_picture=”” player_id=”default” playlist_id=”” playsinline=”” sizing=”responsive” video_id=”6368152979112″ video_ids=”” width=”640px”]“That was just a total shock for me more so than the violence.”
Vegas wedding
Saundra met her husband, now ex, in a nightclub when she was a single mum-of-one and the pair dated for three years before getting married.
They eloped to Vegas to get hitched but Saundra was never keen to go through with it.
The abuse began before they got married with her being left black and blue from his punches and with fingerprint marks along her arms from him holding her down.
[quote credit=”Saundra Crockett”]He would be so apologetic, he would hit himself with the frying pan or do crazy things to show how remorseful he was.[/quote]“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 said: “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’.”
Shock attack
The night he beat her unconscious, Saundra woke up and met with her friends who were horrified by the assault.
She decided to go home with them and saw herself in the mirror for the first time.
The attack had left her black and blue and her face was completely swollen.
When she headed home in the early hours of the morning, her husband asked ‘What happened to you?’
Throughout the day her face continued to swell and she knew she needed to go to hospital.
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 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 stayed on the ward for six months undergoing 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 and Saundra moved in with family while she recovered.
Knowing that things had to change, Saundra had the courage to divorce her abusive husband and never hear from him again.
Saundra didn’t press charges at the time and kept the domestic abuse secret for years.
She hid her face behind a surgical mask for 12 years as it was “the only way” she could cope and not be reminded 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 stayed in a women’s home for several years to come off drugs and rebuild her life.
She managed to find peace with herself and take 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, son, and grandchildren and has made the best out of her trauma by helping other women living through domestic abuse.
[quote credit=”Saundra Crockett”]This is a thousand times better than what I looked like when this first happened to me.[/quote]Saundra was given free care 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 who started the non-profit, said: “They have to look in the mirror and be reminded this man or this woman or this mother did this to me.”
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.