Loula knows all too well, if a man hits you once, he’ll hit you again.
By Vanessa Chircop
WHEN Loula Dellaportas was a little girl, she promised herself she would never let a man hurt her.
She told herself she would be a strong, independent, career woman and would not rely on a man.
She saw how domestic violence had affected the people that she loved and she promised herself it would never happen to her.
And the first time Loula Dellaportas’ fiancé hit her, he promised he would never do it again.
A week after their wedding, the honeymoon was well and truly over and the real beatings and the mind-games began.
“I realised very quickly that this wasn’t going to stop… three months into the marriage I asked for a divorce,” she said.
“He said if I divorced him he’d kill me and kill my parents and because he was constantly belting me, I believed him.”
A prisoner in her own home and trapped by fear, Loula told her husband if he kept beating her she would never give him a child.
“He was desperate for a son, and he changed, he came really, really good.
“As soon as I got pregnant the beltings started again.”
On one occasion while pregnant with her second child and nursing her first, Loula recalls her husband grabbing her by the hair, dragging her through the house, slamming her into a wall and then bashing her head to the floor.
Not long after she gave birth, Loula managed to escape.
She fled with her sons to her parent’s house where she lived for three years, trying to put to the pieces of her life back together.
Sixteen years later the Hume resident is using her experience to not only help other victims of domestic violence, but is also trying to break down the stereotypes surrounding the problem.
“I had a job, I had money, I had my own home, I had a car and I fell victim,” she said.
“Domestic violence doesn’t discriminate.”
Unfortunately Loula’s story is not unique — in Hume last year 2,037 family violence incidents were reported to police. Of this, charges were laid in only 576 cases.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence call the Women’s
Domestic Violence Crisis
Service on 1800 015 188.
