Story of Ms. Alice
Thirty-year-old Alice was advised by the Czech Police to come to the Intervention Centre, for she had been brutally attacked by her husband. She barely communicated and only kept staring to the ground. Her husband had been abusing her physically and mentally for 8 years, but she was too afraid to leave him, as he threatened her with murdering her.
She and her abusive husband have two underage children together (5 and 3 year-old). At the moment she came to the Intervention Centre, she was on a maternity leave, thus dependant financially on her husband. The years of terror she has experienced left her psychically wounded, she did not believe in herself and she thought that she wouldn’t manage living without the bully. She was ashamed of the things that were happening in her household and was unfairly blaming herself for that. She unloaded her troubles on no one and her husband was forbidding her to meet both her family as well as her friends. The turning point came when her neighbours called the Police during one of the assaults. The abusing was so serious that her husband was taken into custody and the Police started investigating the case. The Police also recommended Alice to go to the Intervention Centre to ask for help that she was immediately provided with. Alice found the inner strength and started talking about all she had to go through. She started coming to the Centre regularly and she was provided with psychotherapy in order to help her to get over the things she had experienced. She also started visiting a therapist with her children. The workers in the Intervention Centre also helped her during the whole process of getting divorced and during the criminal proceedings with her husband. The husband’s abuses were assessed by the court as the abuse of a person living in the same dwelling and he was imprisoned. The workers in the Centre helped Alice to find a new home and the children started attending kindergarten and school, so she could get a job. She restored contact with her family and friends and started living a normal life again.
