I’m a Different Woman Now

The night 33-year-old Avorina’s Hall’s partner rapidly punched her face six times, everything faded to white before she slumped to the floor unconscious. He was a serial cheater who abused her relentlessly, and now he had quit paying her rent. This night marked an escalation.

When she woke up, Avorina grabbed the nearest knife and lunged, but it sliced through a jug he raised to defend his chest and he fled. She knew he would return later, intent on killing her. So, she huddled in the front room with her three sons, a heavy wardrobe braced against the door. Later, he returned, kicking and pushing with all his might, but the wardrobe prevailed.

33 year old Avorina Hall has faced a lifetime of abuse, starting when she was four years old. Spotlight Initiative-funded training has equipped her with skills to overcome the trauma (UNDP/Ricardo Makyn photo).

Three nights later, he was back.

“He wanted to sleep with me and when I told him over my dead body, he got upset and threw the TV off the wall and took a hammer to the serger”, she remembers. The serger, a specialty sewing machine that gives a finished look to her clothing, is her pride and joy. In a rage, he scattered its valuable parts across her dressmaking studio.

In that crucial period of her life, something stirred.

Avorina and employee around her precious serger machine, now repaired after it was targeted by her former boyfriend. The serger ensures a professional finishing touch to garments. (UNDP/Ricardo Makyn photo)

Avorina was at the time enrolled in a small business and life skills programme under the European Union-United Nations Spotlight Initiative, soaking up lessons on her personal value, how to grow her business and how to deal with abusers. The women’s economic empowerment programme implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Multi Country Office in Jamaica in partnership with municipal corporations in Clarendon and St Thomas trained 80 survivors like Avorina.

The 33-year-old fashion designer is seated around one of three sewing machines she owns, tracing her journey from victim to recommitted ad determined boss of her own business.

Avorina Hall, fashion desinger, dressmaker and tailor. (UNDP/Ricardo Makyn photo)

HE KNEW ABOUT SPOTLIGHT INITIATIVE. HE KNEW WHAT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN

“I realize the reason he was so aggressive is because he saw my progress and he tried to stop it … He knew about the Spotlight Initiative, so he knew what was going to happen,” she concludes.

Then other lessons started to click.

“I never knew there was something called financial abuse. I was going through all the five abuses, and never knew I was going through so many. He called me names … he told me bad things; some things made me feel less than myself … so the Spotlight Initiative helped me a lot.

Avorina pauses, seemingly for minutes and tears flow as she processes painful memories of lifelong abuse, the latest at the hands of her son’s father. Now she has newfound hope.

"The programme taught us that whatever we are doing, be serious and don't go halfway and stop. As females we learned we can independent and help ourselves financially." - Avorina (UNDP/Ricardo Makyn photo)

AN EYE OPENER

"The programme taught us that whatever we are doing, be serious and don’t go halfway and stop. As females we learned we can be independent and help ourselves financially.” - Avorina Hall

“When I met the Spotlight Initiative it opened my eyes to many things as it has helped me to push my business further. It (taught) us how to manage our business, what to do, what not to do, and how to dress to impress. It also taught us that whatever we are doing, be serious and don’t go halfway and stop. As females we learned we can be independent and help ourselves financially.”

People can testify and see the difference within me, because the woman you see today you wouldn’t see two years ago. It’s a different, different me. - Avorina

BUSINESS HAS NEVER BEEN BETTER

Today, the abusive partner is out of her life, stricken with mental illness after repeatedly threatening to curse her. The business has never been better after applying lessons learned in the Spotlight Initiative-funded programme, and she now employs one person, she reports.

“Business is good so far to be honest because the community challenged me …right now, I never knew I could do wedding dresses, jackets, suits.  Now I’m doing all that. I believe I can do ALL things through Christ Jesus who strengthens me … I only been to high school, I never go anywhere else to learn sewing, so that’s when I realize it’s a gift”, she says.

TAPPING INTO HER GREATNESS

“…(through) Spotlight Initiative I realise there are great things within me, and I need to explore it. That’s when I decided to take my business serious and wanted to move further. With the grant (I bought) another sewing machine … I would like to employ more persons in need and also train them free of cost and employ them after. 

People can testify and see the difference within me because the woman you see today you wouldn’t see two years ago. It’s a different, different me. The group (fellow students) has opened my eyes to see that there is greatness in me.

Jamaica has a 27.8% prevalence rate of Gender Based Violence according to the 2016 Women's Health Survey which revealed that more than 1 in 4 women aged 15 to 64 years experienced intimate partner physical and sexual violence in their lifetime.

Through Spotlight Initiative I realised there are great things within me, and I need to explore it. That’s when I decided to take my business serious(ly). - Avorina Hall, fashion designer

TRACING THE CYCLE OF ABUSE

Avorina’s journey to a liberated business owner is in her words painful, but she wants her whole story told, no holding back. She says in order to understand her trauma, she must start at the beginning.

MY MOTHER GAVE ME AWAY 5 TIMES

When Avorina was a little girl, her mother sent her away to live with friends and relatives no less than five times. In her words, “My mother gave me away,” the only one of her 16 siblings to be treated this way.  It was years before she could process her feelings of pain and bewilderment.

She was two years old when it started. By four years of age, the godmother’s husband started to molest her.

“She used to let me sleep with him. I had to make sure at nighttime I sleep in a tight skort (skirt and shorts combined), because if I don’t do it, he would molest me all through the night. While her godmother went to market in the days, she stayed out to evade abuse and was beaten on her return.

When she told her mother what happened her reply was ‘hush, he did the same to me’.  

Jamaica's Child Protection Family Services Agency (CPFSA) received 9,800 cases of abuse against children in 2020. Sexual abuse accounted for 20 percent of these reports. The children’s registry reports an average of 700-800 cases monthly for 2021.

“At age 11 she (mother) gave me away again, to my grandaunt,” she recalls shaking her head.  The husband also molested her, and they used her like a slave, demanding she cook, clean and do their grocery.

“When I was 13, she gave me away again”, she sighs. “That lady abused me very badly and her brother also used to molest me”.  

Later she passed for Thompson Town High, but a bad sore foot prevented her from attending regularly, so she was placed in a class for slow learners. When she placed first in her exams, everyone realised she was bright.

Her mother placed her in a better school in Clarendon’s capital, May Pen, and sent food on the weekends. “Nobody was there to protect me. I could go anywhere I wanted to go. I tried suicide two times because I felt nobody loves me. When my monthly (menstruation)come, I had to cut up clothes to make pads to see me through. I have nothing, no roll on until I met my son’s father at age 16,” Avorina says.

He gave her money, sent her to school and bought her a sewing machine. Later she took her exams and earned a Grade two in Clothing and Textile.

That was the beginning of her journey into the dressmaking business.

The first time I heard I was beautiful was when I was 14. I went home and looked in the mirror and saw myself for the first time. I never used to see it because I felt nobody loves me" - Avorina Hall

Avorina wants victims of abuse to know that they are valued and that there is life after abuse.

THERE IS LIFE AFTER ABUSE

Reflecting on her choice of an abusive partner, Avorina points to the childhood trauma that left emotional scars and wounds and reinforced feelings of worthlessness.

Now she wants victims of abuse to know that they are valued and that there is life after abuse.

From troubled child to confident woman relishing her financial freedom, Avorina is determined to put the past behind her and is focused on taking her business to new heights. 

FOOTNOTES

Text by UNDP Communications Analyst, Gillian Scott. Thanks to UNDP Spotlight Initiative programme manager, Shellian Forrester and thanks to teams from St Thomas and Clarendon Municipal Corporation and Clarendon Parish Development Benevolent Society for facilitating the interviews. Photos by Ricardo Makyn for UNDP Multi Country Office in Jamaica.