‘The monster who swallowed my husband’

Botes, who has written a book on the emotional abuse she was subjected to by her ex husband, titled “The monster who swallowed my husband”, shared her story with the victims of crime and Aids at the Benoni CPF’s victim empowerment motivational talk, on March 29.

When she first met Mark he was a “kind, generous and sweet man”.

But the problem was that Mark had a secret, which he did not share with Annemarie when they got married.

Soon, the sweet man started swearing at her, and she could not understand the problem”.

“I started asking him what was wrong; he said I’m the problem and he accused me of having an affair,” said Annemarie.

Things started getting worse between the two as, during the night, Mark would just jump out of bed and say he had seen a neighbour’s son jumping through the window to have sex with his wife.

He was so convinced of this that he would run around the house throughout the night, believing he was chasing the non-existent neighbour’s son.

He also once took the wheels off Annemarie’s car and threw them into the room through the window where their son was sleeping.

Fortunately the child was not hurt.

Annemarie could not share the problem with her family, because she wanted them to believe they were happily married.

“I put on a mask – my best behaviour – whenever they or we visited,” she said.

But the pain became unbearable and Annemarie ended up complaining to Mark’s brothers.

“But he told them that I was having an affair and the brothers sided with Mark, saying they knew their brother very well and that he could never do such a thing,” she said.

“At the time I was heavily pregnant and his brothers said I should get my act together.

“I ended up thinking I was hallucinating.”

The abuse continued.

“One night, when the family visited a restaurant in a shopping centre, we walked past the same man sitting on an aisle seat twice, and Mark was convinced that he was my boyfriend and that I had arranged for him to be there.

“He said that was the father of the baby I was carrying and swore he was going to kill me and our children that night.”

He then drove them to the cemetery and she was convinced he was going to kill them.

“Luckily another man arrived in a car and asked if he could help; Mark calmed down and we left.”

Annemarie believes the man was an angel.

“The next day I went to hospital to give birth to my daughter and my husband was just screaming at the door, saying he was waiting for the father of the child to come so that he could kill us both – I was humiliated,” she said.

After five days, Annemarie decided enough was enough.

“I packed my things and phoned Mark to let him I was leaving,” she said.

But the surprised Mark quickly came home with his manager.

“I told his manager everything and Mark broke down and revealed that he was addicted to cough mixture and said he drank about 30 bottles of cough mixture with codeine a day,” Annemarie said.

“He then went to rehab, but it did not last for long and we ended travelling that road more than 10 times.

“Every time he went to rehab I saw my wonderful and kind Mark, but, unfortunately, he could never choose us or himself over the addiction and I realised that there was nothing I could do.

“If I told him I was divorcing him he would put a gun to my head and said he would kill me and the kids.”

The worst part was that their local police station did not want to open a case against Mark.

“In small towns we knew each other and the officers said they knew Mark could not do that; they asked if he had ever hurt me physically and refused to open a case when I said no.”

The abuse escalated to a point where Mark started keeping Annemarie awake all night and allowed her to sleep only at 4am, only an hour before she went to work.

“He was scared that if we both fell asleep I would have sex with somebody, and he thought an hour was too short for sex.”

Annemarie eventually got fed up and thought killing Mark was the solution.

“I decided to use his addiction to kill him and I looked for all his pills and cough mixtures and made a cocktail to overdose him,” she said.

“I had no feelings at that time; I felt I was surviving the marriage and saving my children, so I gave him the first concoction and, after an hour, gave him another one and then helped him to bed.

“In my heart I just said die … die.”

Three hours later she went to the room to check if he was dead and found him lying on the bed with white foam coming from his mouth.

“I immediately came to my senses and phoned the ambulance and said he had overdosed himself; they believed me, because by then his problem was known,” said Annemarie.

He also believed it when he came out of hospital.

Mark behaved for a little while, but soon went back to his old behaviour.

“I eventually gathered enough courage to divorce Mark,” said Annemarie.

She then started noticing colourful things in her life, especially flowers.

“I realised that I was colour blind all along; I saw everything as black and white and nothing else.”

She says abusers are manipulators of the worst kind and advised people to share their pain and tell their story before it becomes too late.

Mark has since died.