Astou Dieng: Seventh PADV Purple Heart with Hope Honoree, March 2011 Astou and her lovely, affable children live in peace now. They do the usual things: homework, share dinner, take baths, and relish a bedtime story together, yet their home is strikingly different than it was. There is order, tranquility, food and hot water, no nightmares, or 911 calls. Astou is grateful to PADV, but it is Astou who is to be commended for her courage and perseverance against a grim likelihood that she might not survive. The 2011 Purple Hearts with Hope Award belongs to Astou. Ironically, it has been eleven years since she entered an epoch of agony that would come to define her love, her marriage, her pregnancies, and her American dream and – for far too long – her hope. Today she smiles a gentle and trusting smile. Her eyes shine with confidence, conviction and expectation. Astou’s abuser denied her water warm enough to bathe their infant children; he denied food for her hungry newborns. While her belly was swollen with innocent life, eager for nutrition of its own, Astou’s husband starved both mother and child. He locked her in their house and cut the telephone lines. She was unable to even call her worried mother in Senegal. “She was afraid he would kill me.” Speaking in their native French, Astou’s abuser chided her. “You’re never gonna leave me. You don’t know English. You have nowhere to go,” he threatened, censoring her hope before it could take root. She cowered in the locked apartment, babies at her breast, her senses keen to the echoes of yesterday when he returned fit with a yen to choke her physically and emotionally as he so often did. Astou did, in fact, have somewhere to go. She contacted PADV, which she had learned about while serving a jail sentence as a result of a 911 call, in which her husband convinced the police that she was the offender. PADV connected Astou with legal counsel, transitional housing, food, education and childcare support while she found and fed her hope. Today, Astou has her green card and works providing elderly care. She is seeking certification as a licensed practical nurse. After eleven long years of uncertainty, Astou recently visited her mother in Senegal. She recalls, “My mother, she hold me. She cannot believe that I am alive. She can rest now. PADV help us as a family. I can say happiness.”
Posted on: Wed, 24 Jul 2013 07:56:55 +0000
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