SAN ANTONIO – Nationally, one in every four women will be in an abusive relationship in her lifetime. In Bexar County, the statistic is one in three, which shows the scope of the area's domestic abuse problem.
In the new Defenders series "One Voice - 1,000 Stories," KSAT 12's Courtney Friedman sat down with a domestic violence survivor, who opened up about something that is usually kept silent.
There's a Native American proverb that says, "It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story." Yet, when it comes to domestic violence, we rarely hear any stories. The woman, whose identity we will keep hidden for her own safety, wants her story to help create conversation and eventually change.
"He came home and burned me in my face and said, 'What are you doing here? I told you not to come here.' His friends were there and that's when he just started pushing me around," the woman said.
After what she now admits was years of abuse, this survivor decided that she'd finally had enough.
We asked her: "You've been burned, you've been punched, you've been thrown. What made you stay in that relationship?"
"He told me he was going to change," she said. "That's why I quit my job. And then it just got worse from there."
For the first time, she reported the violence to police and got a protective order against her abuser.
"They took pictures of my arms and I told them that I had went home drunk after we were fighting, and I was asleep in the bed and I woke up to him abusing me," she said.
Her story is the story of thousands in San Antonio and Bexar County. Just last year, local Family Violence Prevention Services helped almost 7,000 men, women and children who were victims of domestic abuse. The organization reports that's only 30 percent of the real number. Experts say 70 percent of abuse goes unreported.
"I feel like I'm going to do better from here on," the survivor said. "I think that if I would have stayed in that relationship, I wouldn't have became anything."
She hopes other survivors will find that same strength before it's too late.
"Just get away," she said to anyone else in her position. "If there's a safe place you can go, if there's resources, then go. There's no reason to live like this. If someone is going to hurt you, then they don't love you."
"One Voice - 1,000 Stories" continues on Tuesday, Feb. 3, when a panel of local domestic abuse experts watch this survivor's interview and weigh in on her common situation.