Domestic Violence Survivor Shares Her Story To Save Others
MIAMI (CBS4) - While authorities in Broward County try to figure out what caused 29 year old Abel Ferdinand Jr. to allegedly shoot and kill his 25 year old wife Nattalie Ann Cardona Ferdinand at their Pompano Beach home Tuesday night before turning the gun on himself, Elena Linares a survivor of domestic abuse wonders if anything could have been done to prevent his tragedy.
"We don't want to lose any more women," she says.
While there are no reports of police responding to the couples home for domestic abuse, Linares says most of the time domestic abuse goes unnoticed until it's too late.
"How sad she didn't get out in time to save her life and how sad children are left without their parents," says Linares.
Linares now a successful business owner, with two barber shop locations in Miami. The single mother says she suffered physical and mental abuse in silence for years before finally fleeing New York. She ended up in a shelter for battered women in Miami; a move she says changed her life.
"it's important for me to send a message to victims that there is a way out, I'm a survivor and I love telling my story and let people know there is a beautiful life out there and good people," she says.
Good people like Jeannette Garofalo, President of the Safespace Foundation in Miami, a shelter for batter women and there children.
"The statistics are staggering, every ninety seconds a woman is battered," she says.
But Garofalo says once a victim of domestic abuse makes the decision to get out, there is light at the end of the tunnel with the help of confidential organizations like Safespace.
"The firs step is the hardest the decision that they can get out they can survive by themselves." says Garofalo.
A decision Elena Linares says saved her life.
"I'm able to show women anyone can do it, I did," she says.
And she has never looked back.
For more information, log on to the Safespace Foundation
