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"My husband beat me and left me for dead," said Christine, who requested her real name be withheld.
Living in a gated, secure community on Hilton Head Island, the couple had an active, public and social life with many business obligations and connections. She worked in the banking industry; he had a high-profile career. The verbal beatings she received when he got angry were a secret.
Aware that she had to get help and not wanting to involve friends, and as she became more aware of what had happened, Christine remembered something about a United Way group's shelter -- Citizens Opposed to Domestic Abuse in Beaufort. On the third day after the beating, she called CODA to ask for directions to the shelter. She still has the piece of paper on which she scrawled barely legible street names directing her to where she could seek safety.
Christine joined 15 other women, many with children, at the CODA shelter. She was taken to the emergency room where it was determined that despite dozens of blows to her head, there was no bleeding in her brain. CODA housed her for eight days. She received mental health and legal counseling and support from law enforcement through a Beaufort County Sheriff's Office advocate.
"This experience in the shelter was the catalyst for getting out of my marriage," she said. "It was very profound. I know without the counseling I received through CODA, I would not have been able to endure the depression and the emotional trauma."
Now, almost four years later, Christine volunteers weekly at the shelter, working with other women and speaking to groups using her real name on behalf of CODA. She doesn't mind sharing her story to help others, but also doesn't want people to only know that side of her life.
"I want people to see me as a survivor," said Christine, who now has moved away from Hilton Head and is reinventing herself. "I don't deny or hide my identity or hide my background, but I don't want that one incident to identify me as a person in the public eye."
At the shelter, Christine shares her story of being emotionally abused for 10 years before things violently escalated with the severe beating at the hands of her husband four years ago.
"My husband assaulted me and nearly beat me to death, and he had not hit me before," Christine said. "He was abusive emotionally, he had anger issues, but that is what happens when people with anger issues are abusive -- it escalates.
"I love speaking on behalf of CODA and their fundraising, because I know how important it was for me to have some place to go in time of crisis, where I could get all of that support and what a difference it made for me."
CODA, based in Beaufort for the past 23 years, services victims from four counties, which covers more than 2,800 square miles. In 2008, CODA provided shelter to 188 women and children for 3,195 nights and answered more than 3,400 24-hour
emergency hotline calls as well as provided outreach services such as counseling, referrals and legal assistance to more than 600 adults and children.
The group relies on volunteers such as Gene Rugala, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation profiler, who serves as the president of the CODA board. When Rugala moved to Beaufort five years ago, he called CODA to offer his services. He helps train volunteers and offers assistance to women who are being stalked and abused.
Calls to the shelter have risen by 100 between February and March. And with the increased call volume comes a greater need for help. To pay for those needs, CODA is holding its annual fundraiser, the Carolina Spring Fling, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Friday at the University of South Carolina Beaufort South Campus' Hargray Building and Harvey Plaza off U.S. 278. Music, heavy hors d'oeuvres and drinks will be served. Silent and live auctions as well as music by the Frogmore Blues Review will entertain. Tickets are $50 a person or $40 a person for groups of 10 or more.
"There are a lot of good things being done by a lot of good people," Rugala said of CODA. "But it takes a community effort to stem this tide of abuse to of making people aware there are resources."
