The six o'clock news led with the main story it had been running all week. They read out my former partner's statement, "Yes, I hit her five or six times but it was only to calm her down". The morning newspaper ran his line that he had said to me, "The trouble with you is you haven't been broken in yet".

The reason why the story of my own experience of domestic violence hit the press and ran for almost a year was my former partner was the Deputy Leader of a major political party. Further, he was the Shadow Minister for Police!

For this reason I thought I could never escape. I also loved the man though hated the act. I knew the spin doctors would be out in force. I would be descredited, crushed. Once I escaped to a domestic violence shelter. Using his position he was able to find the address and came to collect me. My final escape was when a political journalist just happened to be listening to the police scanners and recognized the home address. When it became public there was no going back.

Having the media constantly outside your home, in the court rooms, printing each intimate detail was humiliating. The worst was when he used Parliamentary Priviledge to discredit me. Through his office the entire electorate received a posting of his version. From the Women's Shelter and now in poverty I could only watch and feel totally powerless.

The newspaper ran a story which said that I had lost my job because they had to deal with him. I just didn't want to wake up the next day - an overdose saw me in hospital and when I woke up I made a choice. I decided to stand my ground, I decided that I would come out from under the rock that I had crawled under. I decided that having survived this I would dedicate the rest of my life to helping end violence against women and children.

It was to take a long time in counselling and recovery. Eventually at the next election I stood as a candidate myself. Under the campaign slogan, "You can't beat a woman!"

While I didn't win that election neither did he. I have recently been asked to join one of our political parties as their candidate for the 2006 elections. If I meet with success then I'll have my eye on the Police portfolio - I'm sure I could do a better job!