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Alice's head hit the concrete wall hard enough to make her dizzy, but not knock her out. She was dimly aware that the father of her baby son was sitting on her rear, but it wasn't until the knife sliced through her back a third time that she really felt it.
"When it touched my backbone, that's when I tried to regain a bit of consciousness. I reached and touched my back and there was blood," she says.
"I said 'what are you trying to do to me?'. He just said, 'this stab is for your mouth. You talk too much'."
He aimed for her throat. She saw it coming. "I lifted up my arm, he sliced across it and the meat inside my skin dropped out. You could see the bone inside. I just looked at it and I said, 'I am going to die'."
Photo: Penny Stephens
Alice had been with the man who attacked her for about a year. The relationship started as it was to go on. There was no love at first sight, or at all, really. She agreed to be with him only after he started spreading rumours that they were sleeping together and she was having his child.
Living in the Solomon Islands, where more than 90 per cent of the population identifies as Christian, she felt shame over the rumours and gossip; perversely, she agreed to be with him in a bid to preserve her honour. Four months later she was pregnant.
Alice's story tells us something about the country this Fijian-born woman chose as her adopted home.
While Australia is having a belated focus on the impact of domestic violence, the most recent data suggests the level of abuse remains much higher in the Pacific nation that, per capita, is most reliant on Australia aid.
Two out of three Solomon Islands women have suffered physical violence at the hands of their partner. Nearly two out of three of those aged 15 to 49 who have ever had a partner reported they had been on the receiving end of physical or sexual violence in the past year.
More than one-third said their first sexual experience was forced. More than half of all arguments between married couples were found to end in violence.
This is, perhaps, not surprising given two-thirds of men believed it was acceptable to hit women in certain circumstances.
When we meet Alice, she is staying at the Solomon Islands' only domestic violence refuge, a gradually expanding development on a large, hidden-away block in jungle on Honiara's outskirts.
Set up quietly by the Anglican Church of Melanesia in 2000 without government support, the Christian Care Centre is run by a handful of nuns, one of whom doubles as a nurse. Now working with the backing of World Vision, they take in women and children brought to them by the police, offering a shoulder, emotional guidance, healthcare and space to recover.
Sister Ruth works at Christian Care Centre, the Solomon Islands' only refuge. Photo: Penny Stephens.
The centre has the look and feel of a school camp – there are rosters on the wall dividing up responsibility for cooking and cleaning among abuse survivors. Facilities are basic, but there is a library and room for children to play. Construction of a new building for teenagers to have their own space is under way.
Beyond a locked gate, there is no security – experience suggests if men arrive looking for their partners, they generally turn away when met with no-nonsense nuns speaking with the authority of the church.
Nuns Sister Daisy and Sister Ruth. Photo: Penny Stephens
It is Alice's third time here. After she moved in with her partner he took away her phone. He then told her to stop working. She left briefly, returning to Fiji, but quickly discovered she was pregnant, so agreed to go back.
Soon after, she saw him with his ex-wife, who she discovered was staying across the road at his parents' house. One night he arrived home drunk at 3am and tried to attack Alice with a knife. He narrowly missed, leaving a scratch on her neck.
She went to the Christian Care Centre for the first time, staying for six weeks – and gave birth to a son, Jonah. Her partner went to counselling, and asked her to come back. She said OK.
Things quickly deteriorated. His drinking worsened. Her mother-in-law pressured her to give the baby to his ex-wife and leave. Eventually, her partner stole the baby while he was drunk, and ran. When she returned to the street with police several hours later, they found the baby held in a stranger's house up the street. They had been feeding him sugary water.
She left again, this time for three months.
The final time she returned to him it was on the condition they move to a small island off the Guadalcanal coast, where she had work doing some accounting for a fishing company. He drank away the money and assaulted her when she complained, throwing her into a wall and stabbing her repeatedly, as previously described.
She escaped when her partner took his weight off her, telling her he was going to get a bigger knife to finish her off. She had to get stitches inside and out. After a harrowing 24-hour wait for police to respond, during which he punched her in her stab wounds, he was arrested and charged on eight counts, told he faced years in jail, and then released on bail. He is now living in a part of Honiara where the local police, who have not been armed since the ethnic tensions early last decade, are too afraid to go to rearrest him.
While the domestic violence problem in the Solomon Islands appears overwhelming, here too there are some green shoots of a solution.
At the Christian Care Centre. Photo: Penny Stephens.
For the first time, the government has been spurred to act. The horrifying statistics above prompted the passage last year of the Family Protection Act, which blazes new ground by outlining what is required of health workers and the police if they become aware of family violence.
It includes letting abused women know what their options are, and mandatory reporting of clams of abuse against children. It also introduced new penalties, recommending domestic violence offences draw three years' jail or a fine equivalent to about $500 – a significant amount in the cash-strapped archipelago, where more than 80 per cent of the population live a subsistence existence.
Julieanne Wickham, a government policy co-ordinator working on eliminating violence against women, stresses the scale of the problem – "We are one of the highest, in terms of prevalence of violence against women, in countries that have conducted the survey using World Health Organisation methodology" – but she says public awareness is gradually improving.
Where it was once not discussed, people in Honiara now read about it in newspapers and see roadside billboards that tell people to "say not violence" or, in pidgin, "naf nao" (enough now).
"A lot of perpetrators would potentially get away with it, not only because of the law, but because of the attitude that it was a family matter, it was private. No one really paid attention," Wickham says.
"Now, it seems like there is more and more domestic violence – but that could be that people know that they can come forward, so they are coming forward."
This can in part be put down to a World Vision program called Channels of Hope for Gender that has been training church and community leaders, including police, to combat entrenched attitudes about the subordinate role of women.
The basic idea behind the training is simple, but powerful: as a man, God created you in his image and God doesn't treat people like this, so you shouldn't either.
An Australian National University evaluation found the first three years of the program have made a difference.
More men now say they recognise women have rights. Surveys suggest a significant increase in the percentage of men who believe women can accuse their husband of rape (up to 83 per cent), and a significant fall in those who believe the Bible says "man is boss" (down to 66 per cent).
Women are more prepared to speak up about the services they need, and systemic failures to protect them from violence. Church leaders are also more likely to preach against violence, though this hasn't always had the desired result; some who have been trained have been urging abused women to forgive and reconcile with their abusive partner.
Alice had three goes at that, but says she won't have a fourth.
Alice. Photo: Penny Stephens.
Under Solomon Islands law, her partner had a greater claim to custody of Jonah while their relationship remained common law. Knowing this, she married him after returning to him the final time. It means they now have equal custody rights and, crucially, she was able to get Jonah a Fijian passport.
She has taken her baby back to her home country, where she also has twin boys from a previous marriage. But she says she will return to the Solomon Islands, and hopes to use her experience to make a difference.
"I'm going to Fiji for my son's safety, but don't worry, I will be coming back. I really want to come and fight against violence," she says.
"Women here don't speak out. They feel they can't do it on their own, so they go back after their man beats them. I want to tell them there is a safe home, there is support, there is a way."
Some names have been changed. The reporter and photographer travelled to Honiara with World Vision Australia.
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