Filipino American actress Giovannie Espiritu used to suffer in silence. Not any more.
The 32-year old is telling her story of domestic abuse so that others don’t suffer the same fate, reports GMA.
Espiritu founded the San Francisco Actors Workshop and has appeared in such TV shows as Bones, Trauma, ER, and Gilmore Girls.
Espiritu got married at age 18 to a man who had traveled to the Philippines to win her over. The two lived in a remote mountainous region where neighbors could not hear any commotion coming from her home.
Her husband quit his job and watched her and her newborn son closely.
“So many things could set him off… I started losing track of all the things that set him off. It seemed like everything could,” Espiritu said.
She says he once threw a log at her, barely missing her, but chipping the door frame.
Her decision to leave him was the freeing moment of her life.
You can read her story and how the pattern of abuse she witnessed started in her childhood in GMA.
Those readers in Northern California can her her speak at the 10th annual Free from Violence program 5:30-7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 2 at the Philippine Consulate General.
