There are laws, and then there are laws. Sometimes a law is so blatantly stupid it should be repealed on the face of it. This is such a law.
A woman who was tortured and beaten by her ex-fiance for hours in front of her children could face jail time if she refuses to write him letters in prison updating him on the progress of their children.
Natalie Allman, 29, was ordered by a judge to update her ex on their children regularly, and would be held in contempt of court if she refuses to do so.
Allman’s five-year-old twin sons were just two when they witnessed their father, Jason Hughes, viciously beat their mother with weight-lifting dumbbells, cut her throat with a Swiss Army knife and attempt to suffocate her with a pillow. Allman said she and Hughes had been separated for a while at the time of the incident, which occurred in February of 2012, but he was staying at her house until he could find another place to live.
“He’d never been aggressive before, just controlling and he drank too much. We’d been separated a few weeks but he was still staying in the house until he found somewhere else,” she said. “I woke up in the middle of the night and he was kneeling over me, beating me repeatedly in the face. At first I thought he was punching me and then I realized he was using his weights. He was smashing them into my face over and over. There was blood everywhere but he didn’t stop. It was midnight and then the next thing I knew I was coming round and it was 3am. I don’t know whether I fell asleep or was knocked unconscious.”
According to reports, Hughes attacked Allman two more times throughout the course of the night, and tied her up to prevent her from getting away. Allman managed to call police around 7 a.m., and police soon arrived to find the couple’s twin sons, Ethan and Timmy, in bed with their mother and covered in her blood. Allman miraculously survived the attack, with the knife just missing a major artery.
Hughes was sentenced to nine years in prison for the attack.