Nela Kalpic, a fellow Rotarian from Madison After Hours Club, spoke to us today about her personal story- from triumph over a decades long abusive marriage to obtaining freedom in the United States to becoming a Courage Award winner and force in/for Domestic Abuse Intervention Services in WI. She was born in Belgrade Serbia to a Croatian Father and Serbian Mother and declared a Croatian national at birth. During the turmoil of the Yugoslavian republics and her parents divorce she endured the hardships in Serbia, escaping at a young age to Egypt to meet a man she met on line. Soon after her Son was born they moved to Kuwait and she found herself under the power of a husband who controlled her movements and was physically abusive. She had no other family in Kuwait, no advocate, and with a child (and then 2 more) to protect she couldn't leave. By 2013, the couple was back in Egypt, and Kalpic convinced her husband to seek asylum in the United States, claiming that the widespread persecution of Coptic Christians in the country threatened their safety. Seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time gave her a feeling of "organic, basic freedom" and they were granted asylum 6 months after arriving. It took her more than a year of being in the U.S. to leave what, in one court document, she called a “violent prison I’d been locked in for nearly 14 years.” With a driver’s license that was only a few weeks old, she drove 1,200 miles from North Carolina, where they lived, to Madison, Wisconsin, with her sons. She wanted to work in the Capital building and worked her way into an internship with Senator Schilling. She was appointed to the Council on Domestic Violence and has been working on Marsy's Law passage which will be voted on in April. https://www.equalrightsforwi.com/about_marsys_law Dream big dreams, Nela told us. Anything is possible! More about her story at : https://www.channel3000.com/a-survivors-triumph/ |
