Complicit In Sacrifice

It makes no possible sense at all, that someone, a young woman, could be gruesomely, horribly abused, be in unbelievable pain and suffering, be in an induced condition of compromised health serious enough to lead to death, and despite her suffering make contact with people who truly cared about her welfare, yet not once would she call out for help. This young woman, married for two years to an violently abusive man simply refused to believe that person meant her harm, even while he committed the most abhorrently dreadful physical acts of violence against her.

Donna Ellen Jones-Hutt was found dead in her home. Her husband Mark Hutt is on trial charged with murder. (Facebook Photo)

It is difficult in the extreme to understand how it could be that someone could be invested with such low self-esteem that they desperately would do anything to save a marriage that was a personal calamity even before it took place. Friends, family members, even co-workers identified the unmistakable signs of abuse, and frankly faced her with that ineradicable fact and that under those circumstances representing a threat to her future, she must not follow through with her impending marriage.

The caring reproaches of her family, the benevolent and kind approaches of her co-workers and friends, so obviously mindful of her well-being, an individual whose character and personality they respected and were so fond of, did not succeed in convincing her that the malevolent, vile actions of her fiance represented a violence against her very existence, that her future was certain to be a bruised uncertainty, reflecting the bruises left on her body.

She died while in horrendous pain. She could have been saved, her life restored from its ebbing flow as she slowly succumbed to the third-degree burns sustained over most of her body, that festered and became infected and finally took her life. Over eleven days of misery and pain beyond the imagination of most people, but very well known in depth and quality to a medical burns-specialist who testified at the trial of her husband, Mark Hutt, Donna Ellen Jones died a little more each day.

Yet each day she spoke to her mother, to some of her friends and colleagues, telling them sad little tales of being exhausted because she and her husband had been so busy socializing, telling them that he'd caught a cold, she wasn't feeling well; they couldn't possibly, under those circumstances receive any company. But that, in any event, she would shortly be returning to work. All was well, other than those little inconveniences, ordinary occurrences in anyone's normal life.

Her life was not normal. She was intent on protecting her husband from any external criticism, blame for anything, much less for the violence he inflicted on her. She had sustained due to his tender loving care a broken nose, nine rib fractures, wrist fractures, fracture to a finger, bruises all over her head. And over all of that, she was dreadfully burned all over her body, the result of her husband having 'accidently' flung a pot of boiling water directly on her.

Her condition, said Dr. Joel Fish, director of the burn unit at the Hospital for Sick Children, would have required massive doses of morphine to manage the pain, along with time on a respirator, massive IV fluids, multiple surgeries and skin grafts to heal her condition. Had she been hospitalized. Which in time would have saved her life. But that didn't happen. Because, said her husband, his dying wife said she was fine, she would be all right.

He had her sequestered in the basement of the house she had bought before their marriage. She lay on a mattress on the cement floor for 11 days after he baptised her with fiery water, her life ebbing away. But she refused to have medical attention. To do so would implicate her husband. She could have, had she wanted to, alerted her mother. Instead she passed small talk with her mother, her brother. And assured her friends over the telephone that all was well with her.

While she was dying her husband never did bother taking her cellphone. He obviously knew that his wife, despite the excruciating pain she was suffering, despite that he was the conduit for that pain, despite that he had abused, humiliated, beaten her for years, would never implicate him directly in the misery her life had become. He would, she wanted so desperately to believe, look after her. Take care of her.

He certainly did both of those things.