NAME: DONNA CARSON
HOME: NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA
DATE OF BIRTH: 1957
OCCUPATION: ACTIVIST , ANTI-DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
SURVIVOR TYPE: CONNECTOR
ADVERSITY: LIT ON FIRE BY BOYFRIEND
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The gasoline trickled through her hair, dripped down her back, seeped under her arms, and spilled onto her legs. A 37-year-old schoolteacher, Donna Carson was drenched in fuel and knew what was coming next. Her longtime boyfriend and abuser was standing in front of her with the gasoline can. She had tried to escape through her yard, running as fast as she could, but he was too quick. Then she heard the flint of his lighter, the same striking sound when he started a cigarette.
In an instant, Donna’s body went up in flames. Her hair was burning, her blouse on fire. Instinct made her take off again. She had been running from violence, from him, and from men like him for so long. Her entire body was engulfed in flames from her feet to her hair, and she was running again, desperate to die on her own terms. She was in flames, but she could still think clearly enough to know that she wanted to preserve a tiny piece of her dignity.
Donna dropped to the ground and started rolling over and over through the lush blades of grass. The sensation carried her back to childhood for a moment. And it made her think of her children who loved to roll in their yard in Wingham, Australia, a small riverside town a few hours north of Sydney. Her kids would roll and roll and then try to stand up, giggling when the dizziness forced them back to the ground. Donna kept going, rolling for her life, extinguishing some of the flames as she tumbled, and then, she stopped. It was over, she would die this way, but at least she fought back.
Donna desperately wanted to see her boys one more time. Coe and Bodean, the poor things. They were just 12 and two at the time. She knew they had been watching the whole time, standing on the small porch at the side of the house, looking out over the rail. If only she could roll one more time, just to catch a glimpse of them. “I wanted to see my sons for the last time and take that image with me,” Donna says. “At least I’d have something precious.” Exhausted and barely alive, her need to connect with her boys gave her the energy to spin one more time. Their silhouettes appeared for an instant. She saw their little bodies next each other. Then she closed her eyes, clenched them as tightly as possible, and waited.
It was around six o’clock in the evening on Good Friday, April 1, 1994. A pot of tea was on the stove. Clothes were in the washing machine. Her sons’ Easter eggs were hidden away. When she woke up, Donna thought he was in Heaven. She was surrounded by long blades of green grass, everywhere. Each stem was magnified by the bright light. Then she realized many of the blades were black and charred. It wasn't Heaven after all. And that’s when she realized, lying in on the scorched grass, that she was alive. Her first thought: “It’s going to be tougher than anything I’ve ever done in my life to come back from this.”
From that instant, her sons motivated her. Even during the darkest, most painful days of skin grafts and rehabilitation, they kept her alive. “Look after the kids,” Donna pleaded with a neighbor who came to her aid. “Mum will soon be here.” Donna’s mother was on her way to celebrate Easter.
With full thickness burns on 65 percent of her body, Donna was taken to the burn unit at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital where she drifted in and out of consciousness for the next few months. It seemed like everything had been torched including her face, neck, chest, shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, legs and feet. Even her throat, windpipe and lungs were badly injured. Carson’s mother and stepfather and sister stayed with her. They put two huge pictures of Coe and Bodean on the wall, daily reminders of why she needed to get better. Some days she would just cry and cry, tears running down her burned cheeks. She missed her boys.
On brutal days when she was suffering excruciating pain and didn’t want to go on, her parents reminded her of the boys. Raising them had always been her most important job. After three and a half months, her mother leaned over one day and whispered, “I’ve got to tell you something. They’ve taken the children.” Donna knew instantly the Australian Department of Community Services had intervened. Someone – Donna would never find out if it was her attacker or her children’s father or someone else – had claimed that she had lit herself on fire and was trying to kill herself. The case was never investigated, and Donna lost custody of the two boys.
“How much harder is this going to get?” she remembers thinking. “I’m lying here, I can’t move, I’m burned to a crisp, and now they’ve taken my only life way from me?” That’s when Donna literally stopped breathing. After an emergency tracheotomy, she was stabilized, but more than anything she wanted to die. She even tried to hold her breath, hoping to commit suicide. It didn’t work. Ultimately, Donna spent nearly six months in the hospital and went through 19 operations.
When she was released, she fought every day to regain strength and movement. Her entire body was scarred and hurt everywhere. But she wrote letters and made calls demanding that her children be returned. She produced evidence to prove that she was a victim of domestic violence. She heard nothing until she was abruptly told that her sons would be allowed to visit her for Christmas. Then she was told they could stay with her, indefinitely. Just like that, without an explanation or an apology from the authorities, her sons were back home.
Just getting out of bed was agony. Moving around the kitchen was torture. Donna knew she would have to overcome the pain if she was going to be a good mother. “The boys are here,” she thought. “I have to do things for them.” Her doctors recommended physical therapy, but Donna decided making lunch, getting one son off to high school, and trailing around her three-year-old around would be the best rehab she could find. Despite the pain, she found the strength to take a walk with her toddler, sneaking a nap whenever he slept. When her older son returned from school, she did homework with him. And when she thought she couldn’t keep going, she forced herself to get through the next minute. Then the next. Later, when she was stronger, she focused on the next hour. Then the next day.
Donna believes that Coe and Bodean saved her life. When she couldn’t hold it together anymore and the stress and pain overwhelmed her, she would cry out with tears streaming down her face. “I’m okay,” she would tell the boys. “I’m just having an emotionally fragile period.” Then her littlest one would get a box of tissues and her older son would boil water for tea. “That’s okay,” they would tell her. “We understand.”
Today, Donna is a leading advocate for burn survivors and victims of domestic abuse in Australia, helping women make their way through the legal system and regain control of their lives. In the 2004 Australian of the Year awards, she was named the Local Hero, an honor that was presented by the prime minister on the lawns of Parliament House. She’s written a powerful memoir of her struggles, Judas Kisses, and she gives speeches across her country. Her son Coe, in his mid twenties, now has a son of his own. And Donna is helping her youngest through high school. “Australians are at their best when times are at their worst,” she says. “We are well known for our tenacity, resilience, resourcefulness, loyalty. When times get tough we don’t whine about things. We roll our sleeves up and get on with the job.”
Donna talks about being in the hospital, feeling low, and listening to the doctors encouraging her to get better for her kids: "They would say... 'Look, you've got to get better, because who's going o look after your sons?" And I thought to myself, well, you know, my boys have always been my most important job in my life. I can't think of anything more important than raising the future of Australia... There is no other important job than that."
When asked what really helped her most get through, Donna says, "I think, my love for my sons. I planned to have them, and I plan to be here to raise them."
