Woman angry after beating

Press, 15 July 1985, Page 14

Woman angry after beating

PA Wellington Jacqueline Wattam gets angry about the time she has lost out of her life after the brutal beating she suffered while waiting for a bus in Surfers Paradise last year.

For five weeks after the December attack she lay in hospital in a deep coma, but over the last few months has been making steady progress and is now able to propel herself round the wards of Porirua’s Hospital where she has recently been moved to be closer to her family in Raumati, near Paraparaumu.

No-one was convicted for the savage attack and the police do not even know how many people were involved. Miss Wattam is

grateful she cannot remember anything about the incident which left her with a fractured skull, broken ribs and serious head and internal injuries. She believes the attacker must have been a very sick person, in need of even more help than she has been for the last seven months. Miss Wattam’s parents were told to expect the worst and were given little hope of anything like a full recovery. But their daughter’s determination and high spirits have contributed toward her progress and although she is still paralysed down her right side and unable to walk, she can now perform personal tasks such as feeding herself and brushing her

teeth for which she was previously totally dependent on others.

She could go home to live now, and make daily treks to the hospital for treatment, but she says she would rather stay where she is than place a huge burden of care on her mother, Margaret, who spent most of the first part of this year at her daughter’s bedside in Queensland. Miss Wattam says she thinks a lot about the future and still hopes one day to be able to go on the trip to Europe she had planned for later this year, but she is going to wait and see how things work out before making any firm commitments. Miss Wattam had been working in Australia for

five years before the attack. She returned home one night from the resort where she worked but found she had no key. While she was waiting for a bus to take her to one of her flatmates to get a key, the attack took place. She was not robbed or sexually abused and the motive for the attack remains a mystery. Her attacker is probably still free. “I get angry because of the time and the waste there’s been,” she said. “But I hope that in a year or so it will be part of the past.” Out of the immense suffering a lot of good things have come, she said. She has been overwhelmed by the kindness of people, especially those who did not even know her.