Trigger warning for the following story
Country singer and actress Jana Kramer has just opened up about a terrible period in her life. Jana met and married her first husband, Michael Gambino, in 2004. At the time, she was 19 and he was 36. They married after dating for only two weeks. Jana says his being 17 years older than her made her feel protected. Unfortunately, Michael’s abuse towards Jana began very soon after the wedding. When she did try to leave him, he waged psychological warfare to force her home, including threatening their dogs. Everything came to a head in August 2005, tragically almost killing Jana in the process.

For a decade, Jana Kramer has kept private the terrifying ordeal she endured at the hands of her little-known first husband, Michael Gambino.

“I met Mike when I was 19 at a Coffee Bean in L.A. He was a smooth-talker, very charming, intriguing and obviously older,” Kramer, 32, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “At the time, I liked that. I felt protected.”

Seventeen years her senior, Gambino developed an abusive routine that led Kramer to sleep in her car some nights or hide in the bushes until he calmed down. Easily angered and frequently jealous, “he’d come home at 3 o’clock in the morning and pick me up out of bed, throw me onto the ground and start yelling and hitting,” says Kramer, who hid bruises with makeup and kept the abuse hidden from family and friends.

“Then the next morning he’d be like, ‘Hey, baby,’ as if nothing had happened.”

Then an aspiring actress, Kramer was regularly choked and threatened. “When I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore’ he sent me a photo of my dogs on the freeway and said, ‘I’m going to let them go if you don’t come home’,” she says. “He’d kick me out of the house, I’d sleep in the car and then that next morning I’d be with him in bed again.”

“My self-confidence went down each time he was abusive.”
Things escalated to a breaking point on Aug. 6, 2005, when he choked her into unconsciousness and left her bleeding on the gravel outside their L.A. home.

“I remember praying that night, ‘Please, just take me away, I don’t want to be here anymore’,” says Kramer, who has small scars on her shoulder and arm from that night.

“I’m so embarrassed and afraid no one will love me because of my past, but I’m ready to put it out there now,” says Kramer, who is eager to use her experience to help other abused women.

“If I can help one person, I’ll be thankful for what happened – and I can move forward.”

[From People]

Fortunately Gambino was found guilty for attempted murder and went to prison for five years. Two years after his release, he took his own life. Jana’s story is horrifying. Thank God she and her puppies survived this monster.

Jana, who appeared on One Tree Hill and won Top New Female Artists at the ACMs is 2013, is currently appearing on Dancing With The Stars. She has an eight-month-old daughter with her third husband, former NFL player Mike Caussin, from whom she is separated after discovering he was cheating on her with multiple women. I wish her well and hope she can move on from this, hopefully helping others at the same time.

I am borrowing People.com’s closing on stories such as these: For more information or to seek help for domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline 24/7 at 1-800-799-SAFE or go to thehotline.org.

Photo credit: WENN Photos