WHEN her husband grasped her throat in rage and squeezed until her vision blurred, Pauline Smith's (not her real name) faith in the Hong Kong police took a battering.
Her husband, a senior officer, dropped her limp body in their government quarters as their two children looked on.
''I was unconscious,'' she said. ''He was a complete madman.
''I appealed to some policemen I knew. They said there was nothing they could do; it was very sensitive.
''I came to the conclusion that I didn't stand a chance.'' A businesswoman, Ms Smith met her English husband in Hong Kong in 1966 and watched him rise through the ranks of the force. They appeared to be a successful expatriate couple enjoying all the territory had to offer.
But for more than a decade, Ms Smith said, she kept her husband's drinking bouts and abuse secret in order to protect his job, his income and their government flat. It was not until the day she lay gasping on her own floor that she finally decided to break the expatriate code of silence.