HELENA - Speaking through tears at times Wednesday, some American Indian women from Montana reservations told about the domestic and sexual violence they suffered for years before seeking help and putting a stop to it.

The keynote speaker at the conference exploring ways to stop violence against Montana Indian women, Eileen Hudon of the Minnesota Coalition for Battered Women, said talking about domestic and sexual abuse is an important first step. "The silence is broken at the kitchen table," she said.

State Public Health and Human Services Director Anna Whiting Sorrell said she was a victim of domestic violence before she married a wonderful husband.

"I know what those bruises are like," she said. "I am one of you."

Then, before a hushed audience of about 80 people in the House chambers, some other Montana victims of domestic and sexual violence shared their stories, often in graphic detail.

Evelyn Hernandez of the Confederated and Salish tribes said she became involved with and later married a white man. Both were alcoholics.

"I remember the first Sunday he hit me," she said. "He slapped me so hard he knocked me on the floor. From there the beatings got worse."

She was then about 5 feet tall and weighed 95 pounds, while he stood 6 feet, 4 inches and weighed 220 pounds. "Alcohol helped me self-medicate," she said.

Hernandez, who had become sober, recalled he beat her the last time at home on the porch of her trailer in Missoula. She wound up unconscious with two black eyes, a broken nose and teeth knocked out.

She went to a battered women's shelter, while her husband was arrested, convicted of attempted murder and sent to the state prison in Deer Lodge. Even then, Hernandez said she went to visit him.

He grabbed her by the hair and smashed her head against a table in the prison's visiting room, she said, while the guard did nothing to stop him. She told the man who tried to murder her: "You're never going to hit me again because I'm going to kill you."

"It was then I took my power back," Hernandez said. "One of the first things I did was stay sober. I started to work on myself and self-esteem."

She got her first job and returned to the reservation and obtained two associate's degrees and two bachelor's degrees. She attributed her success to the women at the battered women's shelter in Missoula who never gave up on her and were available to talk any hour of the day or night. They urged her to leave her abusive husband.

"There's hurt, there's shame, there's anger," Hernandez said. "We battered women, we need to be treated gently. They need that love. They need a lot of patience. Please don't give up on them. When you give up, that might be the death of that woman."

Hernandez concluded by saying: "I think it's harder getting sober than to get out of that relationship."

Marcella Green of Browning told how she was sexually abused at age 5, date raped as a teenager and dropped out of school at 14 to be with the 20-year-old man she later married.

"I was raped throughout my relationship with my first husband," she said. "He did terrible things to me, like being grabbed in your private area and having some of your skin ripped off."

When she was eight months pregnant, she went out one night and returned home intoxicated. Her husband accused her of having sex with another man. "He pushed me out of the house," she said. "He held a .357 Magnum gun to my head and said he was going to kill me. I was saying in my mind, 'Just do it.' "

The man held her down on the stairs, tore off her pants and raped her. When she awoke, there was blood everywhere, Green said.

While she was taken to the hospital, the tribal police called in the FBI to help investigate because the crime was "so terrible," she said. Green pressed charges against him.

The doctor said if Green hadn't had so much alcohol in her system, she probably wouldn't have survived the beating.

Sober now for 24 years, Green said she obtained her General Equivalency Degree at age 40 and got a two-year college degree in human services. She works as a counselor at a chemical dependency program in Browning.