IT was the brutal ending of an unhappy relationship with her first love that forced her to flee from her native Scotland.
But more than 20 years later, Deborah Alessi, has dedicated her life to helping other victims of violence and dozens of women have, like her, been able to repair the scars and move on to better lives.
She fled after being hit with a guitar, having her hair pulled and then being kicked down a flight of stairs.
Mrs Alessi has worked extensively in the private aviation industry, managed a private fleet for a Royal Family in the Middle East and in the United States aided individuals and businesses in the purchase, sales and management of private aircraft.
She met her husband, plastic surgeon David Alessi, on a blind date when she moved to the US.
They set up Face Forward 10 years ago, to give women disfigured by domestic or gang abuse free, corrective surgery.
Now, in a brief trip back to her home city to visit her mother Agnes, she hasbeen in talks with cosmetic surgeons in Glasgow as she looks to help women in her homeland who have suffered in the same way.
Mrs Alessi said: "He got jealous one night. It’s embarrassing but it happened. To get away from him was one of the reasons I left Scotland. This was not going to be my life.
"Face Forward is near and dear to my heart because of the personal story with domestic abuse myself. I escaped my country in order to escape that relationship completely."
Mrs Alessi, 43, said she kept hearing about women left disfigured and knew she had to help.
“I wanted to help women. It didn’t take me long to figure out what we had to do. We take all victims of violence but we have to make sure they so not put themselves back in danger. They have to commit to leaving altogether and set up home elsewhere,” she said.
Face Forward have since performed surgery on dozens of women. who, without the organisation, would have faced a lifetime of being scarred.
She added: “Domestic abuse impacts one in four people in the US and we are focusing our efforts on those people along with victims in other parts of the world as well because this is global problem as well as a local one.
“It affects a lot of women here in Scotland too and it is my dream to try and help them too and give something back to my homeland.”
For more information about Face Forward, visit https://www.faceforwardla.org/
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