The ex-wife of John Michael Farren, former Deputy White House Counsel under President George W. Bush, has told for the first time how she thought she was going to die when her husband brutally bludgeoned her with a flashlight.
“I felt like my head was just mush inside, and I thought, ‘I’m dying,” Margaret, now 49, told ABC News’ Amy Robach. “And then I was thinking, ‘I’ve got to hold it together. I have to stay conscious so I can save the girls.'”
“He was squeezing my neck and said, “I’m killing you,” she added.
The vicious attack at the couple’s home in New Canaan, Connecticut, happened two days after Margaret served her husband with divorce papers.
The lawyer, now 62, beat his wife repeatedly while their two daughters, a tiny baby and a 7-year-old, slept in a neighboring room.
She managed to escape with the children but spent six days in the hospital with a broken jaw, fractures to her cheeks and forehead, lacerations and wounds on her head and brain damage.
Farren is now serving a 15-year prison sentence after a jury found him guilty of attempted murder, assault, and risk of injury to a child. He isn’t allowed any contact with his children and a civil jury ordered him to pay his wife, herself an attorney, $28.6 million in damages after she sued him for assault and battery and infliction of emotional distress.
The full interview will be shown on ABC News “20/20” on Friday at 10pm. ET.