Domestic Violence: Behind Closed Doors
Copyright ©2006 Sure Woman.com/Dawn G. Prince
Real Women and Their Stories
I
magine after years of emotional and psychological abuse, on the day of your divorce your ex-husband holds you captive, asking: Do you want him to strangle you or cut you up into little pieces? You convince him to give you medication to die a painless death and you escape the next day. Two weeks later—after you come out of hiding—on a bright, sunny day, he stalks you at work and shoots you five times—twice in the head—and you are left to bleed to death in a parking garage while he puts a bullet in his own head killing himself.
That is 49-year-old Monica Young’s story and she tells it often as she speaks out against domestic violence. Educated, successful as a Programmer analyst and with a reverent faith in God—for five years she endured emotional abuse before the violence escalated in a two-week period before he tried to kill her. Like a lot of offenders, he threatened suicide and said it would be her fault or if she left him that she would pay. Enraged by her divorcing him, his final act was to exert control to the end.
“There was verbal threats, restraining, following you, taking away your belongings,” she says of her husband who was needy and had low self-esteem. “I was more intimidated with him saying if I leave I was going to pay, or I am going to kill myself if you leave.”
Although he never hit her, he would push and pull, stalk her and monitor her whereabouts. The verbal abuse reminded her of a childhood marred by domestic violence, where she watched her mother abused by the same lover who whipped her with electrical cords and verbally abused her.
“It took me back to my childhood days of feeling rejected and helpless.”
Besides the obvious bruises, scars, and broken bones, domestic abuse ravages a woman’s spirit and leaves deep inner wounds that could lead to repeat abusive situations. Like Monica, some women grow up with domestic violence and carry the trauma into adulthood, or often there is a history of abuse somewhere in their background They fall into a pattern because they are used to living with violence and some will leave one abusive relationship for another. That is why it is important to break the cycle.
“You develop a pattern. You just never know if things will happen,” says 39-year-old
Carolyn Chappelle of finding herself in another abusive relationship after her fairy tale marriage to her drug-addicted, abusive husband ended. Running from that marriage she was comforted by a family friend who seemed to be Prince Charming.
“I winded up dating him,” she says. “He used to shower me with gifts. He was the perfect man. We would get into fights, but I didn’t feel like a victim. I was in the military. I fought back—a lot of women can’t fight back. I defined a victim as someone who can’t defend herself. Of course, I was wrong.”
On her 27th birthday, he showed that he meant that he would kill her if she ever left him. During a discussion about her leaving, while walking and holding her hand, he raised her arm and slammed it into her throat. Unable to breathe, she collapsed. He then forced her onto the roof of their apartment building saying, “You’re always crying for your mother. You’re going to see your mother tonight. The sidewalk is where you are going to be unless you can fly.”
“That was a really haunting feeling,” she says of seeing the ground below. “I thought stop playing tough, and I started to cry and something in him snapped and he says, go downstairs. Run, before I change my mind.”
Carolyn narrowly escaped being thrown to her death, but didn’t leave the relationship because she didn’t want to be alone. Like Monica, she says it was the fear of starting over and wanting to believe things would work. For most, it’s not easy to make a decision to leave. It took Carolyn and Monica years of breaking up and starting up again to see that they were victims and deserved better.
For Jade, after 12 years with her batterer—her high school sweetheart—she exhibits all the signs of a woman who’s in denial that the relationship is more than it is because she’s become emotionally dependent on her abuser. And because she’s come to accept violence as a normal part of her life, she doesn’t see herself as a victim, or the effect it has on her three children who sometimes witness the abuse. Even before her jaw heals, she allows him back into the house.
“She loves him and thinks he’s a good father even though he beats her,” says her frustrated sister. “She knows the truth, but sometimes she's not willing to accept the truth.”
Jade lets her sister speak for her because like a lot of women in abusive relationships, “she’s not comfortable talking about it, and she’s probably embarrassed and ashamed of herself.” Being in an abusive and violent relationship is a lonely struggle for the victim because of the closed-mouthed nature and the feelings of fear, lost dignity, helplessness and shame for not leaving. The longer a woman stays, the more it whittles away at her self-esteem, and she’s held hostage by a host of conflicting reasons and emotions about staying in the relationship.
“It chisels away at every fiber of your being and you can’t see the tire tracks. They are individual tire tracks,” says Murphy-Milano who’s touring the country with the new book that includes a section on domestic violence and stalking, and how to safely leave an abusive relationship and find help and services.
More often than not, the violence escalates in frequency and severity the longer a woman stays in the relationship—endangering the lives of her children and increasing her chances of serious injury and possibly death without outside intervention. In 2000, 1247 women were killed by an intimate partner (BJS).
With education and awareness such as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month we can affect change, says Murphy-Milano. In recent years, through advocacy and legislation, society has come to see domestic violence as a serious crime and not just a private problem. Women are recognizing the warning signs and those in abusive relationships are finding strength to leave before they end up dead. She says while there is education and awareness, there’s more to be done, and the media needs to pay more attention without sensationalizing it.
“It (the way domestic violence is treated) changes when somebody gets killed,” says Murphy-Milano. “People need to remember that The Violence Against Women Act across America was not signed with a pen of ink, but with a pen of blood. All those people had to die before somebody would listen.”
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National Domestic Violence Hotline:
1-800-799-7223(SAFE)
