An American story:The violence we still allow

Written by: civillydisobedientbitch

Edited by: Good to be Queen.

This is the 21^st century. Like so many ugly aspects of our society, domestic violence has finally been recognized … understood … fought and resolved. Certainly that’s a widespread belief here and now, now that our modern society is so evolved, so socially aware, so enlightened.

Right?

Think again. Like so many social wrongs we think we’ve “fixed,” domestic violence still terrorizes men, women and children. Daily. And the remedies we thought we’d applied – the laws and awareness and organized groups waving signs – the things that let the rest of us sleep at night, secure in our advanced thinking, are failing. Daily.

My son and I are only one story. But I believe we’re a part of something much larger that’s only too easily overlooked by a complacent society that believes we’ve “solved” domestic violence, a society that only registers alarm when an extreme case – a husband shoots his wife on Main Street just before the evening news – jars our consciousness.

My story shines a light on the ongoing, pernicious misunderstanding – even ignorance –of the real face of domestic violence. I want to share my story so that the thousands of other abuse victims in our enlightened society who are terrorized and traumatized daily will know they’re not the only ones. That you don’t have to show up on the evening news to be a victim of domestic violence.

I live in Georgia. The state of Georgia has within its law code a provision that domestic abuse trumps all other concerns in divorce and custody cases. I only wish the state of Georgia actually worked that way.

I married my ex-husband in 2001.

The abuse began on our return from our honeymoon. I was pregnant at the time, but that never stopped him.

First the abuse was verbal. Then it became physical. He would browbeat me for hours and then block me from leaving the room, physically hold me down while I cried. He systematically terrorized me.

He also sexually abused me. He attempted to videotape us being intimate against my wishes. When I caught him, he didn’t see why what he had done was so wrong.

The emotional abuse was always the worst, though. He took painful, private confidences I’d trusted him with and used them against me as a way to control me. My mother had been physically, emotionally, and verbally very abusive to me when I was a child, and my ex would go back and forth between calling her crazy, and then siding with her, claiming that I was lying about her.

I was called a liar a lot. And crazy, unfit mother, a whore, you name it, every sick, misogynistic name in the book.

I left him in 2003. The lawyer I found was willing to get a restraining order for me. And my ex promptly violated it. Though the judge had written into the order that he could have “reasonable” visitation with our infant son, my ex decided that “reasonable” meant every night, and harassed me constantly to get it. He drove past my house, over and over and over. Tracked my every move. Accused me of having an affair. Threatened to sue for custody of our son. He was never arrested even though I called the police for help.

The judge had not included any provisions for child support in my restraining order. I was a student, and I had no income other than student loans. That money soon ran out.

I was scared. I was about to be unable to feed my child. Then my ex began what domestic violence support groups like to call “hoovering” … a reference to the vacuum cleaner. Trying to suck me back in.

He was so sorry. He was going to get counseling. Nothing meant more to him than his family. He would do anything and everything to keep it together.

So I went back. He promptly browbeat me into dropping my divorce case against him entirely.

And the abuse got worse. I now know that it almost always does, once a victim is talked into returning. The abuser, after all, knows that he or she must bear down even harder, escalate the abuse and control, ensure that the victim is terrorized into complete and utter submission.

And so my ex’s abuse escalated immediately. He added financial abuse to the list. He refused to allow me access to any money. I had finished school at this point and was staying home with my son. I had no income aside from occasional money my family gave me. No gas in my car, no way to buy any groceries while he was at work 45 minutes away, because he took the bank card with him every day. He would make me beg for five dollars to buy cigarettes. I was trapped.

When he browbeat me for hours, he would always get this sadistic little smile. He liked to buy extravagant gifts and then threaten to return them if he got angry with me. He would order me to beg for them.

In 2004, he physically attacked me in front of my son. He jumped me from behind, and when I swung my arm to get him off of me, I accidentally blacked his eye. I fled to my neighbor’s place and called the police and our local DV hotline. Amazingly, he ALSO called the police and claimed that I had abused HIM. They didn’t arrest anyone. All they did was ask him to leave for the night.

It still took me another year to get up my courage to file for divorce. I was terrified he’d sue for custody.

I was right.

When I finally did file, I wound up with a new lawyer, who refused to seek a restraining order for me. Despite numerous records of my calls to the police for help, my attorney told me that we couldn’t prove abuse. My ex refused to move out of the house, or to pay any of the bills. He harassed me constantly. I had to lock myself and my son in my room at night to protect us from him. Still, he’d stand outside the door and rant.

I briefly had a long distance relationship during that time. My ex snooped on my laptop and copied documents in order to “prove” my “adultery”. He emailed my friend. He emailed my family. He made outrageous, malicious accusations, calling me a slut, claiming that I had Borderline Personality Disorder, that I was violent and an unfit mother.

He taped me constantly. He attacked me again and I had to flee for several days with my son. I had to call the police just to get out of the house safely. One of the officers saw my bruises but didn’t say anything. And they didn’t arrest him.

This is so hard to type out. It brings back all these memories. I’m shaking.

When we went to court, he won. My attorney, inexplicably, didn’t even bring the pictures of me with bruises from his attacks. At the same time, my ex claimed that my son was autistic. My son was delayed in his speech, due to a medication he took as a toddler, too much ear wax that was eventually cleaned out, and his father’s abuse of me. Not one therapist has agreed with my ex. The physical problems are well documented by my son’s doctor. Even so, I still took my son to additional assessments, while my ex did nothing. Yet he claimed I was the one who hadn’t done anything to help my son.

The judge ruled that because I was in graduate school by this time, I wasn’t “stable” enough as a parent to take care of my son. He stated he believed my son had special needs that I was unable to handle.

During all this time, my ex had never paid for daycare, never took my son to doctor’s appointments, never put him to bed, never did much of anything that parents do. I was the primary caregiver until the divorce, and Georgia law states that the best interests of the child lie with that parent.

And Georgia law also states that domestic abuse trumps all other concerns. Yet a few earnest lies delivered by a skilled liar were all it took to sway a judge. And maybe even prompt my own lawyer to mail it in. I didn’t stand a chance.

My attorney filed a motion for reconsideration. The judge told him to re-file it as a separate motion to modify custody. While we waited, my ex made a habit of sending me awful, horrible abusive emails. He denied visitation when he was angry, he shut me out of any equal decision-making, even though I still had joint legal custody. In short, he behaved just as he’d always done.

And so we went back to court. My attorney once again failed to submit the emails as evidence of the abuse. I had remarried by this time, and my new husband was more than willing to testify to how awfully my ex had behaved. He flat out called him an abuser in open court.

We still lost.

You think the story’s finally over? Oh no. My ex asked for attorney’s fees on top of everything else. And we lost on that one, too.

The judge has ordered me to pay $5000 plus some additional expenses in monthly installments of $500 each. I can’t afford that. I already pay $400 a month in child support.

If I don’t pay, I can go to jail for contempt of court.

I filed for divorce in May 2005. I was finally granted one in October 2007. And I’m still caught in a legal system that seems more inclined to help my abuser abuse me, than to protect me and my son. Domestic abuse was simply meaningless to the police, my lawyer, my ex’s lawyer, even the judge. Just not on their radar.

I don’t understand this. I really and truly don’t. I don’t know how to make this system do what it’s supposed to do. Why has this happened?

This is, necessarily, an abbreviated version of my story, and it’s just one story. But I’ve learned that there are thousands of abuse victims just like me out there, struggling to get someone to take them seriously, trying desperately to find a so-called “authority figure,” a member of the “judicial” system, to hear us, to believe us.

Although I’m scared to death of the idea, I’m ready to go public with my story. I hope to find those other victims who have similar stories to tell. I’ve learned that only by sticking together, by shouting out loud that domestic violence is still alive, well and vastly underestimated by society and our legal system, can we get anyone to notice. And this is my first step. Talk to me.

DV affects all women, whether they wear pearls or tattoos

Written by: crabbypatter

 

I think it’s important to add my voice to the outrage. 

 

I’m going to do it from another perspective.  Lest people paint my sisters as a gang of combat-boot wearing, libber mental cases, I had to chime in as a woman who lives on the other side of the political divide.  I jumped the chasm as a result of my ex-husband. 

 

I don’t suffer the same fate—or share the same personal outrage—as my friends here; their pain is far beyond anything I’ve experienced. A helplessness that I, thankfully, did not have to live through. 

 

Though I was primary caregiver for my two sons, my abusive ex-husband did threaten to take the children from me when I told him I was filing for divorce.  He snarled in my face, “You’ll NEVER take the children from me!” In that moment, I understood how women abduct their own children.  Just as he would never let me “take the children from him,” those are the same children he could never bother with.  His indignation at having to experience their joy and laughter—we’re talking the good stuff of parenting, not the dregs here—and his anger at how the children wrecked his life, were suddenly important when I wanted to take them away from the abuse.

 

He realized that he could have his career and look like a fantastic dad while I did all the work, so he relinquished their care, assumed a miserable martyrdom at my leaving him.  From that day forward, I had to hear from people who ran into him their weekends together how fantastic he was as a dad: how lucky they were!  I smile through gritted teeth because I know the truth would never ring true to them.

 

No, my anger at my ex has faded to a pity of sorts. A sadness at a dream that was bigger—much bigger—than my reality has taken the place of anger.  A resignation that in addition to my titles (wife, mother, ex-wife, sister, friend, co-worker, daughter), I could add the titles that sound so foreign to me: Victim. Survivor. Advocate. Vigilante. 

 

My anger from my situation comes from having to defend and explain again and again.

 

There is a blame that falls to the women in a domestic abuse cases.  At once, she is blamed for not leaving. She is blamed for not trying harder. She is blamed for exposing her children to abuse. She is blamed for creating a broken family. She is blamed for not conforming, for trying harder.  She is blamed for standing up and speaking out.

 

As I read my dear friend’s rant about Sarah Palin, I think about how easy it is for us to find a woman (any woman will do) and paint a target on them.  The Republicans have targeted Hilary since the last election. McCain sneaked his running mate into the running in a strategic move that nobody saw coming—and she was subjected to an immediate barrage of criticism. 

 

As I watched Palin’s speech during the GOP convention, I was proud of her grace and eloquence. Just as proud as I was that Hillary was able to let down her shield a bit and shed a few tears on her campaign trail—Lord knows I wondered what it would take to make her shed tears if she didn’t during that whole horrid, very public Monica Lewinsky episode.

 

What I find difficult to swallow (if you’ll pardon that phrase so closely placed to the name Monica Lewinsky), is how quick women are set up to jump to the defense of a man, how quickly we’ll turn against our own. How quickly we “ewwwww” the semen-stained blue dress and let history embrace that detail, while the President behind it meanders off, scott-free.

 

Turning against our own is often how we end up in domestic abuse relationships in the first place. The abusive men are quick to eliminate the women that are most dear, strong in spirit, and most apt to call them on their crap, breaking down our defenses and support networks in one fell swoop. They alienate us from them, and leave us standing vulnerable, depending on them to be friend and lover. It’s a dangerous stance to take.

 

Making the decision to leave my ex-husband was difficult.  Our relationship had been eroding, and what little remained was quickly washed away with the tears I shed alone, pregnant, watching the waves roll onto the shore of a Wisconsin lake one frigid January after he had finally crossed the line from verbal and emotional abuse to physical abuse.  It’s textbook: they escalate when a woman is pregnant.

 

My friends—our friends—turned on me, too. I spent years contemplating what it would be like to leave him.  We’d seen probably half a dozen counselors together and separate to resolve “our” issues.  I tried everything I knew how to do. I gave up designs to have a career so I could cater to his. I gave up interests. Physical activity. Family. Friends. When he finally pushed me to give our children a hostile home environment, I knew I had to leave.

 

But my friends—our friends—didn’t see the man I lived with.  They told me it was difficult to navigate a marriage with young children.  They told me that he spoke highly of me, that he loved me and our sons very much. They asked me if I thought it through.

 

These were educated people.  As the friends of my professor (then) husband, they were doctorate-holding professionals.  They were liberal. They were feminist. They were pro-woman, pro-choice, anti-domestic violence, pro-programs to address all social injustices. These were women that I would attend domestic violence rallies with, before I knew that I was in such a relationship.  They’d tsk-tsk the abusive offenders and embraced those women who didn’t know better than to leave.

 

Until they knew that I was one of them.

 

My democratic, green, pro-woman, feminist friends turned a blind eye to me when I confronted them with evidence of my “feminist” soon-to-be-ex’s emotional battery, verbal assaults and physical attacks. They swept it under the carpet of “He’s such a beloved and well-respected guy.”

 

When faced with the option of embracing a woman in need or embracing the abuser who was one of them….they chose him. 

 

I left the party that supported women in theory, but not in action. 

 

My conservative friends? Those who were supposed to hold the family together at all costs? The “Focus on the Family” people I sniggered about?  They supported me and listened. They believed me. They stood by me. I was touched by how my republican friends rallied around me and my boys.

 

My anger comes from the party and people who were supposed to get my plight. Those people who looked through me (without a greeting) rather than at me, despite years of companionship.

 

So, love Sarah. Or hate Sarah. Love Hillary. Or hate Hillary. I’m looking past the politics to the women themselves.  Women with husbands.  Women with daughters.  Women who are just as vulnerable as I was. As we all are.

 

1 in 4 women will suffer physical violence at the hands of their partner: husband, boyfriend, significant other.  According to the U.S. Department of Justice, every two minutes a woman in the United States is raped. Approximately 28% of victims are raped by husbands or boyfriends, 35% by acquaintances, and 5% by other relatives.

 

The numbers are there. We women are here. They are one of us, regardless of the color political banner above their heads.

 

In our pearls and combat boots, with coiffed hair and tattoos, we need to begin to acknowledge our commonalities and stand together. The men have made it too easy for us implode.