Cindy Tracy Anne  Chuck  Jennifer Claire  Jo  Anna Mary  Alice  Ericca Bobby
 
 

Cindy:

"When all of this happens to you, it's just so painful...so...it hurts really, really bad. you feel like scum. you feel like you're nothing...you feel...the verbal abuse, just being a smart ass. something as simple as saying, 'oh you1re going to the store for me right now, honey?' 'no, i'm going tomorrow.' something that smart ass comparing it to something as violent as when he put a gun in my mouth still makes me feel the pain, the hurt. these types of people make you feel trapped. you can't go anywhere. you can't do anything. they love to control you, to stop you. he loved to corner me in the laundry room. for hours. and hours. nothing was good enough, nothing was good enough. wouldn't let me out of that room. would not let me out of that room. for hours and hours and hours. umm...constantly, every time i'd try to get out he'd shove me back, or put his arms out. i mean he was this big man, you know. but if he cornered me in the laundry room i felt he had total control and power over me. and he did. and that is how he made me feel. i hate that room. i hate that room. and when i would get out he would corner me again or take a coke and take it and spray it and say, 'now, bitch, you clean it up.'  Or then you see your son watching you...uhh...I always tried to hide it from them, but the things they saw, poor children...the things they saw. From trash being dumped on mommy's head to milk being dumped on me to pies thrown in my face to...Getting back to that room...that's where I got my arm broken once. Because I tried to get out and he would stop you, pull your arm, pull your arm, intimidate you until it snaps and breaks in half.  And it just makes you feel...That type of human being makes you feel so useless, like you're just nothing and they make you feel that you can not exist without them. And somehow, some way they convince you you need to stay home and you only need one car. And you feel trapped. And there1s no way to get out. But there is."

Tracy:

"I went through the abuse for eight years. Umm, I left several times. One time I went to Michigan and he ended up finding us and he ended up coming there and I ended up having a child so now I had four kids and I'm still in an abusive relationship! And the first time it was just a slap and of course, he was sorry. With time it just got worse and worse. And I've been through the restraining orders and all that. My personal belief is that those don't work. That's just a piece of paper. That does not stop somebody if they really want to get at you. That doesn't stop them from coming. Many times I had restraining orders and he was in the home, did what he had to do, and back out before the police even got there. So I really believe that it's really just getting far enough away so that they can't come. He doesn't have the resources for one to come all the way up here. So that worked to my advantage.  I allowed him to do the things that he did to me because if I had stopped it in the very beginning it wouldn't have gone on for as long as it did. I shouldn't have accepted it the first time. But I think a lot of it is his own insecurities. A lot of it is his own insecurities.  I really didn't realize that until now that I'm out of it. Because when I was going through it I kept thinking, 'what is it that I'm doing wrong? How can I make this better? How can I stop making him mad?'  When in actuality it wasn't me. It was him."

Anne:

 

"I first met Ed when we were sixteen and working at an after school job. We were both working at this greeting card factory. And we started to date. And I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point, maybe in the first year we were dating. I happened to be over at his house on a Friday night when his parents came home from the VFW. And they both had been drinking a lot. They both had a severe drinking problem. And I remember that his mother, Alice, was yelling and screaming at the father, Ken, who was pretty soft spoken. I'd always liked him. And all of a sudden Ken just started slapping her around and pushing her, and punching her. And I was flabbergasted. I1d never seen anything like that. In my family my father had never touched my mother. And I was just startled. And I remember talking to Ed about it in the next week or so and saying, How could he do that?, you know, and 'has it ever happened?' He told me it had happened a few times, but that he was never going to do that to me, that he would never hit a woman because it was like a cowardly thing to do.  Well, I had my epiphany, shall we call it, in 1991. I'd been involved in this new job on the police department. It was this new position called domestic violence coordinator. And I'd been working at it for three quarters of a year when my oldest son, Chuck, who was then living in San Diego, asked me to have lunch with him. So...we went to Seaport Village to have lunch. He was at the time twenty-seven and we had our lunch and then after lunch we sat on a bench and started talking. And he looked at me and he said, 'You know mom, my whole life I've felt like a failure.' And I was shocked because his whole life Chuck had been a popular boy, man, has lots of female friends, lots of male friends, is very talented, sings, dances, is a good worker. And I looked at him and said, 'What do you mean you've felt like a failure your whole life?' And he said, 'Well, remember the last night daddy beat you up?' And I looked at him and I said, 'What?' And he said, "Remember the last time Daddy beat you up? You were yelling out, 'Chuckie, Chuckie, come help me.' And I jumped on Daddy's back and I tried to pull him off of you. And I couldn't get him off of you.' And then Chuck looked at me and said, 'Remember, I was only nine.' And it just hit me. I was just shocked. And I was devestated at the same time that I had never realized what this had done to my kids. First of all, I had stuffed the idea of being a battered woman so far down into me that I couldn't even see it anymore. Umm...for fifteen years. Then all of a sudden my son is telling me that becaue he couldn't save me that last night and I had never addressed that, it is still with him some eighteen years later."

Chuck, Anne's son:

"He was really mad and he starting hitting her and she was screaming and calling for me to help her. And I was bawling my eyes out. I was deathly afraid. My world was shattered. There's no way for me to put into words this total complete sense of hopelessness. And I didn't go to her. Any my brother did. My little brother who must have been five years old, six years old at the time. He ran to her and he backhanded him right onto the ground. My dad just backhanded him. And he fell and started crying and she was almost using him as a shield to some degree. She had him on her lap. But that didn't stop my dad from hitting her. With a fist. It was so scary that I just couldn't watch almost.I remember watching them fight and my mom crying and her makeup running down her face, red-faced, but just ripping him with words. Fighting back, you know, 'fuck you,' you know and he was just red-faced and he just lost it. My father used to say that when he's mad he sees red and I could tell that this was what he was feeling. He had lost all control. He was not thinking of anything other than the anger he was feeding on. And he would punch her. And pull her hair. And punch her. And then he got on the phone and called her father. 'Bill you better get over here. I'm going to kill this fucking bitch.' Screaming, holding her by the hair, you know. Then she'd say something or try to hit him and he'd put down the phone, put her in the corner and start punching her again. We're standing in the kitchen doorway watching this, crying, begging them, pleading, screaming, 'Stop, stop. Daddy, don't hit her. Daddy, don't hit mommy. Please.' On and on and on. It felt like it went on for hours.  It got so intense I couldn't handle it anymore. I ran into my bedroom. I went into the closet and...and sat there in the corner...and all the kids came in. We all sat on top of each other. I was on the bottom and all the kids were on top of me. We all were just crying, you know...we just didn't know what to do...didn't know how to cope. There's nothing you can do at that point. Just...just ride the terror."

Jennifer:

"I had been working with domestic abuse issues, child abuse even more, for fifteen years, when I married a colleague, another psychologist, who was a well educated Englishman who was physically, emotionally and verbally abusive to me. And I remained in that relationship for nine years. And I was a clinical therapist at the time. How do ya figure? I was raising a daughter and you'll also hear from her in this production. I also had a son from a previous marriage who would come and visit. And I wanted him to come into an intact home. And I had a mother-in-law who had moved from England to live with us. And I felt as the mother of the household that I had an obligation to everybody, and that the price I was going to pay for stability of the family for all these people was my physical safety. And I did it for nine years. And then I left. Moving out for me meant moving out with a nine year old daughter. And part of the moving on for both of us was a gradual conversation. A dialogue that has happened over several years. Probably will continue for years to come with my daughter about what she saw, and what she heard. And I remember the moment that started. We were sitting in a hotel room on the edge of a bed. And something or television or...something set it off, but she started spilling out all of this stuff that I didn't know she was aware of. Fortunately I overcame my reluctance to talk about because...you know, it's embarassing. I don't feel like a good mother when my child is telling me how terrified she was seeing and hearing some of what she saw and heard. And there is a big part of me that wanted to patch it all up, pretty it all up, push it under the bed, not have to deal with it. But that's not what we did. We talked about it. There was crying and hugging and it went on for quite a while. It's now okay to talk about it, her father and what it was like when she was a child and what it's been like for her, continuing to have a relationship with him and knowing him to be not only in his relationship with her own mother, but observing his abusiveness to a later stepmother. And watching her younger half sisters living in that same violent situation. So for her, she never really got out of it altogether because of visitation. I didn't have to deal with it anymore. But she still has to. And she always will have to. As a mom and his ex-wife I have to carry some of the burden of that with her so that she's not left with these awful memories and confusing feelings all by herself."

Claire, Jennifer's daughter:

"I lived through my childhood watching a lot of things that really hurt because I loved both my parents and still do love them quite a lot. I guess what hurt most was that I couldn't stop their fighting. When they would be fighting I would go and stand between them. I would never run away or hide. I would always be right there. Watching them. Standing right next to them. I remember one terrible experience. This is imprinted in my brain forever. My parents were fighting. My dad was screaming and sitting on one chair while my mother was sitting on the sofa. And he scared her so much that she peed in her pants. The image of that will just be in my brain for the rest of my life. It was just so horrible to see. I was a little girl and I peed in my pants all the time. My mom could always help me and comfort me. But there was nothing I could do for her. And seeing how horrible he could be. I have changed and I'm not a little girl anymore. Instead of just being hurt and confused by what was really going on, I became really angry because I went down to visit him with one of his girlfriends or wives or something and they ended up fighting for three days. And I was blamed for it. I was caught in the middle and my sister and I would hide out in his office, just hanging on, shaking, trying to listen in, see what was happening. "

Jo:

"For me it was my second marriage and I was bound and determined to make this work. With three children I was going to make this work. And it just got to the point...I could tell many stories...My husband was an alcoholic and he was Native American and he would get extremely abusive when he was drinking. I would get dragged out of the bed at three o'clock in the morning, kicked, punched, everything to cook breakfast, and when I would cook it he would throw it on the floor and say kick it again, bitch.  He tried to rape my mother when she was seventy-two years old because I refused to give him sex. I had to hit him over the head with a statue, the heaviest thing I could find, and barricade the door, stay there all night, so he wouldn't hurt my mother. He terrorized the kids all night long. There were many many nights he kept us up all night long. My kids would flee up the alley. My two youngest ones slept in the dumpster one night because he was on a rampage. My oldest one was from a previous marriage, and he would decide at three o'clock in the morning he wasn't going to live anymore. Of course I would run in and protect them. I would not let him abuse them.  But it came to a point it was getting worse and worse and worse, and I could not take it anymore. I planned his murder several times, my suicide several times. It came to the point one night ...he used to love to chase me with knives when he was really drunk and abusive. I went to run out the back door one night and he put a butcher knife up to my throat like he had several times before. And I said, "do me a favor and do it." For the first time I wasn't afraid. It was like death would be better than living like this because this wasn't living anyhow. And I remember putting my head back and saying, "please do it. Just finish it cause this isn't living for me anymore. I don't want to live like this anymore." For the first time, he looked at me and I wasn't scared and he dropped the knife. I think he was shocked because he wasn't terrorizing me anymore. With that he went to bed. It was three or four in the morning.  And I laid on the couch and thought to myself, "is this what it's come to? That I really want to die? And what about my children?" And I decided that I was going to do something about it. Although I had called the police several times--I'd had them out to my house three and four times in a night. And they never arrested him. I think the police have changed quite a bit since then. We're going back twelve years ago. Anyhow I sent my boys next door and I took my daughter with me because she'd witnessed a lot of it. In those days if you didn't have a witness, no matter how badly you were beaten it didn't make a difference with the police. So I went down to the police station and told them I wanted something done. My house was destroyed. Everything. He had slit the tires on the kids' bikes, even pulled chandeliers out of the walls. He had broken tables, broken furniture. Pancake syrup spilled in the refrigerator. Oil in the washing machine. Anything he could think of to destroy was done.  And I said, "I need something done. He's beaten me. He's terrorized my children, my house has been destroyed. Something has to be done because one of these days he is going to kill me, and maybe some of the children." Well they kept me waiting and waiting and ever so often I'd go back up to the desk and say, "I want to speak to someone in charge now." It's like there was a fire inside me. I thought, "this is not okay." I was on a roll. It was like: I want to make some changes in my life and I need you to help me do this. And that's what you're supposed to do. But they were ignoring me. I finally yelled out all over the police station, "I'm going to sit here until hell freezes over, until you do something." And so then they called me up to the desk to calm me down and they said, "well you don't have any witnesses." My daughter was nine at the time and I said, "Christy, you tell this gentleman what you saw." And I said, "Here's my witness. You didn't say it had to be an adult. I don't want to drag my daughter into court, but if I have to I will."

Anna:

"I lived with him a whole year. It was really good at the beginning, but it got real abusive. And it got out of hand with the kids. They see too much. I would help anybody in a situation like this. Because who would not know if not for a woman what really goes on if you haven't been through it yourself? (Question: You mean that started it for you?) Yeah, the kids. Umm...made me think, yeah, I don't want to end up dead somewhere. That was my main reason."

Mary:

"All of a sudden he goes out the house and comes back in and accuses me of being out there in the streets with another man. And I'm in the bed all the day, looking at my soap operas.  And he locked me in. And it's very frightening being locked in a place and you can't get out. So I started hollering and he put his hand over my mouth and nose and he cut off my oxygen and I was hurting real bad up here.  And when I went to the hospital they told me I had accumulated fluid around my lungs from my oxygen being cut off.  It's not nice--being locked in and being frightened and beaten. Hey, I've been being beaten since I'm nine years old. Don't know my mom and dad. Stayed with different sets of people. All I've got to tell women is if you're in an abusive relationship, get out, get out. Run as fast as you can. Cause it's nothing nice. It's scary and you don't know which way to go, but there's somebody out there to help you.  (Question: why do you think men do this kind of thing?) If I had to guess I'd say it's because they think they have more authority than women do, you know. But it's a two way relationship. If you're with somebody you don't just take one side. Always look on two sides because there's two sides to a story. Just because you a woman we're not all that helpless, but we make ourselves helpless by all the time being with our abuser, you know.  They try to control your mind, your heart and everything, but only God can control a person. I think the demon gets in these men. Yeah. Run women run. That's all I can say. Just run. If you got an abusive partner, get away from him. Because if he do it one time, he's gonna cry and say he's not going to do it again, but he's going to keep on doing it. If he do it one time, he'll do it two or three, how many other times it takes. But run ladies, run. All I can say. Run."

Alice:

"The last year we were together I got pregnant. We planned the pregnancy, but when he found out I may be pre-term, he asked me what was wrong with my body and why can't I carry his child to term? But all the while he was still beating me and umm...putting me under a lot of stress. And also I was working. And the work I did required me to stand a lot, and umm, I got really afraid that maybe he would hurt me worse than he usually did because I was pregnant. And one night he did beat me really bad while I was pregnant. He stomped me in the stomach.  After I had my son, you know how babies cry when they're newborn. And he would wonder why he would cry so much. He would tell me I would have to pick the baby up as soon as he would start crying. He would get really angry with me if I didn't. One night I was holding the baby and the baby was crying and he got really angry with me. He kicked me in the chest and the baby and I went flying across the room. He was really short tempered with the baby. So I decided I was going to try to do whatever I can to keep the baby quiet and umm...the last time we were together, we had spent the night together and everything was fine. And the next morning he called me and he told me that he was going to kill us. He said he was tired of us bringing him down.  So that night I told my mother that we were leaving. So I called a family member and asked if I could come stay with them. And it went fine until April when my uncle kicked me and my kids out because I didn't want to give him anymore money for the things he was doing, you know, he was doing drugs. So he kicked us out in the snow."

Ericca:

I was one of four children and when I was two years old my mom left my father because he was abusive. He was an alcoholic. She left because he used to beat her, push her down the stairs. I remember when she was pregnant for my younger sister, he pushed her down the stairs. My step-mother moved in shortly after that. She was the one to take care of us during the day. She fed us. Basically that's it. She locked us in our room for the entire day. Every day. My sisters, the ones that were potty trained used a plant pot to go to the bathroom because we couldn't get out of our rooms. She didn't pay attention to us at all. Umm...my father used to come home at night when we were sleeping and beat us with a belt or smack us around. Or, you know, tell us, say things to us that were really mean. You know, emotional stuff. That we were stupid. I mean, I was two. I didn't understand any of it. I thought it was normal at the time. After a year he eventually dropped one of my sisters and I on my mother's doorstep. After living with him we were amazed, we didn't understand. My mom didn't abuse us. She didn't hit us, she didn't say nasty things to us. It was okay for a while. Then she had another man come into her life, and he was also an alcoholic. This was when I was a little older. I was about thirteen. I understood a lot more. Ummm....he used to hit. And I think he used to abuse her, you know, a lot behind closed doors where we couldn't see it, but we knew it was there, my sisters and I. After a couple of years of that she finally got up enough courage to leave him. But during that time I was always afraid, always scared for my mom. And I always used to try to get her to leave. It's hard for a person to leave when they're not sure of anything. It was scary. We ended up going to a shelter because we were so frightened. It was a shelter and kind of secretive, you know, nobody knew about it and umm...so he couldn't get it. It was a locked place. He wouldn't have been able to get in. I didn't know what I was going to be like as a parent. I knew that I didn't want to be like my father. I needed some information on how to be a better parent. On how not to be violent or...how to deal with my anger or what to do with my children when I was angry. I don't want to be the kind of parent that my father was. When I was six months pregnant I started the Parent Child Center for the child care and the classes, but also because I didn't know what I was going to be like as a parent. I knew that I didn't want to be like my father. I was abused physically. I was abused emotionally. I didn't understand at the time why we would be spanked or yelled at or hit with a belt. I didn't understand those things, what we did wrong. When I got older I realized it wasn't my fault, that I didn't do anything, that he was an alcoholic and sometimes that just happens, that people don't know what they're doing if they're drunk, or using drugs...so...we were neglected. We were not taken care of. The food, we were given food to eat, but nothing, no attention, no love, none of the things that are crucial and important when you're that young. We didn't have any nurturing...the important things that you need at that age. My mom was the one to teach me the loving, the nurturing, you know, playing with dolls together, going shopping together, giving me time, spending time with me. We didn't have a lot of money so she couldn't buy me things. But I knew that I was loved by her, by the time that she spent with me. Teaching me how to cook, clean. Teaching me that I could be a good person, be friendly. That I didn't have to be mean to people just because they are mean to you.

Bobby, Ericca's husband:

When I was younger I was neglected, abused, ummm...and you know, it was hard. When I was in grade school I would get into a fight everyday. It didn't matter what it was. If somebody looked at me funny I would get into a fight with 'em. And I'm not blaming it on anybody else. I'm not blaming it on myself because it wasn't my fault. It was a lot of pent up anger at certain people that, you know, I was a kid, I couldn't take it out on them. And I had no place else to vent it. I definitely don't want them to grow up the way I grew up. I don't want them to be the way I was when I was a teenager. You know, very violent, into drugs, into stealing, things like that. I don't want that. I don't want to have to wait up every night not knowing what to expect or getting a phone call from the police saying, you know, we caught your kid stealing or your kid was at the park doing drugs. I don't want that. It's not what they need and it's not what I want. They'll end up treating their kids better if we treat them the way we should've been treated. And that's what I want. I want my grandchildren to have excellent parents, excellent mothers, you know, somebody that is there for them. Somebody that if any problem comes up they can go to them. And I want them to have the same treatment when they come over to my house.

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