Staff reporter
kamartin@elkintribune.com
Reporter’s note: The following account of domestic violence is graphic in nature. The victim recounts several incidents while in a relationship that brought her very close to facing her own death. Please be aware that the incidents are real and happen across our nation daily behind closed doors, in neighbor’s homes and even those of our loved ones.
“The first time I experienced domestic violence was within a month of the birth of my first child,” Monica said. “I was in the shower, getting ready for the funeral of my father-in-law. All of a sudden, the shower door was slammed open and a shotgun was shoved into my stomach.
“My husband was standing there accusing me of killing his father because of an argument over him wanting me to place my newborn son in the bed with me. My son could not tolerate the infant formulas the doctor had prescribed and was experiencing vomiting and diarrhea.”
”That incident started years of all different types of abuse,” she said. “At times it was verbal, sometimes sexual, and more often than not, physical in the forms of slaps, punches, kicks and slams against the wall. And I was a fool.”
Feelings of foolishness and inadequacy are often seen in victims of domestic violence. When faced with the disbelief of what is happening along with the emotional upheaval of love and hate, the victims often loose their sense of worth.
“After the first time, I made myself believe it was just the stress from the loss of his father and the addition of his mother needing someone to blame, accusing the argument that his father and I had as the cause,” she said. “His father had been a heavy drinker, a smoker and was overweight, all prime conditions for heart disease. The day after the argument, while my father-in-law was working, he had a massive coronary and died. I convinced myself that the physical incident was a one-time thing and tried to forget.
“The next incident happened one night after he came in from practicing with the band he played in,” she said. “He had been drinking and was pretty drunk when he made it home. I was giving our baby son a middle of the night bottle and made the mistake of saying ‘shh’ as he stumbled past us loudly, blubbering something. He started yelling and startled the baby into crying. I was afraid for my son and took him to his bed to lay him down.
“When I returned to the den, he jumped up and grabbed me and slammed me against the wall,” Monica said. “Then he forced me down onto the couch forcing himself on me. It was the first sex since the baby and it was too early and I was unprepared.”
“I remember waiting and praying for him to fall asleep so I could get away from him. Our son had stopped crying and I was horrified that something was wrong with him. He was my first child and I was inexperienced with what babies would do.”
“A few weeks after that, I had the money for our power bill and groceries in my billfold that I placed in my pocket at work,” she said. “While I was at work, I had to take a patient to the shower and I laid my billfold down on the bedside table and forgot to pick it up when I took the patient out of the room. One of the other aides or orderlies stole it and threw the billfold outside the building empty of the money. That night my husband slapped and hit me over and over.
“I already felt like a fool for leaving it, but after that night, I felt defeated.”
There would be many more nights like that over the years
“One particularly bad incident happened one afternoon when our son was about 18-months-old,” said Monica. “We were living in a house that my grandmother owned just two houses away from her. She was visiting with me at the time when my husband came home.
“Our son walked over to the door to see his daddy and as my husband opened the door, our son toddled out. For some reason, my husband’s temper snapped and he shoved my son into the storm door and then jerked him away and slammed the door breaking the glass.”
The glass went all over their son. Her grandmother screamed and she ran to get the son. From there things degenerated her husband slapped Monica in front of her grandmother and then left.
After making sure their son was okay, Monica gathered a change of clothes and the things her son would need and went to her grandmother’s for the night, where she for the next two days. The following day, she returned to the home, but without her son, just in case her husband was in the house. Things stayed strained for a while, but eventually she went back to their “standard routine.”
Years of similar abuse
“Over the next five years similar occurrences happened,” Monica said. “There were times when I thought things were good and then there were the bad times.”
Her reasoning for staying back the first years was due to the fact her parents had divorced when she was 16 and it had been “ugly.”
“I wanted so much for my son to have both his parents and I thought I could handle it,” she said. “I didn’t allow myself to think about divorce, to me it would be my failure.”
A break in the relationship still didn’t allow for the final break.
“When my son was five, my husband and I separated after a terribly big fight,” Monica said. “He had been playing in the band for a few years and was gone most every weekend.
“Being a part of the band, he flirted with other women constantly and sometime during that particular year, had started sneaking out the back with other women, having sex and going to hotels with them before he would come home,” she said.
According to Monica, there was a particular girl he took out of town with him to a playing gig and then decided he wanted to be with her. That brought on a big fight and he left. Ironically, the girl that time didn’t want him.
“We separated, and for a while, my son and I lived peacefully without everyday violence,” she said. “But, stupidly, I know, I missed him, missed having someone with me and my son missed his daddy, even though it was not the best of relationships.”
Moving away to try to salvage the marriage
“My husband hooked up with another woman and after a few months, they moved out of state,” she said. “He pretty much was running away when they left.
One weekend he showed up at the house with the new woman in tow, and Monica and her husband ended up arguing.
“We were on the porch and he started choking me and pulled a knife on me, and held it against my throat,” she said. “He choked me until I passed out, and he pushed me off the porch. My little boy ran next door to the neighbors and they kept him inside safe with them and called the police.
“My husband left before the police arrived, but that was the first of several police reports filed against him for physical abuse,” she said. “I had to be taken to the hospital to be checked out.”
He left the state that night.
“After about a year, their relationship went sour,” said Monica. “He came back to ask me to move myself and our son to where he lived then.
“Like an idiot, and against all the warnings and threats from my family, I went,” she said. “My son and I were hours away from family and friends, but I was determined to make it work.”
Their son started school in another state and all of them shared a house with another couple out away from town, sometimes stuck out in the boondocks without transportation,” she said.
“But yet again, he couldn’t stay away from other women and he found one there too,” Monica said.
The abuse of alcohol and drugs
“One of the things I haven’t talked much about is the drinking and the drugs,” she said. “I am not and have never have been what anyone would call a drinker. “I ‘wore’ the drinking of my husband and his drug use.
“At first it was just drinking, then he added pot, and then harder drugs,” she said. “I did not believe in that stuff, but once, stupidly, I tried the pot ,just to make him happy. That was not a good night. I was deathly sick to my stomach and could not function properly, and he just laughed at me anyway.”
Over the years, he would have bouts of hard drinking which would usually result in physical abuse. The last time she knew of anything he was doing I’m pretty sure he was still using drugs and definitely drinking.
The relationship changes several times over next few years
“We moved to another location and for a short period of time, we had a semi-normal relationship,” Monica said. “There were good times and bad, but there were always bouts of physical, verbal, and other forms of abuse. I really had a low opinion of myself and low self-esteem through those years.”
There came a time, when, through several other women and countless arguments and fights, we moved back home.
“I was happy to be back and after a while found myself carrying our second child,” said Monica.
During that pregnancy she went back to school and was working part-time, but due to a medical condition, had to choose one over the other.
“We needed the money, so school was out,” she said. “After our second son was born, things were pretty good for a while.”
Then it started again. First the other woman and staying out of town, then the physical and verbal abuse when he was in town.
“There was a particular incident when my second son was 6-months-old where my husband forced himself on me violently while my sons were asleep down the hall,” she said. “That just made me so sick on my stomach, I could hardly breathe. And then, the other woman kept calling the house and things just finally got to be too much.”
The move away, physically and emotionally
“Somehow, I woke up one morning and thought ‘enough,’” Monica said. “I packed everything I could in my car with my sons and I moved back to my grandmothers, the one place I knew I could always go.
“Things were hard and my oldest son was only seven at the time and didn’t completely understand. My baby was only 6-months-old, so, thankfully, he didn’t have any adverse effects at the time.”
Just after she left, her husband moved the other woman, and her child, in with him.
“Lord have mercy, that started another nightmare,” she said.
Transfer of violence
“The next years were a battle of custody, physical abuse and police calls,” Monica said. “Fights over the kids, money, and everything else under the sun.
“Then, one weekend, when I took the kids for their court ordered visit, he cornered me in the bathroom, while my young sons were in the other room. That was the last time he laid his hands on me. I didn’t tell anyone he forced himself on me for several years. I felt too ashamed and guilty.”
He then began to abuse his oldest son.
“There were so many different episodes over the years,” she said. “Then he transferred his abuse to our oldest son. Their relationship has deteriorated over the years to the point that now there is not one at all. And for my son, that is the best possible solution.”
“Our youngest son’s relationship with him is, for the most part, non-existent, thank God,” she said. “Although I don’t have to have any contact with him anymore, I constantly worry about my boys. I live with the fear that he will go after them again anyway he can. He was the biggest mistake of my life and I’m just lucky to have survived.”
The emotional conflict
“I hear women talking about abusive relationships all the time,” Monica said. “Most of these women had loving, non-violent fathers, solid family relationships, and a loving relationship with a man who is kind and loving. But these women have no idea of the emotional bond that develops, especially after a child is born.”
“I was dependent on this man for my emotional needs, as crazy as that may sound, to give me love that I felt I was missing,” she said. “I was ‘in love’ with him and could not get over those feelings. Then with our first son, I could not even think about taking him away from his father. I didn’t want him to not have both parents.”
She was also dependent on him, so she thought, for financial security.
“I could not foresee being able to provide my son with the things he needed and would want,” Monica said. “The emotional bond I had was stronger than anything else in my life. I know now that it was just that I had been beaten down so far, physically and emotionally, that I just settled into a mindset of accepting that this was what life was like.
“I had no experience with a man in a normal, loving relationship that could show me any difference,” she said. “My father had whipped me and used his fist, and a belt on me growing up, and for me, it became an acceptable way of life.
“I really don’t think people realize that once you’re in it, it’s almost impossible to see your life as anything else,” Monica said. “The dependency, the physical affection you long for, they are powerful things. Thankfully, I eventually got out, but my decisions influenced the lives of my sons negatively.”
Her biggest regret is not the physical and emotional abuse that she allowed myself to be subjected to, but the influence it had on her sons.
“I can’t take that away. I can’t soothe their fears or chase away the bad memories. I can only be there for them as much as I can and tell them how much I love them,” she said. “There is never a phone call between us that doesn’t end with me telling them I love them and they always tell me they love me.
“You can’t possibly know what hearing them say I love you means to me,” she said. “When we see each other, we meet with a hug and we never part without one.”
Her sons are now grown with families of their own.
“I was lucky in the sense that I made it through the relationship. There are many women who experience physical violence that are killed and/or maimed,” she said. “I was left with a few physical scars, but many more emotional.”
“I went to a support group meeting once several years later and heard other women speak of the turmoil they found themselves in. Many of them spoke of feeling that it was their fault,” Monica said. “Many others spoke of how they couldn’t see their lives without the abuser in it. For whatever reason, most victims of abuse can’t break the emotional attachment very easily. When kids are involved, it becomes even harder, not easier.
“I know now that no man has the right to put his hands on me for any reason whatsoever,” Monica said. “I have been hit by several men in my life, all of which I believed I loved and that they loved me.
“But, I have also learned that love doesn’t come in the form of abuse of any kind. Not physical or verbal,” she said. “I’ve also learned that I won’t cower down ever again. I will fight back. That may sound harsh, but I will never allow myself to be hurt again at the hands of any man in my life.”
Domestic Abuse Help
Domestic Abuse — Surry Task Force on Domestic Violence, Inc.
786-6155
SURRY COUNTY
Surry County Domestic Violence
Historic Courthouse
114 W. Atkins St. Room 215
P.O. Box 294
Dobson, NC 27017
Office: 356-2014
Crisis: 356-2014 or 911
Fax: 356-2015
WILKES COUNTY
SAFE, Inc.
P.O. Box 445
Wilkesboro, NC 28697
Office: 838-9169
Crisis: 838- SAFE (7233)
24-Hour: 667-7656
Fax: 838-4350
Web site:
www.safedvsa.com
YADKIN COUNTY
Yadkin County Family Domestic Violence Program
P.O. Box 1053
106 Elm St.
Yadkinville, NC 27055
Office: 367-7251
Crisis: 679-2500
Fax: 679-2236
Post a Comment
