DOMESTIC VIOLENCE MYTH: Domestic Violence CANNOT Happen to ANY Woman

When I began working with victims of domestic violence,
I did not understand why they stayed with their abusers,
Or the lack of answers to my questions and unearthly silence.
I definitely did not comprehend why she choose to stay with an abuser.

I had experienced 7 years of a happy blissful marriage,
Just like a fairy tale complete with a horse and carriage,
My mate never said the words "shut up" or cussed at me,
To appear to choose to stay with an abuser-despite the options-I just could not see.

Get an injunction, file for divorce,
And get full custody.
It sounded easy enough,
Just follow my advice-steps one, two, and three.

I failed to realize that in many states including my own,
Florida-if you are wondering-was my home,
Revoking visitation and a mother gaining full custody,
Was almost never ever an actual possibility.

It did not matter if he beat her,
It did not matter if he cheats on her,
It did not matter if he did drugs,
And it did not matter if his roommates were thugs.

It did not matter, you see,
Who he was...
Or what he does...
Or what he threatened....
Or what he said....
You see they refused to revoke custody,
Even if he threatened to shoot his wife and children dead.

And so....
She left....
And all her children are dead....

And then I realized what I failed to see,
An unjust and cruel reality,
Now I understand the fear in her eyes,
And now I am unable to comfort her cries.

How do you comfort a mother,
Who took your advice to leave,
And tried to do right,
And ends up with dead children,
That daddy killed on the first visitation night?

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE MYTH: Domestic Violence CANNOT Happen to ANY Woman

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE FACT: Any Person, Any Gender, Any Age, Can Be the Victim of Domestic Violence and Leaving Domestic Violence Abusers Leaves 4 Women Dead in the United States EVERY DAY

Until the current custody laws change, strong women who refuse to take abuse and divorce or leave their abuser despite his threats of revenge, may unfortunately be the next mothers who are killed or have their children killed by their ex-husbands and ex-boyfriends. 4 women are killed each day. I don't know how many children are killed each day. More women who are U.S. citizens have been killed by husbands or ex-husbands or boyfriends or ex-boyfriends due to domestic violence than U.S. citizens have been killed due to terrorist attacks.

I once dealt with a particular rape victim, a strong, educated women, who was raped by an army veteran who was also educated and worked for a branch of the government. They met at a local university. This rape victim explained that she contemplated gouging his eyes out during the attack as taught in rape prevention classes but she remembered his military training. She said she believed that had she attempted this tactic, he would have went ahead and strangled her to death. So she focused her efforts on just surviving the rape rather than getting killed during the rape. And due to his connections, she believed that he would have been able to cover her death up quite easily. This man had two other prior rape victims who failed to prosecute him.

With that said, this logic also applies to domestic violence situations. Unfortunately, some people will kill their wives, children, ex-wives, girlfriends, or ex-girlfriends. 4 women are killed every day due to domestic violence and children are dying too. I once interviewed a 3+ time serial domestic violence offender and his wife, separately.

I asked him, "what if your partner would have put you in jail?" for a particular attack. He said without a skipping a beat "I would have killed her when I got out of jail." I asked if he was afraid of serving time for that and he replied that he "would dispose of her body by chopping it up and putting in an alligator infested lake or burying it on their property" and then he further explained that he would "take her car to the local Wal-mart and leave it there, and then call the police a few hours later to issue a missing persons report." He was quite confident that he would not get caught.

I asked him if he worried if he would get caught and he said the he was not worried about getting caught, he was not afraid of jail or prison, and that he would make sure "he killed her real good" before going to jail. I asked "what does killing her real good mean?" and he responded that it including raping her and sodomizing her prior to killing her. I asked him how he would have responded to his wife getting an injunction against him, and he responded that he would not be told where he could not go, that he would violate it, and if she called the police to put him in jail her would kill her. He explained "an injunction is a piece of paper, I could kill her before the cops arrived" and this man had a prior injunction violation on his record where he broke and entered and nearly killed a man. Women are generally smaller in stature, this man was over 6 foot tall and about 230 pounds, and are easier to be beaten to death than another large man.

The wife in this case had sought a divorce in Florida and was informed that joint custody would most likely be issued since the domestic violence against her did not have anything to do with the children. She was told no custody and no visitation was not an option, it was nearly impossible to get. When she brought up his threats to kill her after a divorce and kidnap the children on the first visitation to the lawyers, she was informed that since he had not acted on his threats that they did not have much weight.

When I questioned this abusive husband on his threats to kill his wife and kidnap his children, he calmly explained that he "was not going to be told by anyone when he could see or could not see his children or be controlled by anyone regarding his rights to his children." When asked where he would flee with his children upon kidnapping, he replied "probably Mexico."

His wife was not the "myth" domestic violence victim, she was a strong-willed, college educated, beautiful woman who worked as analyst in the business field and had healthy self-esteem. She said she did not believe she deserved to be abused and she did not want her children to be alone with him or his relatives due to his abusiveness. She believed that he would get revenge if she divorced him as he promised he would. She had greater earning potential than him financially and had more pre-marital assets.

She explained her decision for not seeking divorce as a simple business decision call, "If I knew that I would get killed by starting a business in country X, obviously I would not do it. And if a divorce means that my children will have to spend alone time with an abuser where he can twist their minds like telling my children that I wanted to abort them which is a blatant lie that he has tried to tell them as well as exposing them to awful things like cocaine addicted strippers, drug dealers and illegal drugs, pornography, and everything that I don't agree with during visitations.... Well then I will stay to protect them until the laws change." She also added an interesting haunting statement, "a lot of people tell me to leave and trust God or they say he is just full of threats, I know they are not empty threats from prior incidents when he almost successfully killed me while I was actively trying to leave. I know that he would have destroyed a woman with low self-esteem or killed a woman who did not believe his threats. What is the point of a divorce, if you are dead or your children get abused on visitations?"

Sometimes leaving an abuser is like playing Russian Roulette with your life and your children's lives. You have to make a call on whether that chamber has a bullet or not.

Here are 7 cases, out of thousands, where the chamber had a bullet:

Father Kill His 3 Children in a Hotel Room
Father Kills His 2 Children and Refuses to Tell Wife Where the Remains Are
Florida Father Stabs Children, Burns Little Girl Alive, and Commits Suicide in Retaliation When Given Joint Custody - he wanted FULL custody
Florida Man Kills Wife, 2 Children, and Himself-13 Year Old Son Ran From Shooting Dad and Survives
Florida Father Kills Daughter, Self, and Injures 3 Sons
Florida Man Kills Ex-wife, 2 Children, Himself, and Ex-wife's Roomate