"He said he loved me…and then he tried to kill me."

Lori Bratton

Journalism—Summer II

2001

Kelly* pulls into an empty spot in front of Greg’s* apartment complex and turns off the engine. It’s almost three o’clock in the morning and Greg is passed out in the seat next to her. She doesn’t want to wake him up, remembering the fight they just had at the bar. He can get so angry when he’s drinking. There is no way around it, she thinks, and gets out of the car, walking around to the passenger side door. She stops for a moment, seeing Greg’s roommate’s car. Chris* is home. Maybe I’ll just go wake him up to get Greg out of my car. Kelly knocks on the door, but no one answers. Oh well, maybe he won’t even remember. Kelly gently opens the passenger side door, and unhooks Greg’s seat belt. "Greg. Greg, wake up, you’re home." Greg opens his eyes and looks at Kelly for a moment, like a little boy waking up. Then his eyes change. They grow dark and angry. "You slut," he says, and before the words can register in Kelly’s mind, she feels an explosion of pain across her face and falls to the ground. She looks up through her tears to see Greg standing over her.

Her eyes open, and I know that we have reached a break in her story. Barely reaching 5’2" and weighing about 100lbs. with wet clothes on, I marvel at strength inside this tiny 22 year-old woman. She reaches for her lighter, and sparks up a Marlboro Light, inhaling deeply. I take a moment, during this break, to look around me. We sit in her apartment on the south side of town, only a few streets from my grandparent’s condo. It looks like the apartment of a 22 year--old, with mismatching furniture and lots of knick-knacks and pictures. "I love pigs," Kelly says, noticing that I am studying a display of pig paraphernalia. She tells me about a stuffed pig she has that oinks when you pull its tail. In this moment she is like an innocent child.

Her cat jumps on my lap, begging for attention. "Greg gave him to me when he was a kitten. Watch out, though," she adds. "He’s just like Greg, cute and cuddly one minute, and the next minute he’ll bite you." No sooner have the words come out of her mouth before the cat tries to sink its teeth into my hand. "Greg bit you?" "Yeh, a couple times. My back, my face…" "Your face?" I interrupt. "Yes, he got his mouth over my jaw line, so you could see his upper teeth marks on my cheek, and his lower teeth marks under my chin. I don’t really remember him biting me specifically, but I think it was after I called Sarah*[her roommate]." Kelly takes a long drag off of her cigarette, and exhales slowly, remembering that night, ready to continue reliving the nightmare.

Sarah, who came home just after I arrived, has joined us. "I don’t think I have ever been so scared in my life," she tells me. "I kept praying--praying I would get there in time, praying he wouldn’t kill her, praying he wouldn’t hurt me. It was weird, because even though he had never done this before, I wasn’t really surprised that he did. I don’t know why, I guess it was just a feeling I had about him. I’ll tell you, after I saw what he had done to her, I wanted to kill him. Actually, I wanted to call everyone I knew to go beat the shit out of him first, and then kill him. I will never, ever, forget listening to that over the phone. Those screams…"

"I told them everything at the emergency room. They took pictures of all the bruises, and bite marks, and scratches, and told me I couldn’t leave until a police officer had arrived to take an official statement. We ended being there for, like, three hours by the time they finished all the forms and stuff. The cop was such an ass. He acted like I was this big inconvenience for him, like I had ruined his night. Anyway, we finally got home around seven or eight in the morning. I took some pain pills and went to sleep."

That afternoon, while Kelly was sleeping, Greg called. When Sarah told him he couldn’t talk to her, he got upset, questioning Sarah, "Why is she mad at me, what did I do?" Sarah listened in disbelief, then said, "What do you think Greg? Maybe beating the fuck out of her last night has something to do with it!" Greg denied everything, and accused Sarah of lying, so she hung up.

When Kelly woke up, she called her mom, and tearfully related the story. Her mother arrived an hour later, and after checking Kelly’s scrapes and bruises, called the police department to see if Greg had been arrested. She was then informed that a warrant would not be issued until Monday, possibly Tuesday, when a judge had a chance to look over the police report. It was Friday afternoon.

"I couldn’t believe it. I mean, he threatened to kill me, he pulled a knife on me, and the cops wouldn’t do anything for three days. I thought about going to my mom’s house, but he knew where that was, and I didn’t want to put my family in danger. I was lucky, though. He called a lot, and came by, but he didn’t break down the door or anything when I wouldn’t open it. He kept saying he didn’t know what he did wrong."

On Monday, Kelly’s mother accompanied her to the police station, where they were sent from one department to another. Finally, they were told that a warrant had been issued. "Everyone we talked to treated me like I was lying. I couldn’t understand why they were being so…uncaring." It would be three more days before Greg was arrested.

Believing that her situation did not really count as domestic violence, because they were not married or living together, Kelly believed she did not have the right to pursue further protection for herself after Greg was released on bail. She was not referred to an advocate (volunteers trained to educate victims of their rights) at the emergency room, or by the police officer.

I found the contradiction between police policy, and police action disturbing. I questioned a police officer that has worked in the area for over a decade, and asked him why Kelly’s case was treated the way it was. He told me that probably 50% of victim’s of domestic violence drop the charges against their abusers. The people involved in prosecuting an abuser cease to pay attention to victims. Arresting, charging, and prosecuting an abuser takes many man-hours. No one wants to spend the time doing this when there is such a high probability that the victim will drop the charges. However, by not spending the time, they are not helping the victim break the cycle of abuse.

Studies of domestic violence indicate that the cycle of abuse follows a predictable pattern:

Kelly and Greg met when Kelly started waiting tables at the restaurant where Greg bartended. About two months after meeting, they were a couple, and rarely went anywhere without the other. Kelly remembers that their friends at work would jokingly say they were "joined at the hip."

As the relationship continued, Greg became increasingly jealous and suspicious of Kelly’s behavior. He would frequently accuse her of flirting with men to upset him and cheating on him. He would grill her on her whereabouts if she went somewhere without him.

"We had gone to a bar that night. He had done some [cocaine] before we left and had already been drinking. He said he was stressed and just wanted to get fucked up. When we got there, he had to go to the bathroom, and while he was gone this guy asked if he could buy me a drink. Greg came out of the bathroom and saw me talking to this guy and got really pissed. He didn’t tell me he saw me, though; he just started flirting with some girl there. I was so upset, I didn’t understand what I had done wrong to make him do that to me. He kept making rude comments, until finally I couldn’t stand it anymore told him I wanted to leave. He got really quiet and walked out. He never said anything until, well, I already told you that."

"We got back together a few weeks after that night, but it was never the same again. I just couldn’t forgive him for what he did. He swore he would quit using drugs, except maybe pot, and would be careful not to drink too much. I didn’t want to be alone. He could make me feel so special, so beautiful. I don’t know, though, the spark was gone, I guess. We broke up after about 6 months. I guess he knew I would never really trust him again, and he must have felt that distance between us, because he was okay with breaking up. And he never did hit me again."

Kelly’s hesitance to forgive Greg and trust him again broke the cycle. In most cases where the woman goes back, she stays long enough for Phase 3 to wear off, and the cycle to begin again. Often, women caught up in the cycle of abuse will start to exhibit signs of post-traumatic stress, including increasing medical and emotional problems, such as depression, anxiety, and substance abuse (Gerard 6).

The longer a cycle continues, the likelihood of the violence escalating increases. Given that Greg’s first time to abuse Kelly was so extreme, she might not have lived through the next. If she did, the chances that she would report the incident would have been slim, given the lack of support she received the first time.

Although many did, I cannot judge Kelly for going back. She had friends tell her she was stupid for going back. Fearing that the responses from her family members would be worse then those of her friends, she lied to them, never telling them she had gone bake to Greg. Survivor Kim Eyer wrote an article to answer the question she asked herself many times while in an abusive relationship: "Stay or Leave? Go Back or Stay Away? An Explanation." In the article, she discusses the cycle of abuse from the victims’ point of view, and relates how it felt to be caught in it.

Kelly was very lucky she was able to break the cycle without falling victim to Greg’s abuse again. Many women, and male victims of domestic violence for that matter, are not so lucky. Many are financially dependent on their abusive partner. Many have children, and don’t believe they are capable of single parenthood. Some have been so psychologically abused that they feel completely incompetent without their partner. Still others die trying to leave.

Until domestic violence becomes a publicly understood issue, and victims are both encouraged to leave and supported when they do, we cannot break the cycle. It will continue until society stops it. How do we do that? Educate ourselves. Understand the predicaments many victims face, and never tolerate abuse if you see it. Never sit back and do nothing, because by doing nothing, you are supporting the abuser, not the victim.

"Sometimes bad things happen to good people. That’s just the way life is. The important thing is that you learn from what happens to you. I’ve learned to have self-worth, and not rely on someone else for it. Especially because sometimes it seems like they’re giving you a sense of worth, but really they are taking away what little you have."

--Kelly, a Survivor

*Names Changed

Author’s Afterwords...

The most difficult part of this piece was making the scenes I had written from my interviews with Kelly, and the research I had match up. I made the mistake of doing too much research before my interview, and although I didn’t think about it during the interview, afterwards I realized it didn’t match. I had tons of information about married victims, victims with kids, even gay victims. My 22 year--old, un-married and not living with her partner subject didn’t fit. Finally, I backed up and forgot what I had learned, and started a new search. This time I concentrated on her interactions with the police department, and how her case was handled.

My original subject was married, and had a child, but when she could not make it, I remembered a "friend of a friend" who had been battered by her boyfriend. Even though I really struggled to find an angle, and get my mind out of the "family domestic violence" mode into a "young woman dating domestic violence mode," I am really pleased with the final product. Her age being the same as mine helped us to identify with each other, which enabled her to open up to me easier. I think this made me able to ask her questions I might not have felt comfortable asking an older mother. A lot of people don’t think of domestic violence as happening to young women, and I think it is time for a story to focus on this side of the story.