Graphic by Michael D. Fraley

Originally published October 8, 1999 in The Evening Star

Our eyes met for only a fraction of a second but it was all the time we needed to tell each other
everything.

She knew that I knew, and I knew that she knew I knew.

Swiftly, guiltily, this stranger and I looked away from each other, refusing to acknowledge out
loud what I'd seen, almost as if I'd caught her shoplifting.

Indeed, I wish it had been as simple as that.

She pushed her shopping cart a little faster, moving far enough ahead of me to make it
impossible to snatch a second look.

I'd heard them coming long before they passed me - or, rather, I'd heard the man she was with,
I presume her husband. Incessantly, the man alternated between correcting a small child they'd
brought with them and telling the woman what she was and was not going to purchase on
their trip to the store.

As they passed me the woman picked up a package of doughnuts and said, "I've heard these
are good."

"I'm not having that crap in my house!" he snapped. She saw me looking at her when she
turned to put the doughnuts back.

Two yellow-gray rings rimmed both her eyes.

It was then that I knew and, somehow, I knew that she knew I knew.

It wasn't the first time I'd seen a woman who'd been hit hard enough to blacken both her eyes.
When I was a little girl in the 1950s, my aunt used to show up at our front door with black
eyes.

Dressed in long pants and long sleeves, summer or winter, she would stand on the porch, tears
dripping from beneath dark sunglasses that poked out from between a head scarf pulled far
over her face.

My mother would let her in, comfort her, sympathize - then send her back home again
because, because, well, back then that's what women did when their partners beat them.

A woman's place was beside her husband, no matter what the cross was she had to bear.

I leave both this woman and my aunt unnamed because domestic violence doesn't have a single
face or name. Domestic violence crosses all socioeconomic, cultural and racial lines.

It is true that some men do suffer abuse at the hands of women. But, despite a recent
controversial book asserting that women batter men as much as men batter women, most
experts on the issue agree that the overwhelming majority of domestic violence victims are
women.

In fact, according to statistics provided by the Bureau of Justice, women comprise 90-95
percent of domestic violence victims in the United States.

Domestic violence also comes in several forms. While physical violence is the most obvious,
hidden types of abuse, including sexual, verbal and psychological, can be just as terrifying and
hurtful.

Domestic violence also has indirect victims, including the children of a household where their
mother is being battered.

And, while more people today are willing to admit they know someone who is battered, in
northeast Indiana domestic violence still is a hush-hush topic that people try to keep a secret
within their family circles.

"Domestic violence has been happening since before recorded time," says Gail Waymire,
northeast Indiana chairperson of the Steuben County Domestic Violence Task Force.

"The problem is domestic violence knowledge is new. It's something that has been studied only
for the last 25 years or so and, compared to how long it's been going on, that's a drop in the
bucket.

"Why is Indiana so far behind in domestic violence awareness? It may be gender-based a little
bit, but my stronger feeling is that it's because Indiana is a great place to live and raise a family.

"It is a family-oriented area with a stronger focus on the family unit than any other state. But,
when it comes to domestic violence, that strong family focus also is a factor.

"That same protective family unit protects the secrets in the family, including domestic violence.
Breaking the silence is very difficult."

Another reason for secrecy is that society, in general, continues to believe that what happens
between a couple is a private matter and not something in which someone else should
intervene.

What happens, then, is that silence becomes a batterer's best friend, according to Bonnie J.
Campbell, national director of the Violence Against Women Office.

Victims are so terrorized by their batterers that they won't tell their friends or neighbors about
the abuse, let alone call police, lest they incite their batterer into more - and maybe worse -
abuse.

When a call does come to a domestic violence hotline or shelter, it almost invariably is to
report a physical assault or the immediate threat of physical assault, Waymire says.

Because Steuben County does not have a shelter for abused women, Waymire, who also serves
as the executive director of the Branch County, Mich., Coalition Against Domestic Violence,
often gets calls for help from Steuben County women.

"Ours is the closest domestic violence safe shelter to Steuben County - just 20 miles away,"
Waymire says. "We serve a lot of Steuben County residents. In fact, 22 percent, or 42 of 191
clients between October 1998 and September 1999, were from Steuben County."

A woman is most likely to call for help when she is living in constant terror and doesn't know
what else to do, Waymire says. Although hotline operators are trained to ask callers if they are
safe for the moment and if it is safe to call, most women wait to call until it is safe to talk, she
says.

"If I had to model a typical call, it would include someone calling and saying, I'm not sure if
you're the appropriate person to call or if there really is a problem, but -'" Waymire says.

The reason a woman will begin the call with a feeling of self-doubt is because she doesn't want
to put her husband or partner in a bad light. "If anything, a woman will minimize the situation
so if she admits abuse, believe her," she says.

On the hotline, operators will ask the woman what is going on and whether the abuser has hit,
kicked, punched or shoved the woman.

If the woman says no, the operator then asks about forced sexual acts that the partner may
have made her do against her will or with which she doesn't feel comfortable.

"Then we ask, Are you afraid of him? When? Are your children afraid of him?'" Waymire
says. "We also ask about weapons and if the abuser has a history of alcohol or drug use, or a
history of violent behavior against others in public.

"If they say no to all of these things, we'll say, Something made you call us today and we're
worried about you. Tell me what was on your mind before you made the call.'

"Then, the more we talk the more we find other things going on in the relationship, such as he
pinned her against a wall and used verbal threats to her or to the children - things like, I'm
going to kill your mother if she doesn't straighten up!'

"Sometimes she'll admit that he played Russian Roulette with her, held a gun to her head,"
Waymire says.

"Women don't call a crisis hotline for nothing. Something - almost always fear - makes them
make that call."

What else constitutes domestic violence, then, if an actual physical assault on the woman hasn't
occurred?

"All it takes is the fear, a believable threat," Waymire says. "Domestic violence is about power
and control. Besides physical violence it can take the form a verbal threat of physical violence,
or sexual violence as an enforcement method to control the woman."

Verbal threats also can include comments to publicly humiliate the woman or threats of
violence or threats of certain types of repercussions - all intended to coerce the woman into
submission to the abuser's wishes.

And then, there's the worst possible domestic violence of all - murder.

"There was a double domestic homicide in May in Steuben County," Waymire says. "That's
about as real as it gets."

Next week: An area woman tells her story and statistics on domestic violence in northeast
Indiana.

Where to call if you need help

If you are in immediate danger, call 9-1-1

If you are safe at the time, call:

(517) 278-7432 (Branch Co., Mich., Coalition Against Domestic Violence)

463-8700 (Elijah Haven Crisis Intervention Center Inc., LaGrange)

925-3365 (DeKalb County Sheriff - this office will contact a nearby shelter for you)

800-567-9596 (Noble County Answer Line)

Or call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at (800) 799-SAFE.

Originally published October 22, 1999 in The Evening Star

At the victim's request, names in this story have been changed.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS - Until death do us part.

Rose took these words from her marriage vows seriously. Marriage, her Catholic upbringing
had taught her, was forever, for better or worse, no matter how bad the worse part was.

All told, Rose had five miscarriages during her marriage to Devon. During one pregnancy she
starved herself so she wouldn't become fat - Devon liked children but not the weight gain that
came with pregnancy - unintentionally causing herself to miscarry twins.

When Devon beat her during a different pregnancy and she miscarried, the emergency room
medical report read that she fell down the stairs.

Still, she didn't leave him. "I fell down the stairs," Rose says, simply. "That's what I told
people."

The signs of abuse had waved like red flags long before the physical abuse actually started:
Devon insisted on telling her how to wear her hair and her makeup, what dress to wear, which
friends to visit, which parties to attend.

Even after the first time he hit her - because he thought she enjoyed the flirtations of a mutual
friend at a party - she didn't leave. Taking the blame for what she called his "insecurity," Rose
made excuses for his behavior, saying she hadn't handled the flirting friend properly.

Even when she sat trembling in a chair night after night, terrified of what would happen when
he came home, she still didn't leave, not for 15 years.

"For the longest time I didn't think I would ever get out," Rose says. "I was sure I was stuck in
the situation, that I was doomed, that this would be my way of life forever.

"People will read this and go, Is she crazy? Why did she stay?' Well, if somebody hit you out
of the clear blue you're not going to put up with it.

"But there's a difference between that and domestic violence. Domestic violence starts out
small. You don't see the signs even though they're there.

"It begins with manipulation, the power he has over you. It's sort of like brainwashing. You
lose your identity while he manipulates you. He manipulated me with his charm.

"I'd already lost my identity by the time he hit me. I was totally dependent on him, physically,
emotionally and financially. People say, Why did you stay?' but I answer, Why did he
abuse?' Nobody ever asks that.

"He had me so convinced that, without him, I was nothing and who would want me with four
kids and no job skills to speak of? Plus, I thought I never would be able to give my children
the lifestyle they were accustomed to if I left him.

"I thought as long as he didn't hurt the kids I could endure this. So, I thought I'd stay to give
them the kind of life they deserved - when, in actuality, the life they deserved should have been
one without domestic violence."

Rose was sure the children didn't know just how badly she was abused. She was stunned,
then, when her 12-year-old son sat on her hospital bed one day and cried, begging her to leave
his father and saying he was moving in with a friend because he couldn't take the situation any
longer.

"I'd been beaten so badly that time I passed out," Rose says. "I'd started to bleed and he kept
hitting me, hitting me. At one point I even prayed that God would just take me and get it over
with - you know, until death do us part.

"I thought only death would end the pain, so I prayed to go so the abuse and pain would end.
I went in and out of consciousness and, when I woke up in the hospital, I had a staph
infection.

"My head was all swollen and my eye was closed. Then my son said he was moving and it
really hit me. I decided the only way I could leave was to go back to college - which I had to do
behind Devon's back, because I knew he would never let me go if I asked."

Since Devon was traveling out of town during this period, it was easy at first to hide from him
the fact that she'd re-enrolled in school.

She knew, though, that her secret wasn't safe forever. "I worried every single day that he was
going to find out," Rose says. "In class I'd wonder if he'd called the house, if he would ask
where I was, what I was doing. It was phenomenal it took as long as it did for him to find out.

"It was horrible," Rose says of the day Devon figured out what she was up to. "He beat me so
badly I was hospitalized. Why? Because he was the man of the house. He could support the
family. What was I thinking of?

"I was in the hospital three weeks. When I got out, I kept going to classes against his wishes. I
would go to class with sunglasses to cover my black eyes."

The beatings and abuse escalated. At one point she tried suicide to escape the abuse - and was
furious when she was rushed to the hospital to have the pills she'd taken pumped from her
stomach.

After each beating, Devon would be full of apologies. "He would get all teary-eyed and say he
was sorry, that he couldn't have done that," Rose says.

"Then, one day, he threatened to kill the kids. That was when I decided I had to leave."

Leave. It's a big, scary word when the time comes - and symbolic of an even bigger mountain
to hurdle:

"Everything we owned was in my husband's name," Rose says. "The vehicles. The house.
Everything. So, when I left, I thought I couldn't even take a car."

At this point some people still won't understand why she didn't seek outside help, such as
from law enforcement, Rose says.

"You have to understand he knew the mayor," she says. "He went to school with the sheriff in
the big city where we lived.

"Devon was big in the community. He was so community-oriented nobody would believe he
would do something so horrible to his wife. He was just too nice of a guy.

"The police would get called - but he played golf with them! Once, my son called the police and
when they got to the door Devon told me to stay in the bathroom while he handled' the
situation. I was so petrified I would do anything he told me, in fear of getting hurt worse.

"So I stood in there and waited. I could hear him telling the officer it was just an argument,
that the kids never heard us fight before and that they had over-reacted. And you know what?
Never once, not once, did the officer ask to look at me.

"And not once, not once, did anybody ever ask me if I wanted to file charges. At that time I felt
I not only was abused by the man I thought loved me more than anything in the world, but
also by the system.

"When it finally came out, nobody would believe it. What had I done to provoke him?' was
what they said."

The night Rose decided to leave, Devon had come home with a gun. "He was swinging a .38
around," she says. "I had locked myself in the bedroom with the phone and I called the police
and told them he was threatening to kill me and the kids.

"I told them he had a gun and it was the first time the police actually did anything. They took
him for a 72-hour evaluation and, during that time, I took the kids and came back here (to
northeast Indiana)."

These are just a few of the incidents that occurred over a period of years.

"There were so many it would be impossible to enumerate them," Rose says. "Once he held me
down and cut off my clothes with a hunting knife - and he raped me.

"It was very violent. It was the most horrible thing in the world."

Only in divorce court did Rose feel as if someone was looking out for her. "The divorce took
place somewhere else, where he didn't know the judge," she says.

"But even then I lost out because, outside the courtroom, Devon said, Please do not destroy
me.' And then he gave this look I'd seen so many times before and I knew if I tried to get
things like child support, our stocks or anything else, I would get 't' - beaten.

"That's all he had to do, just stand outside the courtroom and say that, with that look. So I
signed off everything, all against my lawyer's wishes. He got the house, the car, everything. And
I agreed to half the support I'd filed for. I gave it all up because I knew he would hunt me
down and hurt me if I didn't.

"It took me so long. So long. It's hard to explain why I stayed. Devon never admitted he had a
problem. In his mind he didn't have a problem - I was his problem. It was my fault he drank,
that he was abusive.

"It was my fault for not being perfect enough. Now I think it's pathetic, but the reason I
stayed is similar to alcoholism or drug addiction. You think to yourself, If I just loved him
more, if I was just more understanding, a little more perfect, it would be all right.'

"You don't leave for good until you've hit rock-bottom - when you know you might not wake
up again tomorrow."

After Rose left, Devon called her for five years, telling her he wanted her back. Eventually he
remarried.

"And he abused that wife, too," Rose says. "She ended up leaving him, too."

Next: Professionals explain the psychology behind battering.

Copyright Kendallville Publishing Company