Fallout, Conclusion: Reclaiming Our Lives

The following, the concluding segment of "Fallout," tells how I managed to get my life together after putting an end to the domestic violence in my twenty-year marriage.  There IS life after domestic violence!  Each of us recovers in our own way, and this is the story of my way.  Namaste . . . Jean Fairgrieve

So—where was I exactly in the process?  To answer that question, I took inventory.  I was now a single parent with no job, my teenage daughter was waging war against me and against school and against every other factor in her life which she perceived as having power over her; we had an income that consisted of my meager unemployment check and a child support check from my husband that amounted to $350 per month;  we no longer had access to a car.  Not having a car was no problem for me because I often rode the bus, walked, or rode my bike to shop, so I crossed that item off my list of problems.  We did have enough cash coming in to pay the bills, buy a few groceries, and clothe my daughter, so even though we did not have much, we could survive.  Cross finances off the list of major problems.  That left my daughter, her rebellion, and her depression and my situation as a single parent who had no job and little emotional support.   

After realizing that I now was the sole parent of my daughter and completely responsible for guiding her through the next few years, I decided that to help myself and to have a reason for getting out of bed in the morning, I needed to replicate the routine I had when I was working.  If I could stabilize myself by doing this, then I would be better able to help my daughter.  So one morning in April I sat down at my kitchen table with a calendar and a piece of notebook paper and listed all the ways I could spend my time meaningfully.  Number one on my list was, of course, looking for work.  However, due to the scarcity of work in Lewis County, I knew that job hunting would not keep me busy for eight hours each day.  Thus, I went through my list, chose the volunteer activities that most appealed to me, and made a short list of these items.  

That done, I looked at my calendar and decided how much time I wanted to devote to these activities and when during the week I wanted to do them.  My first choice was to work at the Salvation Army food bank, and my second choice was to tutor at the local juvenile facility. 

Decisions made, I implemented my plan.  The Salvation Army was happy to have my help in their foodbank, and I worked there two days per week.  I enjoyed the work.  Bagging powdered milk and flour were messy jobs, but they were simple.  Those jobs and the others I did at the Salvation Army were low-stress, and as I worked, I could think about my future.  The staff members were friendly and seemed to enjoy my company, and I liked being with them.  In addition to finding structure for my days and meeting friendly people, I gained the benefit of being able to take home fresh produce when the local farmers donated their excess to the foodbank.  At the end of the day, if there was produce left, and if there was no room in the refrigerators, I was allowed to take what my daughter and I needed.  So even though I received no pay for my work, I made friends, gained satisfaction from completing my simple tasks, felt good because I knew that what I was doing was helping people survive hard times, and managed to add some variety to the meals I prepared at home.   

My other major volunteer project, tutoring a teenager who was spending time in a juvenile offender facility, kept me busy on two of the days when I was not working at the Salvation Army.  In the process of trying to help the young man with his reading, I discovered that he was severely dyslexic and was reading sentences backward.  I did my best to help him, but because I had no training in the area of special education and helping people with learning disabilities, I could not do much for him.  However, in telling his counselor about my discovery, I may have helped him more than I was aware at the time.  Over the years, I’ve wondered how the young man fared after he had served his sentence.  I hoped that he was able to complete the work for a GED, get a job, and go on to have a happy life. 

With looking for work, volunteering, raising my daughter, and my therapy, then, I was busy every day and had good reason to get out of bed each morning.  As I met and compared notes with other about-to-be-single women, I could see the wisdom in what I had done, for many of them were suffering from such debilitating depression that they slept most of their days away.  One woman I encountered said she stayed in bed, let the kids take care of themselves, and read on average six Harlequin Romance novels each day.  A few I encountered turned to alcohol to help them get through the divorce process.  I believe that what saved me from depression and alcoholism was the structure I had put in place to give me reasons for getting out of bed and to force me to try new activities and interact with people I would not have otherwise met.   

Finally, in 1983 my search for employment paid off.  I saw a notice in the local paper stating that the community college was hiring people to work part time in the learning center.  The work involved working one-on-one with students who were earning their GEDs and their high school completion certificates.  Since I had a variety of teaching experiences behind me, including working with adults who wanted to learn English, I thought I might have a chance, so I applied.  I went through the interview process and was hired.  Granted, the job was not full time, but that did not matter to me.  Any money coming in was welcome, and I wanted the experience the work would give me.  Perhaps later I could get more hours, I told myself.  In the meantime, I had a job that I knew I would enjoy.  One step at a time.   

By 1983, my daughter was sixteen and was able to be left on her own at home for short periods if I had to stay later than usual at work.  After school, she helped the neighbor by cleaning out the horse stalls in her stable.  In exchange, the neighbor taught her how to ride.  That summer my daughter worked in a federal teen employment program and earned the money to buy herself a horse, which the neighbor boarded for her.  From then on, my daughter was occupied after school and on weekends caring for her horse and mucking out stalls of all the horses in the stable.  Having a horse to care for and ride gave my daughter a sense of purpose, something she desperately had needed since our family structure had changed so dramatically.  As a result, I believe, of tending her horse and working for the neighbor, she began the process of reclaiming her life and finding a direction for herself.   

By the time my daughter was eighteen, I realized I needed to plan my own future.  I knew that my future was not going to involve picking my daughter’s dirty clothes up from the living room and bathroom floors and cleaning her makeup from the bathroom sink.  No, there would be more to my life than that!   

Have you ever had a job that you enjoyed so much you felt you should pay for the privilege of working?  That’s the way I felt about my job at the community college.  Because I had just a bachelor’s degree, however, I was not allowed to be a contracted faculty member.  So in 1985 I sold my house, set my daughter up in her own apartment and found an apartment for myself nearby.  I had decided to spend one more year working at the community college and then attend Washington State University and earn a graduate degree in adult education.  During my final year in Centralia, I would, I decided, teach my 19-year-old daughter to run her household, pay her bills, and do all the other chores an adult must do.   

In fall of 1987, I began my graduate program in Adult and Continuing Education at W.S.U. in Pullman, Washington.  I was about forty-eight years old and scared!  I had hated college as an undergraduate and, therefore, did not do well.  That was in the late 1950s and the early 1960s.  I hoped, then, in the late 1980s, that my experience as a graduate student would be different.  For one thing, I was motivated, something which I had not been in 1957 when I entered college as an undergrad.  As it turned out, I need not have worried.  I enjoyed my program at W.S.U. so much that I decided to enter the doctorate program at Oregon State University and earn a degree in administration.   

By the time I entered O.S.U., however, the program to which I had been admitted had been changed, and I discovered that my instructors would be, for the most part, no more qualified than I was to teach the classes I would take.  Since I had an assistantship in the Composition and Rhetoric department that paid me a stipend for teaching lower-level composition classes, I decided to stay in school and earn an interdisciplinary degree with a major in Composition and Rhetoric.  The two degrees would, I reasoned, lead to a faculty position in a community college doing what I enjoyed most, teaching remedial writing to adults.  I was right about that!  I was hired to teach remedial writing in the Developmental Education department at Walla Walla Community College in fall of 1991.  

During the years I was attending graduate school, my daughter was struggling to get her life together.  I had taught her the basics of taking care of herself, and she knew I loved her,  but that was not enough to give her the feeling of self worth she needed to direct her own life effectively and find satisfaction in her decisions.  As many incest survivors do, she became promiscuous and became a binge drinker.  In addition, in the summer of 1988, she rode her motorcycle directly into the path of an oncoming car and spent several weeks in the trauma ward of Harborview Hospital in Seattle.  She had sustained a closed head injury and was in a coma for eight days.  When she had recovered sufficiently, she was discharged to a rehabilitation hospital in a small town south of Seattle.  From there she was sent to an adult foster home in Centralia.  Because my daughter was twenty-one, the State of Washington had custody of her and I had no voice in the decision.  However, when I discovered that the son of her foster mother was molesting my daughter and his mother was using the money the state sent for my daughter’s care to make payments on her r.v., I helped my daughter get an apartment in a low-income complex in Centralia.  She was capable of living on her own by then, and I felt that would be far better for her than being subjected to the sexual advances of the foster mother’s son.  She was more than ready to live on her own!  

During the thirteen years I taught in Walla Walla, my daughter held a lot of jobs, all of them low-paying because she had just a high school education and few marketable skills.  In the summer of 1994, I persuaded her to come to Walla Walla to get away from Centralia for a while because so-called friends of hers were supplying her with meth.  Her accident had left her with grand mal epilepsy, for which she took medication, and her brain was a time bomb waiting to go off each time she took meth.  She stayed in Walla Walla long enough to work for a year at the humane society shelter, a situation which she enjoyed.  When she returned to the coast, she found a job and also met her future husband.   

*     *     * 

The year is now 2013, and I am retired from my community college teaching position and living in housing for low-income seniors.  My daughter has married and lives within a few hours’ drive from me.  She seems happy with her life and doesn’t dwell on her abuse.  She does, however, suffer from symptoms of PTSD such as bad dreams related to her abuse, flashbacks, hyper vigilance, and intrusive thoughts.  I, too, have suffered those symptoms, but presently I am in therapy for what I hope is the last time, and my PTSD symptoms have faded.  My present goals for what’s left of my life are those of enjoying life free from the chains of Complex PTSD, writing my story, and helping others understand that they, too, can survive those events in life that seem impossible to survive.  The human spirit, while delicate and fragile, is at the same time amazingly sturdy and resilient.  We humans are wondrous creatures!    

 

Fallout, Part III: Suddenly a Jobless Single Mother

One of the consequences of blowing the whistle on a bad situation is that the whistle-blower is frequently the object of shunning.  Many women have told me that when they took their children and left their abusive spouses, they and their children had to find support from people other than their families and friends.  This was my experience, also, as you will see when you read Part III.  Therapists have told me the same thing, that the victims are frequently shunned and must make new friends and rely on agencies for help.  This is hard!  I can speak from experience.  But the new friends are there, waiting to connect with you when you need them.  Over time, life gets better, and sometimes the old friends and the family members and relatives who did the shunning come around, ask for forgiveness, and life goes on.  In the meantime, if you are in the process of leaving a bad situation, just know that there are people you don't even know who are praying for you and waiting to be your friends.  So keep on truckin'!  Life WILL get better! 

 

The Thursday and Friday following our trip to the police station were fairly normal—my daughter went to school, and I went to my part time job as an insurance clerk.  I was happy to be back in a routine.  My daughter was not so happy because she had missed several days of school and had to make up her work.  Neither of us felt like telling her teacher or principal about the abuse, so I wrote a note telling her teacher that my daughter had been sick and left the matter at that.  We both wanted our lives to get back to normal as quickly as possible, but we also knew that whatever “normal” was would be different from what it had been in the past. 

Easter Sunday came and went.  There was no evidence of an Easter bunny, for I had not had any time to shop.  I took my daughter out for a decent Easter meal after church, and then we went to a movie before finally going home to our empty house.  I felt like slitting my throat, anything to blot out the horrible events of the past week, especially the session at the police station, but I didn’t have the energy to do anything but set my alarm and crawl into bed.   

Monday morning, my daughter went to school, and I went to work.  I had not thought that life could get much worse than it was, but I was wrong.  By the time my boss came to work that morning, I had already opened the office and was processing insurance applications.  He announced that he needed to have a serious talk with me, and during our talk he let me know that he was retiring and closing his office.   He was sorry that I would be left without employment, but since he had been paying into the unemployment fund, he knew I would qualify for unemployment benefits.  He also told me he would give me two months’ pay as severance pay.  To give him credit, he was generous and he truly was sorry I would be out of work.  However, he wanted to be able to hunt birds in the Okanogan area without worrying about how his business was going in his absence, and to have that freedom, he had to close his agency. 

As I left the office that day, I felt as if somebody had pulled the plug in a giant bathtub and I was being swept down the drain and into the sewer.  Could life get any worse?  At least I had two more weeks of employment.  Maybe in that time I could find another job.  And then I remembered the state of Lewis County’s economy and realized that finding work would be an uphill struggle.  If I were lucky, I might get a job ringing the Salvation Army bell at Christmas.  Black was too bright a color to describe my mood at that moment.   

The days of that week ground slowly by, and my daughter and I waited for the police to come by with the statement for her to sign.  She became increasingly nervous and irritable because she was scared of the police.  I called the police station each day to tell them that my daughter was suffering and that she needed to sign the paper and finish that part of the process.  I told the social worker, too, but she didn’t seem to care.  She told me that the police knew what they were doing.  She was correct.  I discovered later that the police were watching our house at night to see if I was letting my husband into the bedroom through the window.  In other words, they had not brought the paper to my daughter because they wanted to make sure I was not in collusion with my husband.  This did not make sense to me.  If I had been in collusion with my husband, then why would I have turned him in?  I could simply have called my daughter a liar and lived with a pedophile.   

Finally, on the Friday after Easter a police car drove up to our house, and an officer brought us the papers.  My daughter and I read them, and she signed them.  Now, surely, our lives could take an upward swing, and we could get back to our old routines.   

The second week after Easter came and went, and my daughter and I settled into a routine dictated by her school schedule and my now temporary work schedule.  A new issue had arisen, though.  For some reason, my husband was urging me to file for divorce.  His lawyer called me several times that week to relay my husband’s wishes.  I wasn’t sure why my former spouse was so pushy about this, but I decided to comply, and so on that third week after Easter, I set about finding a lawyer.  The first lawyer I contacted told me he would take the case but that he first had to determine I was not in collusion in the sex abuse.  I had no problem slamming the door to his office on my way out.  The second lawyer, a woman, took my case immediately without mentioning the possibility of collusion.  As I left her office, I pondered my situation and decided that perhaps at this point life would begin looking up.  Now that I had a lawyer, I felt I had at least a little support. 

At this point, you, my reader, may be wondering about the matter of support—where was my family at this time?  Where was my husband’s family?  Was there any family member who helped us at this time when my daughter and I so obviously needed emotional support and possibly financial support?  First of all, my father had died in 1962, before my son was born, and my only sibling, my brother, was living on the other side of the continent and simply was not available to me.  If my brother had been there, he would have been supportive, but he was not there.  Thus, two of the three members of my family of origin were out of the picture. 

What about my mother?  She was alive and well and living only fifty miles away.  Didn’t she help me?  My mother and I were estranged, but she enjoyed visiting with my husband, so several times a year we spent a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with her, and we visited her on the holidays.  When I told her about the sexual abuse and let her know that I had turned my husband over to the police, she was angry at my daughter and at me.  Her words to me were, “Well, she must have seduced him.”  Upon hearing those words, I decided that whatever needed to be done to clean up my husband’s mess would be done without any help from my mother.  

The one person on my husband’s side of the family who helped my daughter and me in any significant way was my husband’s father.  For several weeks, he made sure I had enough money for groceries, and he took me to Olympia twice when I met with my husband and his therapist.  After that, he stopped helping us, probably at his wife’s urging.  I knew she would be no help because on the morning my husband moved out, his mother called and ranted at me over the phone for “forcing” him to leave.  When I told her why he had left, she told me I was a liar, that her son would not do anything so horrible.  Thus, I did not resent my father-in-law’s reluctance to help us because I knew he felt he had to keep the peace at home.   

Later, I discovered that my mother-in-law had also turned my brother-in-law and his wife and children and my sister-in-law and her family against me.  This discovery saddened me because I had liked my husband’s brother and sister and had good memories of the vacations our families had spent together at the family cabin in Montana.  When they told me they wanted no more contact with me, I realized that the wagons of my husband’s family had formed themselves into an impenetrable circle, and I was on the outside unable to catch even a fleeting glimpse of life inside the circle, a life that previously had been open to me and welcoming.  Losing that contact hurt!  I spent a few days grieving this loss, but then I decided that grief took energy from more important matters, so I returned to my work of dealing with my immediate situation, the job of helping my daughter deal with the aftermath of abuse and the work of getting my own life on some sort of track.  

 

Fallout, Conclusion:  Reclaiming Our Lives--Coming Soon 

Fallout, Part II: Confronting Our Abuser, Ending the Violence

A word of caution:  Again, if I had it to over, I would not have put my daughter and me in danger by confronting my husband on my own.  As I said in a previous post, I would have taken my daughter to the police or to a social worker, reported the abuse, and asked for a safe place to stay while my husband was processed by authorities.  That is what I would do now, in 2013. In 1981, however, I did not know about resources for domestic violence victims and did not feel supported. Like many battered wives, I felt isolated, as if I had to do everything on my own because I couldn't ask anyone for help.  In fact, there truly was nobody close to me to whom I could turn.  As you will see in a later installment, even my own mother was not there for me.  So, I did the only thing I thought I could do--I confronted my husband on my own.  Not a good idea!  Especially when there are guns in the house!  If you are considering leaving a d.v. situation, please do not follow my example.  Go to a safe place, report the violence or abuse, and then allow yourself and your kids to be given a safe place to stay while your situation is evaluated. 

*  *  *  *

 

My husband came home around eight that Monday evening.  I was not sure exactly how I would handle the situation.  What would I say?  What would I do?  Would he become violent and grab one of his guns and shoot us?  There was that possibility.  He had a pistol and two rifles in his closet in our bedroom, and he was an experienced hunter and marksman.  Did I have the courage to confront him?   

All these thoughts raced through my mind like electricity through a wire, and along with the thoughts erupted an anger I did not know I was capable of.  All I could think of was the fact that this man, this selfish, selfish man, took advantage of a little girl who needed him to be a dad and not a lover.  We had adopted her through Social and Health Services when she was a little over three years old.  She came to us from a foster home, flea-bitten and carrying two brown grocery sacks of tattered, grey clothes that had obviously been worn by several other children before she fell heir to them.  She had been shuttled from home to home, being told each time that these were her mother and father.  I later learned that she had been sexually abused in one of these homes by one of her “fathers.”  What must she have thought and felt when another “father” some seven years later repeated the abuse?   

As the anger and the adrenalin coursed through my body, I struggled to control my rage, knowing that the only quality that separated me from murderers behind bars was my self control.  And then, as my husband came through the back door, I felt an amazing peace settle over me as if somebody had draped a soft, warm shawl over my shoulders and had lightly laid a hand on my hair.  Perhaps this is the “peace that passeth understanding” I had learned about in church, God’s peace, I thought.  And I sensed God’s presence in that room at that moment and sensed that God was grieved to see what had happened to his creations.  I thought I heard somebody weeping softly.  I knew then that I could do nothing less than confront my husband and report him to the police.  I could do that knowing God would protect me and my daughter; we would be shielded from all evil and harm.  As I walked from the front room into the kitchen to meet my husband, I was calm and my voice was strong.  I quietly took my husband’s hand and invited him to come into the living room and sit on the couch with me. 

After we had sat down, I looked him in the eye and gently said, “I know what you have been doing to our daughter.”  At those words, he began to sob.  He repeated over and over, “Don’t turn me in.  I don’t want go to jail.  Let me stay here.”  I told him that staying in our home would not be possible because I knew the abuse had gone on for several years and I could not trust him to suddenly stop the abuse.  He pleaded with me, asking me if he could stay on the condition that I shadow him all the time to make sure he did not abuse our daughter again.  I told him that neither she nor I would live under those conditions and that I was going to report his behavior to the police immediately.   

When he realized that I was serious about calling the police, he tried to reason with me, saying that he had a compulsion and his behavior was beyond his control.  Did I really want to turn him in when he had a sickness and couldn’t help what he did?  I told him that what he wanted made no difference to me; I had to protect our daughter from further harm.  After saying that, I walked over to the phone and called the police.  My husband did not try to stop me. 

The police officer who took my call did not seem to feel that the situation I described was an emergency, and he told me that in the morning an officer would come to our home and arrest my husband.  My daughter, her father, and I would be sleeping under the same roof one more night.  What could I have done?  I had nowhere to go with my daughter to spend the night—not enough money of my own to rent a motel room and no family nearby.  There was no room at what was left of the women’s shelter.  By this time it was nine at night, so I had no choice but to be satisfied with that arrangement.  I checked on my daughter upstairs and told her what I had done, and then I waited with her until I knew my husband was asleep before I settled into a makeshift bed on the television room couch.  I knew I was not going to sleep that night because I needed to make sure my husband stayed away from our daughter’s room.  Also, I wanted to make sure he did not leave the house before the police arrived in the morning.  I don’t know what I would have done if he had tried to leave, but I hoped that my presence near our bedroom would be a deterrent.  For whatever reason, he did not try to escape but awoke when his alarm rang Tuesday morning. 

Shortly after my daughter left for school Tuesday morning, a police car arrived, and two officers came into our home, cuffed my husband, and took him to the station.  He was gone for a short time and then returned home to pack some of his clothes and a few other belongings.  He said nothing, and I didn’t ask him any questions.  I was just relieved to see him leave.   

Later that day, before dinnertime, my husband and I met with a social worker to discuss what would happen next.  He announced that he had found a lawyer who would take his case and was also beginning counseling with a person who specialized in treating pedophiles.  In addition, he said he was moving to another town so our daughter would not need to be afraid he would molest her again.  Our daughter and I would remain in the house, and he would make an appointment with me to pick up the rest of his things.  Until he found an apartment, he would be living in a motel in another county.  Upon leaving the meeting with the social worker, he went his way and I went my way.   

When I returned home, I told my daughter that she and I would be living together in our house and that she no longer needed to worry about her father making advances toward her.  She was relieved at that news, but she also blamed herself for her father’s leaving our home.  To make matters more complicated, she was angry at me, also, because I had called the police and had turned him in.  She knew that what her father had done was wrong, but at the same time, she blamed herself for the breakup of our family.  I knew then that not only did my husband need mental health help but that my daughter and I needed help, also.  My daughter was thirteen, and I suspected that we had some mighty rough years ahead of us.  

The next day, Wednesday, the police called early in the morning and announced that they needed my daughter and me to come to the station so they could get my daughter’s story of the abuse.  The officer told me that a social worker who had our case would call us and would pick us up and take us to the station.  My daughter was happy that she could miss school, but she was not happy at the prospect of telling a police officer about the abuse.  Around noon the social worker called and announced that she would pick us up at 2:30 that day.  She arrived on time, and the three of us drove to the police station. 

At three o’clock we were ushered into what I can only surmise was an interrogation room, a starkly bare room containing four straight-back wooden chairs, a small wooden table, and a shaded light bulb that hung down from the ceiling.  I remember wondering at the time if we were going to be treated like criminals.  I soon found out. 

A uniformed male detective entered the room carrying a portable tape recorder which he told us was defective.  I wondered to myself why he was using the recorder if he knew it didn’t work properly, but I kept my mouth shut.  The detective turned one of the wooden chairs around so he could sit on it and rest his chin on the top of the back, and the social worker, my daughter, and I sat in the other chairs.  I sat by my daughter to support her, and the social worker sat clear across the room.  My daughter was positioned so the bare light bulb was shining in her eyes.   

The detective’s first question was, “What did your daddy do to you?”  My daughter could only sob and was incapable of speech.  After repeating the question several times, the detective took a different direction and asked her how often her daddy abused her. Our daughter was adopted, and her birth mother had been an alcoholic; as a result of her mother’s drinking, our daughter had been born with some mild brain damage and had some cognitive problems, one of which was an inability to tell time or to have a sense of time as it passed.  She was unable, therefore, to answer this second question.  The detective returned to the first question, and my daughter did her best to reply.  When she finished, the detective told us that the recorder had not picked up her answer and that she needed to repeat it so that he could be certain to record it.  She complied, and I began wondering if my husband had been treated this roughly at the police station.  Why was my daughter being treated as if she were the criminal?   

Promptly at 3:30, the door to the interrogation room opened and a new uniformed male detective walked in and took over the questioning.  He also took over the defective tape recorder and began the questioning from the beginning.  The same questions again!  My daughter was weary, and so was I, but we had no choice but to endure the interrogation.  The social worker said nothing to the detective about my daughter’s condition nor did she intervene when the questions were repeated.  I wondered if the experience was a bad dream.  Later I decided that the detectives were, in their insensitive and clumsy way, probably trying to see if my daughter would tell the same story with each repetition or if she would change her story each time, a sign that she could be lying.  That would explain why the social worker did not intervene.   

After the grilling, the detective told us that the material on the recorder would be transcribed and in day or two an officer would drop by the house and ask my daughter to read her statement and sign it if it was accurate.  With that, the social worker took us home, we ate a late dinner, and then, exhausted, we fell into our beds.  

Later, when I had a chance to reflect on our session in the police station, I could see that my daughter had once again been victimized and by the very people paid with taxpayer dollars to protect her from victimization, the police.  First, the detectives had questioned her in such a way that she was forced to not only relive the sexual abuse inflicted by her father but she was made to do that by men in uniform, males who had power over her.  Also, she had been stripped of her modesty by the police officers and forced to submit to men who wanted to know the most intimate details of the abuse.  

I, not knowing what to do and not being allowed to comfort my daughter, had sat and watched and listened as those men in uniforms worked her over.  At one point, when the detective asked my daughter if she liked it, the abuse, and she began to cry, I rose from my chair to go to her and was told to sit down if I wanted to remain in the room.  Thus, I had no choice but to sit and keep my mouth shut.  I was not about to abdicate my role as my daughter’s advocate and main source of support. 

Our DSHS caseworker had also sat passively by and had watched my daughter be victimized by the police.  I kept waiting for the social worker to intervene and protect her from the relentless questioning, but she didn’t.  As I sat there, I wondered how many other young girls had been victimized by the police detectives in the past and how many other little girls were left unsupported by the case workers who, I assumed, were their advocates.  And wasn’t there another way, a kinder and gentler way, for authorities to obtain the information they needed without re-victimizing the victims? 

Fallout, Part III:  Suddenly A Jobless Single Mother--Coming Soon!

Fallout, Part I: The Abuse Discovered

Lewis County, Washington, where my family and I lived in the early 1980s, was not a good place for victims of domestic violence.  For one thing, the economy depended largely on the lumber industry for economic growth and stability, and in the early 1980s many mill owners in the area began shipping their logs to Asia for milling and shut down their local mills, laying off workers who were raising families on their wages.  Thus, the towns of eastern and western Lewis County suffered financial losses and a decline in public morale.  Grocery stores were less busy, and the Salvation Army food bank was overwhelmed by people needing food.

Due to revenue shortfalls, the county government cut staff, and all social service agencies supported by the county cut their budgets.  Among the agencies to see a reduction in funds was the local domestic violence shelter.  This move made no sense to me because during times of high unemployment, the number of domestic violence incidents normally increased, making the availability of shelters all the more important.  Due to the political, economic, and social problems during the early 1980s, then, communities in Lewis County fell short in their accommodations for victims of domestic violence.  

Considering the factors described above, the Monday before Easter of 1981 was not an ideal time to report my husband to the police, but I had no choice, for a few days earlier I had caught my husband in the act of sexually abusing our thirteen-year-old daughter.  I did not really understand what had happened when I entered that twilit room on the preceding Thursday when my husband and my daughter were watching television, but I saw the fear in my daughter’s eyes and the guilt on my husband’s face as they abruptly sat up, and I knew that if evil truly existed, it existed right then and right there in that room.  

I backed out of the room and sat in the dimly lit kitchen, folding clothes.  My daughter went silently to her room, and my husband went outside to work in the barn.  I followed my daughter and helped her get ready for bed.  I said nothing about the incident to either of them at the time because I needed some time to decide how I would handle the situation, but I knew I would not leave my daughter alone with her father. 

The next day, Friday, I had no opportunity to talk to my daughter by herself because my husband came home early, before she came home from school, and did not let either of us out of his sight.  On Saturday morning, however, he decided after breakfast to dig post holes in our pasture.  He tried to get our daughter to go with him, but I insisted that she had chores to do in the house, and he didn’t force the issue.  After he had left and I was convinced he would be gone a while, I took my daughter to the living room couch and gently questioned her.  The following is what I noted of our actual dialog.  I had the wits to make notes after I talked to my daughter because I did not want to forget what was said.   

I:  What is your daddy doing with you? 

At first she won't look me in the eye and she won't answer.  I take her hands in mine and tell her what I saw. Then she talks to me: 

She: Daddy told me that if I told you, you would be jealous and you wouldn't love me anymore. 

I:   Did you believe him? 

She: Yes. 

I:   (Holding her in my arms)  I'm not jealous, and I do love  you.  Do you believe that? 

She: Yes, I do now.  But Daddy made me believe everything he told me.  He told me that he was doing those things to me because he cared about me and wanted to help me learn about men. 

I:   When did he start doing those things to you? 

She: Right after we got back from Germany.  (We returned home from Germany late in 1978.) 

I:   Was I at home when he did them? 

She: No, you were usually at the store or shopping.  (Starts to cry.)  But sometimes he would come upstairs to check my homework when you were washing the dishes.  If I was fooling around instead of doing my homework, I'd get scared, and then I'd tell him I wanted him to teach me more about boys.  That kept him from getting mad at me about my homework. 

I hold her while she cries, and then we plan the rest of the weekend. 

On Sunday, my daughter and I went to church, and then after I had prepared a big dinner, I took her to a movie in the afternoon.  I don’t remember what we watched.  All I know is that while we were at the theater, we weren’t afraid of my husband.  Then, when we got home, my daughter and I ate, and she went to bed.  I stayed up to make sure that my husband stayed away from her room, and I made sure he was sound asleep before I went to bed.  I thought about sleeping in her room, but I didn’t because if I had done that, my husband would have known I knew what he had done to our daughter.  I didn’t want him to know until I had talked to a social worker and had a chance to make a plan of action. 

 

On Monday I called a social worker and told her what had happened.  She wanted to report the incident immediately, but I told her I wanted to confront my husband when he came home from work that evening and report him myself.  She told me that if I had not called her by ten on Tuesday morning, she would report him.  I told her that I would protect my daughter and would confront and report my husband when he came home from work that night and would call her before ten on Tuesday morning.   She agreed, and I hung up. 

I’ve often wondered why I insisted on confronting my husband rather than simply reporting the incident to somebody at Social and Health Services and letting the matter take its course through the usual channels.  To this day, I am not entirely sure what I would say if somebody asked me about this.  I suspect, however, that I needed to bring my own closure to the mess.  Also, I did not trust the system in Lewis County to do the job effectively and efficiently.  Future events would prove that my distrust of the system was well founded. 

 

Part II:  Confronting Our Abuser, Ending the Violence

In Response to My Readers, May 2013: Fallout from stopping the violence in my home

Dear Readers,
The post that has most consistently been at the top of the "hit list" on this blog is a post I wrote about domestic violence--Of Horses and Domestic Violence.  Thus, I can only assume that many of my readers want to know more about the dynamics of d.v., how it can be stopped, and how victims can recover. 

Because I am not a mental health professional, I cannot give you a researched and authoritative article, but what I CAN do is publish an account of my own experience.  I can tell you about the violence in my home, the abuse of my daughter, how I stopped the process, and how my daughter and I began the process of reclaiming our lives. 
I will publish this piece in three parts in the next few days. 

Frequently, people reach my site by typing a search term such as "complex PTSD and domestic violence" into a search engine.  There are several essays about C-PTSD and domestic violence listed in my topic list.  Each of those pieces touches on the topic but does not go into the matter of spousal abuse in any great detail because I have not yet been able to write about my experience as a battered wife.  Even after 30 years, I have not been able to do that.  However, I believe that soon I will.  I hope that what I have to say will be helpful to those of you need the information.

A woman in a battering situation, whether the battering be physical or psychological/emotional or a combination of both, is isolated and scared.  I was isolated and scared!  The abusive spouse sees to it that the victim is isolated and has nobody in which to confide--no close friends, little contact with family, no connection to a spiritual leader such as a trusted pastor or priest.  My husband isolated me this way to the greatest extent possible. 

Luckily for me, my former husband commuted to another town each day, and I was able, then, to maintain a few connections--my therapist, a dear friend, and a couple of casual friends.  However, I did not tell any of these people what was happening in my home because I lacked the courage to do that.  Also, I thought that the situation was, somehow, my fault and that I was crazy.  I was afraid that if I told anyone, I'd be locked up in a mental health facility.  In retrospect, I believe now that my former husband's goal may have been just that, for if I had been removed from our home, he would have had full access to our daughter.

One reason I will publish this long essay is to give you an example of a situation that may be like yours.  If you are in a d.v. situation similar to mine, then perhaps when you see that the process can be stopped, that may give you hope for your own future.  There are better, much safer ways of stopping the process of domestic violence than the way I chose, however.  Please keep that in mind.  Not all men will simply dissolve into a puddle of sobs and tears when you let them know that their days of domination and battering are over!  My husband became passive and pleaded with me to not report his behavior to the police, and when I picked up the phone to make the call, he did not resist. 

I suspect, though, that most batterers would become aggressive and would use force to stop the victim from calling the police.  If I had it to do over, I would have taken my daughter and gone to the police station during the day to make the report.  Then I would have gone to a safe place and waited until he had been taken into custody and until I knew how my daughter and I could be safe while he was being processed by the authorities.  That is what I would do now, knowing what I know now about domestic violence and the perpetrators. 

To conclude, I've made mistakes in my life, and I'm not going to bore you by listing them.  However, I do hope and pray that when the time comes for you to act to end the violence in your own home, you find a safer way to do this than I did.  If you are seeing a therapist and have a good relationship with that person, he or she would be a natural to help you end the violence in your home.  If you are not seeing a therapist, then the next best person to help you would be--in my opinion--a social worker or trusted professional who could go with you and support you when you talk to the police.  When you read my essay titled "Fallout," you will see why I suggest having support when you see the police.  Enough said on that topic!

Here is an interesting quote from J.F. Kennedy, our 35th President, that might help you if you are involved in a domestic violence situation:

“When written in Chinese the word “crisis” is composed of two characters; one represents danger and the other represents opportunity.” 

If you are now in a domestic violence situation, I pray that the information I am giving you regarding my own experience will help you feel less isolated.  You are not alone!  Please know that.  And please know that a host of people in many places and in many faith traditions are praying for you and your family.  I am one of them.  Peace . . .  Jean

A Prayer Accepted!

Some time ago, I published a piece on my blog titled "A Prayer Rejected"--you can read the story behind this in the paragraph following my prayer.  As I said below, it's time for my prayer to be published!  The courageous editor of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral's literary journal, The Red Door, let me know today that she plans to include this prayer in the next edition.  Thanks be to God!  Alleluia!

 

A Prayer for Victims and Survivors

of Abuse and Domestic Violence 

Oh, Lord, You hold a special place in Your heart for little children; please hear this prayer. We ask that You grant us the strength, courage, and powers of discernment necessary to protect and cherish any Little Ones we encounter who are in need of our help. We ask, too, that you grant us the insight to know how to give comfort and help to those who are no longer children but whose hearts and souls suffer the pain of childhood abuse each day they live. Amen

 

For all the innocent little children who are at this moment being victimized—

 

May God’s hands hold your souls, shield them from evil, and keep them pure;

May God’s beauty and strength flow into your bodies and take away your pain and your shame;

May God’s peace form a blanket around your minds and shield you from the horror, chaos, and confusion that accompany exploitation and violation of innocence.

 

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer. 

 

For all the people who as innocent children were victimized and who now
struggle to reclaim their souls, their bodies, and their minds—

 

May God’s firm hands stop you from harming yourselves or others; May God’s eyes give you vision to see your true and innocent selves;
May God’s ears enable you to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit;
May God’s feet move you gently and steadily on His Path.

 

Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

For all those who are presently being violated and exploited and who are living in fear for their lives and the lives of their children—

May God’s gift of clear vision help you see through the fog of denial and deceit; May God’s gift of courage enable you to stop the process of evil before it   consumes you and those whom you love;
May God’s gift of discernment allow you to recognize the forces of good;
May God’s gift of tears help you mourn that which is worthy of being mourned;
May God’s gift of love enable you to know that you are beloved, unblemished, and cherished children of God, forgiven and blessed inheritors of His kingdom. 

 

Oh, God, please hear our prayers for victims and survivors of sexual abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence. We ask that you help these people find bright new lives that are free from the tarnish of abuse. We ask, also, that in times of weakness and trial, you send your angels to comfort them and give them strength. 

We ask this in the name of Your beloved Son, Jesus, and in the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Theotokos, the everloving Mother of the motherless.

Amen.  

In the 1990s, an Episcopal women's organization asked women to submit prayers to be published in a special prayer book. The organization asked, specifically, that prayers be included for abuse victims. I am a survivor of child abuse and domestic violence, and the prayer is heartfelt. The organization rejected my prayer, stating that it was "too intense." Over the past two decades, however, public awareness of the devastation wrought by child sexual abuse and also by domestic violence has increased to the point where the intensity may now be deemed acceptable and totally appropriate.   

On any given day and at any given moment, there are children and adults somewhere in our nation whose bodies and souls are being bruised and battered by abuse. The thought that God weeps to see God’s creations suffer took away my fear and gave me the courage to end the abuse in my own home. My hope is that this prayer will inspire people to engage in meditative consideration of this issue and take whatever steps they feel are appropriate to alleviate child abuse and domestic violence in our city and throughout our nation.