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. 

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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!