Cycle of Violence

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            My colleagues and I used to be dispatched to a couple that routinely crossed the line of what is normal and acceptable in a relationship.  Tim and Louise are those people you never forget but wish you could. 

            Louise had hair past her waist that was always oily and never brushed.  Tim had a beard that never seemed to fill in completely, never got shaved, and never grew longer.  Both wore plaid flannel and navy blue sweat pants every day of the year, and I’m pretty sure they shared three shirts and two pairs of pants between them.  Their body odor was overpowering even outside…upwind. 

            On those dismal days we always arrived to find all of their living room furniture outside their trailer neatly arranged on the front “lawn,” a sixteen by twenty foot patch of white gravel bordered by Johnson grass growing as high as my hip. 

            The inside of the trailer would be bare by the time we got there, with the exception of enough trash, debris, cat litter, and rotting food strewn around to fill several large trash cans.  Their home’s scent was a delightful medley of kitty crap, beer puddle, ashtray, and carcass. 

            Both Tim and Louise had a speech impediment, and the mild difficulty one might experience in trying to understand them, generally as they spoke in “jinx” and at level ten volume, was exacerbated by the fact that they were both invariably snot-slinging drunk. 

            We never arrived without finding them both bruised and bleeding, completely out of breath, and demanding in huffy-puffy screams that we immediately vacate their property. 

            Thing was, it was a planned fight.  That was the reason for the furniture being outside.  Tim and Louise learned years earlier that their neighbors called the cops much faster if they were beating the hell out of each other outside the trailer.  In order to prevent calls to the police they adopted a strict policy of moving their furniture outside the home before the fight.

            I am not making this up; they would cooperate fully in lifting the couch, two chairs, television and television stand out onto the yard, go back inside, ask each other if they were ready, and then attack.  Couldn’t they have used the energy expended to move the furniture and destroying each other to, say, go on a walk in separate directions--or vacuum?  

            “I love you, darlin’,” announced Tim to Louise as his head was guided into the patrol car. 

            “I love you too, baby,” she’d coo back.  “I’ll call my momma to get your bail going.” 

            And off to the hospital or jail they would go, depending on the severity of the injuries. 

The saddest and sickest part of this story is that Louise was often brutally damaged in what Tim called their “fair fights.”  There was nothing fair about it, and I’ve often wondered how hard Louise’ heart was pounding as she and her husband carried the last bit of furniture onto the lawn, knowing full well her beating was about to commence under the flimsy fabrication that Tim called “working it out in private.”  Perhaps she chose this pattern over loneliness or despair in believing she didn’t deserve any better.  Maybe this was all she’d ever known, but surely no sane, truly loving person can see this cycle of “honeymoon” romance followed by mounting tension, and culminating in vicious, despicable attack as normal or healthy. 

Tim and Louise weren’t so unique in this pattern.  Though their willingness to “cooperate” in staging their fights was definitely weird, their cycle of violence has been something I’ve seen repeated in other couples literally thousands of times over the years. 

Often a woman is very angry with her abusive partner at the time the police arrive, and officers frequently hear that she wants to “press charges” to the fullest extent of the law.  However, it is just as common that officers and prosecutors learn the victim has gone back to the abuser within hours, days or weeks of the violence, and that she is now his greatest supporter. 

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard, “He promised he’d never do it again…he promised he’d go to counseling…he promised he’d stop drinking.” 

All the promises are met for a while.  Flowers are sent, apologies are made, and often we discover that the two have “fallen in love” once more. Then a week or a month later, the cycle comes full circle, and she is beaten once more.  “I’m leaving him this time…really.  I won’t live like this.  Press those charges.”

The part before tension starts again and before renewed violence is called the Honeymoon phase of the cycle, and it is as predictable in many cases as the seasons.  The circle that began as passionate love, transitioned into a period of tension, and culminated in violence begins anew at the Honeymoon phase, often to be repeated again and again. 

This is one of the reasons prosecuting domestic violence cases is so difficult.  In no other crime do we see victims not wanting something done.  If you are robbed, you might forgive the mugger but you’ll still want him prosecuted.  The same goes for burglaries, rapes, murders, shoplifting, and car thefts.  The victims want some justice, and they aren’t likely to back off with, “It’s okay.  He promised he’d never break any more car windows and steal the coins from the ashtray.”

It is in this context that we will discuss the scourge that is domestic violence in the following columns in this series.  In addressing the secrets kept within a violent family, in better understanding why one person insists on enslaving another and why the victim chooses to stay in such an abusive environment, and in understanding ways in which all of us, including police, prosecutors, family, friends and employers can make a positive difference in helping those victims finally leave and then live safely, we can begin to confront this issue as a united community.