“I’ll Take Your Children From You!”
One of the most common threats has to do with taking away a victim’s children. I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing more frightening to me than that. The truth of the matter is that if investigators have all the facts and do their job, they can expose an abusive parent for what they are. This can become extremely important in a child custody battle, especially one in which one of the parents has access to a lot of money, but the other has been the victim of abuse. How fair is it for the abuser, who has a lot of financial support from enabling family members, to use the leverage of cash flow to win his or her day in court?
A solid investigation can level the playing field. Even though police officers are not working in the capacity of a private investigator, anything they discover in the course of their investigation can be used at a civil trial. For example, if a police detective speaks with a former girlfriend of an abusive man, and that girlfriend reveals that he was abusive to her and to her children while they were dating, that information can potentially be presented by the current wife as evidence that he has a history and pattern of being cruel to the people he is supposed to care for. Judges tend to be pretty intelligent people, and if they are presented with facts, as opposed to bluster and innuendo, they generally make sound decisions relative to safety, fairness, and what is in the best interest of the children involved.
Threats about taking the children, of telling the world what a bad parent the domestic violence victim is, or of using financial status as a tool to manipulate what is fair and right are the cruelest form of abuse. It is a form of manipulation that tends to work very well, but it is also a method that tends to shrivel when exposed to scrutiny and revelation. Friends, victim advocates, police officers, and prosecutors need to understand just how terrifying and effective this threat can be, and then be ready with the counter argument that exposure of cruelty and systematic manipulation tends to make victims stronger and in a better position to maintain connections to his or her children.
I’ll Leave You Homeless and Penniless!”
This threat seems to be about as common as any other. Often batterers coordinate their situation so that they are in control of finances, the lease agreement or mortgage, ownership of all vehicles, and all accounts on important links to family and friends such as telephone service and computer access.
A new twist on this old story has to do with modern technology and twenty-first century dating practices. We’ve been seeing more cases of late having to do with women who left everything behind including social and family connections, a good job, and a community in which they are known and trusted all for the sake of a man they met and fell in love with over the Internet. Ain’t that a kick in the teeth? Somehow multitudes of intelligent, caring women fall in love with a man via their keyboard and a tiny video camera perched atop their computer, give up just about everything valuable in order to move several states away, and realize weeks or months later what a flytrap they’ve walked into. There are very few women who feel less betrayed and humiliated than this group, and time and again we hear how resistant they were to admit their hellish situation to family back home after realizing how duped they’ve been.
All I can say to that is be proud, but don’t be prideful; there is an important distinction, and if your pride is keeping you from reaching out for help to people who love you and who dream of being able to help, swallow that pride and extract yourself from the trap. Most likely you’ll shake your head in wonder six months later, amazed and grateful that your nightmare didn’t go on one additional day because you had the fortitude to take action.
Back to financial concerns: Yes, the prospect of being homeless and poor is a daunting one. Indeed, it is cited as the number one reason women leave shelters and go back home to what they know will be a bad situation.
Choice one: A place to live where, in most cases, you get food, a bed, and a place for your kids.
Choice two: Homelessness, hunger, and the potential for exposure to violence and sexual assault and/or prostitution. Choice one requires that you tolerate emotional abuse, physical beatings, and rape from time to time, but at least you know the guy. Choice two is terrifying, and shouldn’t even have to be a choice at all.
So let’s agree from the start that choice two is not a viable alternative, and choice one must be eliminated as unacceptable. Other options must be generated if there is to be any hope of breaking the cycle of violence and getting people out of an abusive situation.
One obvious option is for a victim of domestic violence to go stay with friends or family. In many cases, this is an excellent move. The person is around people who care for her, are likely to protect her, and will give her time to heal and get back on her feet. Unfortunately, this isn’t an option in many cases due to distance, strained relationships, fears that the family members will be placed in harms way by exposing them to the menace of the abuser, or a simple lack of financial resources for a host family.
Domestic violence shelters are generally an option, though most carry a thirty to forty-five day time limit simply because they must keep making space for the next victim to get in. Forty-five days isn’t a whole lot of time when you’ve been left with nothing in the bank, no job, no transportation to go find a job, and no time to go out looking for suitable living conditions.
Suffice it to say that financial burdens are a big, whopping challenge in the context of making a bid for freedom from an abusive situation. Shelters that go the extra mile to assist in procuring long-term, low-cost housing, assisting with transportation needs so that clients can get to job interviews and make it to work, and offering life skill training such as interviewing skills, budgeting, and finance management go a long way toward generating conditions that allow victims to break out of their cells and become self-sufficient, productive citizens.
Let me put a bug in your ear before we move from this section on finances. One of the biggest obstacles faced by victims in this situation is a need for transportation. Some cities have excellent mass transit options such as busses and light rail. Other cities simply don’t, and it is there where we actually see a higher incidence of victims returning to abusive spouses simply because getting back and forth to a job, getting the kids to school or to the doctor, and being able to make reasonable trips to the grocery store become almost impossible. If you want to help, consider donating an old car to a local shelter. In most cases the shelter will have local volunteer mechanics repair it to working condition for free, you get a big tax break, and a person struggling to make a new life for herself and her children gets a big break.
“I’ll Tell Your Friends and Family About…”
Couples share intimate secrets; it’s one of the more enjoyable aspects of being romantically involved. Unfortunately, in a situation in which one person is trying desperately to control the other, old secrets can come back to haunt the person of his/her obsession. For example, maybe he knows she’s embarrassed about having Herpes or that she once got arrested for shoplifting; perhaps she spoke ill of her favorite aunt’s new boyfriend (the one she ended up marrying) after a family reunion, and now she’s worried about hurting the aunt’s feelings; maybe he’s just willing to make up lies about her to the family, and she knows he is charming enough to make everyone believe her. Regardless, the idea of being ostracized from the people you care about is intimidating when used as a manipulation tool. Remember that we are probably talking about a person who has been verbally abused and put down for years in some cases, so when a man who professes to love her on Monday turns around and calls her ugly or slutty on Tuesday, it actually matters to her. You or I might be able to laugh in his face, but she may not have the insight and confidence to shrug off insults at this point in her life. The threat of ostracism is much bigger than one might realize, especially for someone living a life in which she already feels lonely and cut off from the rest of her world.
“I’ll Kill You If You Try To Leave Me!”
Death threats are another effective way to control the people you claim to love. Death threats, both outright such as in, “I will kill you if you don’t come home,” and veiled such as, “You know what will happen if you don’t come home,” often come after years of physical and emotional abuse, episodes of strangulation, menacing whispers promising to commit homicide followed by suicide, “If I ever catch you with another man,” and incidents involving gun barrels held to the head and knives held to the throat.
In other words, the threats are taken as real and, frankly, they should be. After all, we’re talking about a very controlling, ego driven bully who might consider it fitting and honorable to kill his wife if she left him, and then intentionally get in a gunfight with police so that he can go out in a blaze of spiteful, meaningless “glory.” Death threats must be taken seriously. I assure you the victims take them seriously, and police officers, advocates, prosecutors and judges must also.
Death threats are often hard to prove. They are seldom announced in a public manner, and it is only in golden, rare moments when they are recorded. It is often truly a “he said, she said” scenario. However, diligent digging on the part of an investigator can often result in previous victims making statements that he made similar threats to them when they were dating. Those statements from previous victims can be very helpful in establishing a pattern of violence that might be usable at trial, but can almost certainly be used for sentencing purposes after the trial. Knowing this, many defense attorneys will advise their clients to take a plea bargain rather than risk a trial, knowing that if they lose at trial the sentence is likely to be much harsher because of the previous victim’s statements.
Sometimes victims are able to make phone calls to the suspect in the presence of a police officer who is recording the whole conversation, and those calls often result in a rich line of audio evidence. The transcript below is a portion of a recorded phone call between a woman and her boyfriend of several years. She endured physical and emotional abuse from the man for some time, but this particular day she’d had enough. The man was certainly a VIP in our city, with lots of political and financial connections. We had to make sure we got him solid. What do you think?
VICTIM
Hey.
SUSPECT (loving tones at first)
Hey, muffin, what’s up?
VICTIM
I’ve got to go to the doctor.
SUSPECT
What for?
VICTIM
I’m bleeding from my vagina, and I think my nose is broken?
SUSPECT
What are you going to tell them?
VICTIM
I won’t tell them you hurt me. I’ll tell them I fell, but I need some money so I can pay them.
SUSPECT (not so nice anymore)
Bitch, you don’t need to go to the doctor.
VICTIM
I’m bleeding from my vagina! You hit me in my vagina. Why did you do that?
SUSPECT
Bitch, just take a fucking shower. It’s probably just some little scratch. You’re gonna go to the doctor for a little scratch? They’re just going to laugh at you.
VICTIM
Billie, my nose is broken. You broke my nose!
SUSPECT
Is this about the money? I didn’t hit you that hard. Besides, there’s nothing they can do for a broken nose anyway. You’re just gonna have to tough this one out. It’ll heal. I know what you’re trying to do, you slut. You’re trying to work me for some money, and it isn’t going to work. You just need to take a shower and shut your damn mouth.
His attorneys advised him to take a guilty plea after they heard the recording.
This technique is nerve racking for the victim because it involves her making a phone call to the person she is most afraid of in the world. The Supreme Court has ruled that this tool is acceptable in most cases as long as one of the two people talking on the phone knows the call is being recorded. Rules can vary from state to state, so you’ll need to check with a local law enforcement agency or prosecutor’s office before diving into this method, but these recorded phone calls often are the best evidence source in a he said, she said situation.
I’ll Kill Myself If You Leave Me
This threat is highly effective in many cases. Remember that we are often dealing with confused and complicated emotions. A victim of systematic domestic abuse can feel many things toward her oppressor: Hate, love, terror, joy, loathing and sympathy. No one wants to live with another person’s suicide on his or her conscience, so this threat can be completely effective in terms of getting her to come back. Unfortunately, once she’s back, she’s trapped once again. There is often a much better alternative, and we’ll discuss how to handle this threat in more detail in the chapter on leaving and living safely.
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