My mom endured emotional abuse at the hands of my alcoholic father for 13 years. She secured a restraining order after the only time he hit her, a scene I watched while clutching the cordless phone, my fear of him dwarfed by the fear of what might happen if I were to call the police as my mother had instructed. I was 11 years old.
I was paralyzed, so she grabbed the phone, ran outside, and called them herself. He moved out, we qualified for food stamps, the house went into foreclosure, and she ate half a yogurt at meals, relinquishing most of her allotted food portions to her three growing children.
One day, we pulled into the driveway to see two bags of groceries propped against the garage door, a balloon tied to the handle. I’ll never forget it. Upon seeing the supplies, my mother immediately burst into tears, crumbling from relief and thanks. They were from her friends, both named Judy, each of whom had divorced their own abusive spouses some years before and were now raising kids on their own and supporting my mother through her own shift toward freedom.
My mother’s common story echoes the cycle of abuse, one that typically resembles the slow incline and sharp drop of a roller coaster. Tension builds on the upward crawl toward a heated and sometimes violent incident at the peak before dissipating upon reconciliation. Elements of violence, control, and oppression characterize these relationships, though it’s not always evident from the beginning of one that it will eventually turn abusive. I am so grateful to the women who validated my mother’s decision to protect her family by letting her know she’d at least be fed.
Two years ago, my friend Esperanza (whose name has been changed) left her abuser for the final time to begin her new life. I met Esperanza in April 2012. (I’ll refer to her as Espe.) I wanted to write about her, and with her permission, DC SAFE, the organization that aided her transition by providing therapy, grocery money, emergency shelter, and a link to permanent housing, gave me her email address. Espe said she thought it would help her healing process to tell her story in its entirety to me, a “clean slate.”
When we first met, it had only been six months since she left him. Over the 18 months since then, I’ve watched my now-close friend evolve from a woman who blamed her experience on a personal flaw to one who wears what happened like a badge, attributing some aspects of why she stayed to latent issues unearthed by time and therapy.
There are some factors that can increase risk for abuse, like witnessing domestic abuse as a child, prevalent substance use, and depression, but one in four women experiences domestic physical violence at some point in her life, a statistic that transcends demographics and circumstance.
“People say to you, it can happen to anyone. But when you hear that, you try to picture it happening to a lot of people that you know and you don’t think it’s possible because you know them, you know their character,” Espe told me. “A lot of people that came to know what happened to me would’ve said the same thing about me.”
You might have a hard time picturing someone bulldozing Espe if you knew her; she is not meek. She’s a very impressive person, accomplished academically and professionally. She’s empathetic, giving and sincere. She has a great sense of humor and a ton of lovable quirks.
Espe immigrated to the United States from Venezuela as a teen and met her abuser while living in New York City a few years ago. At the time she was falling out of love with her husband, whom she supported financially as he tried to become a writer. They grew further apart after he started a job as a server, his routine rooted in the industry’s late-night culture. A man at work began paying attention to her, and she became so enamored with him that she left her husband and moved into her new suitor’s apartment. He began isolating her from the world she knew — at his urging, she procured a restraining order against her mother and sister after they nudged her to leave him and told friends to stop contacting her.
“It was like I was drugged,” she said.
When I first met Espe, she told me she took solace that at her core she always knew the way he was treating her was wrong, and that she didn’t deserve it, and that her family still loved her despite her refusal to communicate with them. Embarrassment, shame, and an implanted feeling of overall worthlessness kept her from considering her option to leave. Love and fear further complicated things. She stayed. Two years passed.
In 2010, he moved her to Alexandria, Virginia, for his new job. Her family had no idea where she’d gone, and it was there that he beat her for the first time, confining her further within this unfamiliar place. He controlled her finances and where she fixed her gaze when they were in public, forbidding her to look anyone in the face. She kept her head down. He forced her to remain logged in to Skype all day while he was at work and she was home, and when she got a job as a teacher in Washington, D.C., he watched her in her classroom.
Her family eventually found her and surprised her at school with a bouquet of flowers. She left with them, and they took her back to Venezuela. Within a few days, he arrived there to take her back, and she returned to the U.S. with him.
Between her family’s initial intervention and leaving for good, he beat her so badly she required hospitalization, and it was there she learned of a nearby shelter that would accept her in a time of crisis. Another time, she truly feared for her life, grabbed the car keys, and ran from the house. She drove the car up and down streets seeking hints of the same shelter. While that night she found it, she returned to him the next day.
On average a survivor will leave her abuser five to seven times before it becomes permanent. For Espe, it took five. “Isn’t it crazy how the textbook sometimes turns out to be right?” I asked her. She’s comforted by the statistic, she said.
“I had to be the one who left him,” she told me. “It couldn’t be like a rescue.”
Espe continues to emphasize that because she was so isolated, she had no idea what resources were available to her should she choose to leave. It was a “gap in her knowledge” that calling the police, something she then deemed too “final,” could simply put them on alert; he wouldn’t necessarily go directly to jail. They’d quell the situation and buy her some time.
Three of every four people know someone who has been abused. With this in mind, we as family and friends must be the ones to inform and empower our loved ones to make choices that save their lives. We must reinforce that we accept them whether they choose to leave or not. Our openness and willingness to listen may be what saves them. We must give them the option.
For Espe, her family planted the seed. While they were pleased when she readily followed them to Venezuela, knowing that she’d return to her abuser, something they’d sought guidance to learn, was key to her eventual success.
“Friends and family members of victims get their hopes so high on their first attempt, and then they become disappointed, because it’s human nature,” Espe said recently. You should expect her (or him) to go back, she said. “What you need to do is arm yourself with patience and always be there as an option, as a support system, for whenever the person decides to make that choice.”
Her family implemented a safety plan by giving her a cell phone to keep hidden at work that they filled with minutes. They impressed upon her that no matter her choices, they would not judge her, and they would love her always and unconditionally. While Espe had felt like a burden to her family, emphasis of their love for her counteracted the guilt that controlled her.
Ultimately, she went to the principal at her school and told her, I can’t go home tonight, I need a place to stay, I can never go back there, and he has me on Skype in the classroom right now. The principal told Espe to return to her classroom and teach like nothing was wrong while she made some phone calls. Espe had a temporary restraining order within a few hours, and she never went back.
Domestic violence is one of the leading causes of homelessness in the U.S., and experts in pockets of the country are currently working to decrease the amount of DV cases that end in homicide, though the movement is hardly widespread. While Congress reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act this year, in 2012, the House of Representatives shuttered its passage because of provisions to offer aide to Native Americans, the LGBT community, and immigrants, whom Espe said made up the majority of women in the shelter where she stayed. Facts and figures like these can be disheartening and overwhelming, but we can look to women like Martha Hunt, who was inspired to open her own shelter after helping a neighbor who showed up at her door.
When I met Espe, she described the first day she was free from her abuser, how wonderful it felt to buy herself a coffee. “I was just looking at everybody, right in their faces,” she said. She moved into a tiny room in a group house and kept a rabbit given to her by the shelter as a pet. Now, she lives with one roommate in a house near school. She’s traveled to Spain and vacationed at the beach. She’s close with her family and fellow teachers. I hesitate to call her lucky, but she is.
Tags: abuse, dc safe, domestic violence, family, feminism, friendship, rebecca armendariz
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Heartbreaking. Just heartbreaking. Espe, your courage fills me with awe & admiration.
Do any Toasties have any advice on what to do if you suspect someone is being abused? I’m not talking about someone close like a friend or relative; I think Espe’s family did amazingly well, but like, if you hear indistinct shouting, crying and thumping sounds coming from a neighbors house and it might not even be anything other than a regular non-abusive fight and arrrghhhhh it’s so awkward.
eeek, I don’t know. The closest I ever came to something like that was a next-door neighbor who was at least verbally abusing her toddler (severely). Eventually we applied to break our lease early without penalties because it was so traumatic to listen to this woman. It turns out we weren’t the first people to not want to live in that apartment because of the woman’s screaming, and they took her to court to evict her, and CPS got involved due to the nature of the disturbance.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think directly approaching her would have been effective. Don’t forget: you may be approaching someone with an anger or addiction problem.
Yeah, I was thinking more of just quietly sort of mentioning hey if you ever need anything we are here and just sort of giving a significant look, and then if it’s nothing it won’t mean anything, but if there is a real situation it may be comforting for her?
I think this sounds like the best idea! You do what you can, and what you can do is offer her a refuge if she needs one. It can be as simple as saying, “You can knock on our door at any time.” Letting her/him know you’re a judgement-free zone. It gives her/him an option in a world where they might be limited.
Oh, don’t you hate that kind of stuff? “Is this something bigger than an argument, or is it just a molehill?” I think if it was outright abuse or a chronic situation you would know.
I called the police once because a neighbor was SCREAMING her head off and sobbing uncontrollably – it sounded like she was in desperate need of help; at one point I couldn’t tell if she was vomiting or crying. I told the police exactly what I heard and that I wasn’t sure this was an “emergency” but that I would feel awful if she hurt herself and nobody said anything. Two female officers arrived and went inside her house and talked to her (she shouted at them a couple of times) and I think they basically let her know that she wasn’t alone and gave her some resources.
My friend called the cops on his upstairs neighbors, because they were obviously having a BIG fight. When the cops came, he heard the couple say, “We were just rehearsing a scene for a play.” [cue fart noise] Things got quieter upstairs, though.
My husband and I heard screaming from an apartment in our building at an especially weird time one morning, and he went to investigate with another guy in our building, and ended up rescuing the girl from her exboyfriend threatening to kill her with a knife. She called the police and he was convicted.
Ex is in jail until March, she’s in another state, and husband, otherguy, and I all testified at the trial.
So, getting the police involved, and going to get the girl was definitely the right thing in that situation.
I called the police when I heard banging and screaming next door. It might have been nothing but I’d rather call over nothing than not call and find out someone was being hurt.
As someone who was saved by a suspicious neighbor calling the police during a loud argument, thank you.
They heard us yelling, but they finally called when they heard a plate crash. It was him holding me by my neck over dishes I had just done.
One of the most humiliating experiences of my life, to know other people had heard this awful thing that happened to me, second only to the thought of what would have happened if they hadn’t called.
Honestly? When the people who lived upstairs of my old work did that we just called the police. Apparently the couple were really embarrassed. The police came back down and told us they’d rather be called out for nothing than miss something.
If you call the police, they can break something up, make an arrest or start proceedings for a restraining order/other legal options. Even if they do none of the above, if it ever happens again or the survivor wants to build a case, there’ll be a record.
I’m super late to this thread but I wanted to share: earlier this year I was in a hotel out of town with my boyfriend and we started hearing an argument in the room next door, around 3 or 4 am. She was saying things like “I can’t believe you hit me”. I was very scared because I had never been in a situation like that, but angry yelling is a trigger for me (my dad is huge on screaming. I haven’t talked to him in a year). So I called the front desk and they went up, but the guy in the room said she was just drunk and they left. The noise continued for one more hour and to this day I feel really guilty for not doing more. Sould I have called the cops? Antoher thing that continues to anger me is that the hotel staff said “You are disturbing other guests”, like that was the reason I called…
I work for an organization that tries to reduce domestic violence, and we confront this issue a lot, usually in situations where calling the police isn’t a good option (because they don’t come, suspicion of the police, retaliation, etc). All the comments below are great but if for any reason you don’t think calling the police is a good idea you could try this strategy that an organization in India developed, where you knock on the door for something unrelated, to let your neighbors know people are listening. It’s kind of scary but still innocuous. One thing I’ve found in my job is that isolation makes it easier for abusers to be violent, and if they feel like they’re surrounded by witnesses they might stop… Anyway, here’s a PSA from the Indian org: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAYDmZ19nG4
Thank you for writing this article. And thank you so, so much to Espe for being willing to share her experience.
These stories are so important. Thank you for sharing them.
Thank you, Rebecca, for sharing your story and to Esme for sharing her story. I, too, had a night of terror when my mother was abused by her boyfriend and I also used a cordless phone to call the cops. It is an incident that has affected so many parts of my life, and it’s really therapeutic to read other survivor’s stories.
Thank you, Rebecca, for sharing your story and to Esme for sharing her story. I, too, had a night of terror when my mother was abused by her boyfriend and I also used a cordless phone to call the cops. It is an incident that has affected so many parts of my life, and it's really therapeutic to read other survivor's stories.
“She moved into a tiny room in a group house and kept a rabbit given to her by the shelter as a pet.”
I don’t know why, but it makes me so happy that Espe has a pet rabbit.
“Her family implemented a safety plan by giving her a cell phone to keep hidden at work that they filled with minutes. They impressed upon her that no matter her choices, they would not judge her, and they would love her always and unconditionally. While Espe had felt like a burden to her family, emphasis of their love for her counteracted the guilt that controlled her.”
She was lucky to have supportive family who didn’t judge her for staying in an abusive relationship. This right here is an amazing way to support a loved one who is being abused: implement a safety plan and let them know that your love/support is not AT ALL contingent on their decision to leave the relationship.
Thanks to Espe for sharing her story, to Rebecca for writing this, and to The Toast for posting this. <3
We have a far worst experience of such incident in our country.
I'm super late to this thread but I wanted to share: earlier this year I was in a hotel out of town with my boyfriend and we started hearing an argument in the room next door, around 3 or 4 am. She was saying things like "I can't believe you hit me". I was very scared because I had never been in a situation like that, but angry yelling is a trigger for me (my dad is huge on screaming. I haven't talked to him in a year). So I called the front desk and they went up, but the guy in the room said she was just drunk and they left. The noise continued for one more hour and to this day I feel really guilty for not doing more. Sould I have called the cops? Antoher thing that continues to anger me is that the hotel staff said "You are disturbing other guests", like that was the reason I called…