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• Monday, June 11, 2007 04:59 PM

  I agree the wrong Q has been asked: not, why doesn't she leave him but, why doesn't he let her go?

  After all, if he holds her in such contempt, such low esteem, as to threaten and abuse and deride her constantly, he can't really love her or think he has a better life with her around, right? If she's such an albatross, let her go.

  That's a more reasonable question to ask, but for some reason we don't, we take the psychosis of a man who wants to keep a woman he loves (and many abusers do love their victims, it's just the expression of love is twisted out of recognition for most earthlings to recognize) as a punching bag in stride, and look at the women with the 'psychosis' of staying and make moral judgments.

  I've always seen domestic violence as akin to being growled at by a rabid Doberman or hungry bear. You don't turn and run - everyone knows that. I think violent men are much like these beasts - you don't run, it only provokes their instinct to run you down and savage you.

  I didn't always see it that way. When I was 23 I worked as a temp in an office with 10 other women. A year into the job and I was pretty good friends with most of them, though they were all about 8-15 years older. I got invited to a lot of lunches and happy hours and learned much about their private lives, including Cheryl, who frequently missed work and often appeared in pain, sometimes even with her nose broke or an eye swelled shut. The other women constantly tried to persuade her to 'leave that asshole'. She'd just shake her head and say, you don't understand how he is. Still, they worked on her. To her every protest they had an answer, e.g. "where will I go?" "you can stay with one of us, we'll take turns, or go to a domestic violence shelter where they are used to keeping guys like him out." "What if he follows me?" "Get a restraining order."

  She left him and got a restraining order and moved herself and her kids to a shelter. About a week later we were having some snacks and drinks at the TGI Friday's when her husband walked in, walked up to our table, sat down and put his arm around Cheryl and said "I told you not to leave me, babe."

  He gave her a little shake, like a hug, and then got up and left. Everyone was chattering indignantly but as he left I saw him wipe something knife on his jeans. The something turned out to be a knife. He hadn't been hugging Cheryl but pressing her into the knife he'd jammed into her side, under her arm. It penetrated her heart and she died before the ambulance got there. Her husband had almost made it across the state line by the time the cops caught up to him, and he freely admitted what he did and went to jail - not for the first time, I might add, and not, I'm sure, for the last.

  So after that I was a little less likely to be critical of women who stayed. Cheryl was right all along - we didn't know him like she did. When someone is determined - *determined* - to kill you, they can pretty easily succeed.

  It takes a severely disturbed person to outright kill someone when there is no external danger or issue of self defense. Most of us can't imagine killing our spouse or boyfriend during a fight. We just know we wouldn't. Women married to violent abusers apply this logic to their abusers and end up dying for it. The questions and potential solutions should be pointed toward the abusers, not their victims.

  —Sandra M Read Sandra M's other letters
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