Home Should Be Safe: Hope and Help for Domestic Violence Victims

By Mina R Raulston

Author and former victim of domestic violence provides factual information about the realities of domestic violence, the help victims need and how to provide that help along with an appendix of available resources. The author also includes her personal testimony of her experience with domestic violence and how God healed and delivered her from t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hat Rack Books, LLC
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781732801134

Mina R Raulston

Mina R Raulston has been a freelance writer since the mid-1990's. She has been published in a variety of newspapers, magazines, websites, wrote speeches, and self-published her first book. This book is the first book published by her own publishing house, Hat Rack Books, LLC.

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INTRODUCTION

Barbara Warner is just one of many women killed by an abusive husband. According to information provided by her co-workers to Action Ohio for the Empty Place at the Table event, on May 27, 1997, Barbara’s husband shot and killed her in their home. From 911 recordings and police office interrogation in the police car after his arrest authorities said she had told him about a friend who was leaving her husband. He asked her if she was doing the same thing and she told him she was not. Later that evening he waited for her to come out of the bathroom and when she did he emptied his gun into her. The court found her husband guilty of aggravated murder and sentenced him to twenty years to life in prison, with three additional years for using a firearm. He is not scheduled for parole until 2020.

One of the stereotypes of domestic violence victims is that they are poor, uneducated, and bring the violence on themselves by their belligerent behavior toward their husbands. Barbara was far from this stereotype. She held a degree in psychology and worked as a counselor with Concord Counseling Services in Westerville, Ohio, a therapeutic program worker for Central Ohio Adolescent Center in Columbus, Ohio, a child welfare worker for Franklin County Children Services, Columbus, Ohio, and a family planning worker for the Ohio Department of Health (ODH). She initiated a statewide family planning and informed consent policy and also made sure all ODH planning agencies included questions on their history and physical forms about domestic violence and physical abuse.

Barbara’s co-workers remember her as steady and calm with a real regard for others. They said she sought out the humor in life. She loved to draw and had a contagious laugh. They also said she had a gift for drawing out others’ individual strengths. But like most domestic violence victims, Barbara’s abuse was kept secret. Barbara hid her abuse by laughing off visual bruises as her own clumsiness or her beloved dogs being underfoot. Her husband’s frequent calls to her at work were attributed to them still being in love.

Barbara’s sister, Alex Scott, told me there was more to her sister’s story. She said Barbara had dated her husband while in college. Alex shared that her older sister Barbara had been the family caregiver to their parents who were older, and was a surrogate mom to Alex. Because of this she said Barbara was looking for a knight in shining armor to take care of her. She also shared that for some reason Barbara didn’t have high regard for herself.

Alex remembers that Barbara’s husband seemed needy, brash, and very coarse. With their parents deceased by that time, the family was glad Barbara was happy but Alex said she couldn’t see what her sister saw in him. She shared her concern that her comments about him may have caused Barbara not to confide in her. But, she said, Barbara may also have distanced herself from her family to protect them from him. Barbara and her husband were married in 1978 and he murdered her in 1997 so they were married for nineteen years. She said she believes part of the reason her sister stayed was shame. She could have been asking herself, How is this happening to me? Alex said she believes it is important that people are told about the soul tie that binds victims of domestic violence to their abusive partners.

As a result of her death, ODH formed the domestic violence work group that has initiated programs on domestic violence awareness and trained ODH employees on what domestic violence is and what can be done about it. As of 2004, ODH has a formal domestic violence policy signed by the director. All of the work group’s material bears a flower design on it created by Barbara.

On Wednesday, April 16, 2008, Governor Ted Strickland signed an executive order creating a domestic violence policy and training for state employees, which are the result of the collaboration of several state government and non-government agencies. The policy is named in memory of Barbara.

WHAT IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE?

Home should be safe. It should be our refuge from the storms and trials of life. That was God’s intent when he first created the family. God said in Genesis 2:25 that it was not good for man to be alone and created a mate for him. In Ephesians 5:25 the word says, Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it. I don’t know about you but every day I go out into the world to work, shop, or have fun. When I come home after a long day out in the world I step through my front door and breathe a huge sigh of relief. I kick off my shoes and remove my coat. I change into my comfy jammies, curl up in my tilt back rocker and I know I’m home and I’m safe.

Countless families in the world today do not have this refuge. For these families home is the most dangerous place to be. Rather than looking forward to going home they dread the thought of it because they know they are in the most danger when they are inside their homes. These families deal daily with domestic violence. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) 50 percent of married women will experience domestic violence during their lifetimes. In 1991 the FBI Uniform Crime report stated that domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of fifteen and forty-four in the United States. The Department of Justice National Crime Victimization Survey stated that each year 1 million women will experience violence at the hands of an intimate.

An Empty Place at the Table is an event held by Action Ohio at the Statehouse in Columbus, Ohio every October to honor some of the women killed by their spouses or partners. Several tables are filled with place settings of personal belongings and the personal story of domestic violence victims who were killed by their abusers. Information about other events is listed on the NCADV and the Action Ohio Web sites.

The abusers and killers are not strangers or criminals who have injured someone in a public place. They are in fact someone the victims know and should have been able to trust and the abuse happened in their own homes.

What constitutes domestic violence?

Domestic Violence is a neutral sounding word to describe a personal, intimate kind of injury, an injury within the family. Family violence is an injury that comes from a trusted person in your life. It is difficult to bear because it usually occurs in the privacy of your own home. No one outside sees it happen. Although some abusers are women, 95 percent of abusers are men, according to the National Council on Child Abuse and Family Violence. Domestic violence occurs in homes with a religious faith and homes with no religious faith. It occurs in all races, classes, economic levels, nationalities, regardless of sexual preferences, according to the Justice Department Analysis of Intimate Partner Abuse in 2001. Although drugs and alcohol can be a contributing factor, it is not the cause of the violence, because violence exists in homes where drugs and alcohol don’t exist and in homes where they do exist. There are several types of domestic violence.

What are the types of domestic violence?

Physical Abuse is described as a physical attack or injury lodged against the victim by the abuser. It includes any physical attack to the victim by the abuser. Abusers have shut car doors on their victims’ hands, feet, arms, or legs. They have shoved their victims down on the floor or onto furniture then continued to beat them. Abusers will slam their victims into a corner or throw them down a flight of stairs. Abusers will throw things at their victims such as rocks, knives, guns, or whatever they can get their hands on. Their intent is to injure the victim, or possibly the victim’s children, possessions, or pets and to intimidate the victim into submission. It also includes withholding medical treatment, especially right after the injury.

Abusers threaten their victims that if they report the abuse they will hurt them worse. Abusers always have a reason for the attack. They say that they had a bad day, the boss was impossible, or someone attacked them. Abusers blame stress from work or finances, the children for bad behavior, or the spouse for not being a good parent. A favorite complaint of abusers according to victims is, You made me do it. I wouldn’t have yelled, hit, got mad, etc., if you hadn’t done, or not done a certain thing. In fact, the abuser was in complete control and was just manipulating their victims. They never take responsibility for their actions.

My parents were married for thirty-seven years. They had their arguments. They went through all kinds of trials. They didn’t have money or position. What they did have was honesty, commitment, and a strong work ethic. No matter how hard things got my dad never raised his hands in anger or caused injury to any of us. My mother knew she was safe with my dad.

My marital experience was very different. At the age of 19 I married a man I met at church. The courtship moved along very quickly and we married six months later. Although I had heard rumors of his temper before we married, I didn’t pay much attention to them because they had traveled through several different people and he never got angry with me. Since my parents disapproved of me even going to church, their disapproval of him meant nothing. Reality clobbered me, quite literally, on the night before our first Christmas Eve.

We lived in a second floor, three-room apartment of a converted house. The rooms were laid out in a straight line. The bedroom was in the front, the living room was in the middle with the main entrance, and in the back were the kitchen, bath, and rear entrance. That night he was in bed with the sliding door shut so he could sleep because he was sick. I was at the other end of the apartment in the kitchen preparing homemade bread, cookies, and candy for Christmas gifts, a lifelong tradition.

Suddenly, he raged out of the bedroom screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. When he came into the kitchen he threw bowls, pans, and anything he could get his hands on.

Before I could react he grabbed me, slapped me, ripped my shirt and put a thirty gallon trash can over my head before he stomped back into the bedroom and slammed the door shut again. All of my fresh baked bread, my dough that was rising, and my ingredients were ruined and I was left sitting on the floor crying, reeling from the shock of it all. Before I could sort out what had happened and why he had reacted so violently I heard him in the bedroom having what sounded like an asthma attack. He said he couldn’t breathe so I called 911 and the squad came and took him to the hospital. He spent our first Christmas in the Intensive Care Unit at our local hospital. I spent our first Christmas with my emotions in turmoil, not knowing how to shift gears from quiet, to terror, and then to worry so quickly.

Over the years his illnesses became the norm rather than the exception and I later described life with him to be like a roller coaster ride. Since I believed marriage was for a lifetime I figured it was my job to do the best I could with what I had, not