My Brush with Intimate Partner Violence
Part 3: “…You misunderstood ma’am the problem was her not him.”
Blondie and I had very different experiences with the police when they responded to our calls for help. When the officers arrived for her, they spoke with John before they spoke with Blondie. He wasn’t who called. Ann called when Blondie yelled for her to call because John had just punched her. The police spoke with Ann (the secondary victim from part 2) but they did so while she was in the presence of John. I couldn’t hear them from my vantage point but I doubt she felt comfortable telling the truth. Remember, she doesn’t want him there but has to make a bad situation bearable.
Blondie has a disability. She says it’s Huntington’s Disease. I cannot confirm the diagnosis but she does receive disability for something. Her movements are erratic and involuntary. Her speech is slurred and if she is particularly anxious, her thoughts become jumbled. It’s easy to understand why the cops believed him when John told them she was on drugs and making things up. She was accused of hitting herself by one officer and made to leave the house by another.
That was the day prior to my calling and asking why they hadn’t arrested John. That’s when I was told that she was the problem. I ended that conversation by telling them that if they wouldn’t take care of John I would. I informed them that if I ever saw another woman come screaming out of his house with blood on her face, I would put John in the dirt. Not my proudest moment. Not the smartest from a legal standpoint either, I am sure.
The following day, a female officer who had been one of the responders the day before, came across Blondie walking down the street. She stopped to speak with her and saw the large swollen bruise on her face. She actually asked her how it happened. I think once she realized it was more damage than she would have done to herself, the officer felt bad about the outcome of the day before. She told Blondie what I had said when I called. Blondie knew then that I had her back. This was just before I made first contact with her.
I want to tell you about the response I received when I was assaulted. Keep in mind eventually the police department did do the right thing and arrested John for domestic violence and took him to jail for a 24-Hour hold. But that didn’t happen until the second time I called the police on John. The first time I called, I was scared that he was attempting to break into my house. It turned out that he was throwing things at my house. Large things. Things I had given him.
Thankfully he didn’t actually manage to do any damage. After explaining to the police that he was basically stalking me at this point, I was told by a female officer (who in my opinion should have known better but was charmed when she spoke to John) that he was just confused and seemed to really love me. This is after she and another officer had read a long stream of texts in which John threatened to assault and/or kill me half a dozen times. I still shake my head when I think about that.
Her words beyond anything else that happened were disheartening and discouraging. I certainly wasn’t going to try to get an ex parte if that’s how the police felt about it. And it made me question my own judgement. It made me think perhaps I was overreacting. I wasn’t. It was just a few weeks later that he punched me and did manage to do damage to my home.
The officers who responded to that particular event did everything right. I was treated with respect and kindness. I was assessed for level of risk. I was given a paper with information about filing an emergency protection order. The only suggestion I would make to that team is this; when you ask if a victim wants to speak with someone who works at the women’s shelter, call that person “an advocate” and explain they will walk the victim through the next few steps. I didn’t understand what was being offered. If I had, John would have been off the streets before he got to Blondie.
I tell you these response stories to highlight the similarities and differences in the responses. It’s obvious that the outcome of the response depends on the officer who responds. I would have thought there would be less room for individual judgement calls in these cases. Despite my having been reassured that the police department in my city gets “pretty good training,” I think there are a few officers who should probably go through it again. Soon.
Also, I wanted to tell you that none of these three groups of responders knew anything about the previous interactions with John. That should not be the case. Perhaps we need additional fields in a database for information that can be filled out and then later read when an individual has been in contact with the police within the previous 90 days. If the officers who had responded to Ann’s call had known about my case, their judgement of the situation would undoubtedly have been different. Same if they had known about Blondie’s disability. There has to be a better way to get information to the men and women on the front line.
By the way, police officers really do not like men who commit domestic violence. 90% of men who kill an officer on the job, has DV on their record. Over 60% of mass shooter’s do as well. It’s an enormous red flag and one we should be able to warn our police officers of before they have contact with these individuals.
But even when everything goes right on a domestic violence call and the perpetrator is taken away, there is a big gap between men arrested and men prosecuted. There are so many women who the Prosecuting Attorney’s office is unable reach because of broken phones. There’s nothing the police officers can do about that, or is there?
Certainly not alone but with some help there is something I think officers could do. You know the program that allows them to carry around teddy bears in their trunk for abused children? How hard would it be to get $20 phone cards or cheap free government cell phones to give to abuse victims whose phone was broken by the offender? We could put them in the trunk next to the teddy bears. It would give a woman who is willing to testify an option to contact the advocate from the YWCA and then the Prosecuting Attorney’s office. Before her abuser comes home.
I realize that these are mediocre suggestions for dealing with a really bad situation. I’m hoping you dear reader might have better ones. I have a question though. Where is the proactive side of stopping intimate and family violence? We’ve been rely on government and private agencies to help rescue these women for decades without making a dent in the numbers. Why aren’t we attacking this from the other side? Where is the ‘Domestic don’t beat your wife’ hotline? Okay, I’m being a bit snarky but you get my point.
Really, what do these men and women do if they know they have a problem with their anger and they don’t know where to go to get help? If you Google domestic violence you will come up with a hundred pages of a ways for women to get help but not one that tells you how to get help if you’re afraid you’re going to become violent against your family. It doesn’t just happen one day, these people have been through the fire themselves. Family Violence its usually generational. I dare say, most abusers recognize that it’s a cycle they want to break but they don’t know how. That is not to excuse their choice to put hands on someone. I raise it as a possible avenue to fight this problem that isn’t currently widely explored. I want to see a billboard on the side of the highway that tells a man or a woman how to get help if they are experiencing episodes of rage. Don’t you?
Okay, I think I’ll stop here because I have to stop somewhere and this is still an even longer story. One that is still unfolding. I hope you’ll join us in part 4, and learn along with the rest of us how the ‘Wheels of Justice’ begin to grind.
Read Part II
Read Part I
KG Farrell is an author, activist and artist living her best life in Northwest Missouri. She has previously published two suspense novels that you can find here here.
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