The following is an account of the domestic abuse that took place in our home on April 27, 2019.As was a typical day in my 21.5 years of marriage, my husband tried to start a fight with me over nothing. After hearing dishes being thrown around in the kitchen sink, I walked into the dining room and asked from the breakfast bar, "What are you doing?" He responded with "Shut up!", "Just go away!" and "I don't have to answer your questions!" Annoyed, I said, "I don't know why you have to be such an ass about everything." Then I walked out of the room. Wanting to avoid any further confrontation with him, I hid out in the family room hoping he would finish whatever he was doing and go back into his office in the garage. Unfortunately, a few minutes later he came looking for me. Loaded up with excuses for being nasty to me, he defended his ugly behavior. I called him out on an outright lie and he backtracked from his story. Tired of listening to his lies and excuses, and trying to hopefully end this before it grew into something bigger, I excused myself from the room. He had other plans. He followed me into the master bedroom and stood outside the master bath continuning to drone on and on. I turned on the fan in the bathroom just to avoid hearing him through the door. Knowing that I couldn't stay in the bathroom forever, I eventually exited. He had been talking the whole time and was now soliciting a response from me. I said, "I didn't hear a thing you said [while I was in the bathroom].' He laughed and said, "I know." Still, he continued talking. I don't even know what he was going on about because I was just trying to avoid getting sucked into yet another pointless argument. He remained adamant that we were going to have this discussion, whatever it was. Something he said, prompted me to respond, "That's interesting because you sat out at the dining room table yucking it up with your dad when he was visiting about some guy who had beat his wife. And you bragged that you had never hit me." While the police report says, "He became enraged" that doesn't even begin to describe the demonic force that stood frothing before me a second later. To say he "hulked out" or "looked like Baby Jack Jack bursting into flames" is too mild and almost amusing. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. His head and face were redder than I'd even seen and he was growling angrily and loudly as he said, "THAT NEVER HAPPENED!"..."WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"..."I NEVER DID THAT!" Oddly, I remained calm throughout his tirade. I had stopped yelling back years ago. However, as his agitation grew, it gave me cause enough to grab my purse in self-defense. He knew that I was going for my carry weaponin my purse; ripped my purse away from me and threw it across the bed. Then he threw me to the floor in front of my bedside table and held me to the floor as he punched me repeatedly. I screamed the entire time begging him to stop. He continued yelling at me and punching me until suddenly he stopped. I didn't know it at the time, but my 19 year old son had heard me screaming and came to the master bedroom door with a wooden practice sword. When my husband saw him, he stopped punching me and went after him. I got up and started toward the bedroom door; he turned around and kicked me in the abdomen knocking me back to the floor. He grabbed my purse and left the room. From the floor, I could hear my kids and someone being hit with something. Before I even got up from the floor, I saw him about 10 feet in front of me by the entrance to the kitchen. He had my purse and a wooden sword. He glared at me and then at the kids; and he went through the kitchen and into the garage, his office. Terrified for our safety, I called for my kids to hurry into my bedroom. My intention was to have all of us together and to call 911. I thought we would be safer together. In hindsight, I know there were a lot of things I could have done differently, but I had never faced this level of danger. I hadn't prepared for this. Though my husband had been violent on many occassions, this was beyond anything that had happened in nearly 22 years. When only one of my kids, my 20 year old son, came into my bedroom, I didn't know what to do. I had no idea where the other three were. I shut the door and locked it, but I opened it again, fearing that he would go after the others if he couldn't get to me. Later, I would find out that my 19 year old son and 15 year old daughter, who testified to the deputies that she had carried a dining room chair as protection, had left the house through the back patio door and were hiding at the side of the house by the garbage bins. My 16 year old daughter was hiding in her brother's bedroom behind the door because she feared her father would get to her before she could get to my bedroom. With numb hands, I tried to dial 911 on my cell phone. I pressed something when I opened the phone app and it tried to dial something else. I disconnected the call and started dialing 9-1-1. Just then, my husband rushed at me from the kitchen. He kicked or threw my phone to the floor and he stomped on it. And again, he threw me down and held me there punching me repeatedly. I don't think he realized that our 20 year old son was in the room because he seemed surprised when he started being punched in the head. He fought with him while he continued to punch and yell at me. My son says he was knocked on top of me, but I don't recall any of that. I remembered a leg being front of me and me grabbing and crawling at it. My son says it wasn't his leg. The police report indicates that there was an open 911 call where they heard a woman screaming (that'd be me) and a man yelling (that'd be him). But I didn't even know if my call went through until I saw the police report. After punching me for nearly 4 minutes, my husband left the room and went back into the garage. My son and I searched for my phone. I heard a beep , like a disconnecting call, and found the phone, screen shattered, under my bedside table. Through the broken Gorilla glass fragments, I looked at the call history to see that I had dialed 911 4 minutes and 1 second prior. That's how I know how long the attack lasted. Still, I didn't know if the call had been received. Looking across the room, I realized that my husband had a gun sitting on his bedside table. I picked it up and looked it over. I was not familiar with it and did not know if the safety was on or off. I checked the chamber and the chambered round hit the laminate-tile floor. Another round was chambered and that's when I discovered that my husband was in the kitchen and had heard all of this. He came into the room and told me "JUST SHOOT ME...JUST DO IT!". I held the gun at my right side with my finger off the trigger. I declined to shoot him at his request. He walked up to me, still yelling at me to shoot him, and grabbed my arm as I held the gun and forced me to point it at him. He repeatedly told me to shoot him. Again, I declined. The last I wanted to do was pull the trigger in self-defense and find out that the safety was on. He wrestled the gun from my hand, removed the magazine, unchambered the gun, put the expelled bullet back into the magazine, and reloaded the gun. All the while he was yelling at me about us both filing for divorce and that he wanted nothing to do with our kids. Then he returned to the garage. My kids started to emerge from hiding and I ushered them into the girl's bedroom. Since my husband had my purse, I couldn't leave. The girl's room is out of sight from someone just walking through the house. So, I stood outside the door in the hallway and waited to see if my husband would leave the house or come looking for me. It wasn't too much later that he came looking for me. "We need to talk privately," he demanded. "No. I'm not going anywhere with you," I said. He then inquired, "Where are the boys?". He asked again when I refused to tell him. He pushed past me and found them in the girl's bedroom. He asked if my 19 year old's arm was okay since he had hit him with the wooden sword. And then he came back to me in the hallway and repeated, "we need to talk privately". Again I declined and he pushed me from the hallway into the living room. As soon as I could, I got away from his grasp and sat on the far end of the sofa closest to the front window. I didn't know what was going to happen next, but I knew I didn't want to be alone with him. He got some ice for our son's arm and he had just sat on the sofa opposite me when I saw a deputy walking across the front lawn and come to the front door. My husband sighed, stood up, tossed his pocket knife to the sofa and greeted the deputy at the door. From the police report I learned that he said, "My wife and I had a fight. I shoved her and knocked her down. I'm ready to go with you." He was handcuffed and put into a patrol car. The five of us---myself and our four kids---then gave oral and written testimonies individually to the arresting deputy. Another deputy took some pictures of the various marks I had on my body from the incident. Paramedics were called to look at the injuries both sons sustained while trying to defend me. My carry weapon, the other pistol I had picked up, and the wooden sword were all taken as evidence. We were each given a domestic abuse pamphlet that we each had to acknowledge receipt of in writing. I was given a card with a case number and told to email additional photos as bruises emerged. Right before the patrol car left, I noticed that my husband wasn't wearing his glasses. What a thing to notice, right? I hadn't noticed all day that he was wearing contacts which is not the norm for him at all. So, I asked a deputy if I could get his glasses for them to give to him. I found his glasses and found an empty glasses case and handed them off to the deputy. That's right! A man had just beaten me...came back and did it again...smashed my phone in an attempt to prevent me from dialing 9-1-1...and was angrier than his normal crazy-angry...and I still had compassion on him enough to make sure he had his glasses while in jail. Processing that in the days to come, I realized just how much more compassionate I am than I had ever thought I was. I wasn't having second thoughts about calling 9-1-1 and ending this abuse. On the contrary, I was adamant that he was never returning to this home again and that I was divorcing him as soon as humanly possible. Once the deputies cleared out of our home, we felt an immediate peace. No one was worried about the future...or all of the numerous threats he had made over the years to "leave us destitute" and "kick us to the curb", We were thankful to be alive and thankful that he was never going to do this to us again. After talking and praying, we further decompressed by watching a few episodes of Stargate Atlantis which we had been binge watching a little every night. About 10:30 pm there was a very unexpected knock at the door: DCF. A women with a clunky government laptop introduced herself and walked right into my home. She told me that she would speak with me first and then speak with the two minors (my two teenage daughters). She asked me to recount the entire event to her and then asked me what I intended to do. I flat out said, "He is NOT coming back into this house!" A few minutes later she said she was satisfied that I was handling everything appropriately and would close out the case as soon as possible. Then she left. She never spoke to my girls and did not refer us to any other agency. I hear that this is miracle that only God can work, so we praised God for giving us favor with her that night as to not add anything else to the list of things that we would be dealing with in the coming days and weeks. We all slept so soundly that night, living in peace for the first time ever. #DomesticAbuseIsNotOkay
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The purpose for this blog is to be a beacon of hope to others trapped in abusive relationships and to educate others to recognize abuse that may be going on in the lives of people you know. There is real help available to domestic abuse victims, but sometimes it is hard to find and hard to take that necessary step to freedom. But there is a way out. I want to share all that I have learned so far on this journey into my new life as well as everything that I will continue to learn along the way.
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Psalm 22:24 "For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and he has not hidden his face from him, but has heard, when he cried to him."
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