Perfect Life Destroyed By Abuse

How many times have you seen one of the woman-in-distress TV movies and thought, “Right. Like that really happens.” Well, it really does….

When Terry met Steve she thought he was perfect. He asked her to move in with him and quit her job. He would take care of everything. It sounded perfect. She moved in. And then slowly, everything began to change.

“I lost control of my life.”

Her family and friends were unwelcome in the house. “We lived together, yet I was alone. Isolated. I was belittled constantly.”

Odd things that had happened when they were dating suddenly made sense. At times, Terry thought that Steve was stalking her, but he always had such a good excuse, she ignored it. He paid her phone bill, but she realized later it was so he could check her calls. Things like that.

When Terry told Steve she was pregnant, he told her the baby wasn’t his and she was trying to tie him down for 18 years. He became more abusive and controlling. He would take the license plates off the car to keep her home. When she tried to speak up, he beat her. She had to beg him to take her to the hospital when it was time to deliver. He dropped her off and left. She had to beg him to bring her and the baby home. She didn’t tell her parents what was going on, she was ashamed.

“After the baby’s birth, he got worse. The abuse was constant. And the mind games. He had guns and he threatened me. I was so scared and alone. I found out that he had the neighbors spying on me when he was gone. I had no money and all I wanted was to get my child somewhere safe. I was scared to stay and scared to go. I was so brainwashed.”

Terry finally got the strength to go to a shelter. But the fear didn’t leave her. “The first night, I laid across my daughter because I was afraid he would fly through the window and take the baby. I thought he had God-like powers.”

Terry stayed at the shelter for three months, then she moved to her parents’ house. She found a job and looked for an apartment. Everywhere she went, Steve followed her. He harassed her at work. She got a lawyer through Legal Aid who told her to talk to Steve and work out visitation. She was afraid, but she met him in a restaurant. She was too scared to speak. He wasn’t. He told her, “I will take everything you have and love and I will destroy you.”

“I grabbed my daughter and ran out. The day I moved into my apartment, he stood at the door, trying to block our way.”

It gets worse. Steve got visitation rights with their daughter. After one visit, the little girl said, “Daddy hurt me.” The doctor said she had been molested. They went to court. Steve said she and the little girl were lying, but the medical evidence was there. The court changed the visits from overnight to supervised. But the harassing went on.

The police weren’t any help. After Steve broke the door knob, they told her to forget it, it was just a $3 item.

Terry packed up her things and said goodbye to her family. She moved to another state without telling Steve. “It was great. My little girl learned to ride a bike that summer, without her father around to hurt her.” But the good times didn’t last long. Steve found them and took them to court. Terry was fined and sentenced to community service because she had kept him from exercising his visitation rights.

Terry has now remarried. She and her daughter have had a lot of therapy. But the fear hasn’t gone away. It’s the kind of fear she says that “you want to run but your legs won’t move. You can feel yourself choking on your heart, but you can’t run, you can’t hide. You know he’s out there.”

If you see this on TV with maybe Sharon Lawrence and Ken Olin, don’t say, “Yeah, sure.” It happens.