Domestic Violence Victim Disillusioned With System Battered Woman Unable To Get Former Husband Into Counseling

Year after year, Bethann Stevens said she grimly tolerated her partner’s violent explosions.

Sometimes, she’d escape with a bloody nose. Other times, she’d be knocked unconscious.

“I’d wake up and he’d be there, crying, afraid he’d hurt me.”

Last summer, the Spokane woman thought the abuse would finally end.

Her ex-husband, Max Miller Jr., was arrested and charged with assaulting her for the second time in two years.

Stevens hoped the court would do one thing at least: force Miller to go through domestic violence treatment.

But despite her desire that he be prosecuted on the fourth-degree assault charge, he ended up pleading guilty to a lesser crime - disorderly conduct.

If he’d been convicted of a domestic violence assault, Miller would have had to go through yearlong treatment provided by one of six local programs.

Instead, he spent 44 days in jail and was placed on two years’ probation.

Stevens, 26, said the experience left her bitter and skeptical of claims that a new domestic violence prosecution team is doing a better job of protecting victims.

“What they did for me was totally inadequate,” Stevens said. “This is no way to take care of domestic violence victims.”

Married 10 years ago to Miller, Stevens struggled through a relationship common to many domestic violence victims. They divorced five years ago but shared a house and continued an off-and-on relationship.

“I loved him. I thought he would eventually change,” said Stevens, who is raising the couple’s two children.

The violence usually came as the end to an argument, she said. She would yell; he would respond with force.

One night last August, his demand for sex sparked a fight, Stevens said. When she tried to call police, she said he grabbed the phone and threw it at her, missing.

They scuffled. A neighbor called police. By the time officers arrived, Miller had fled the house. He was arrested later at his parents’ house.

Had the assault charge gone to trial, the bruises on her legs and arms would have been part of the evidence against him.

Miller had been convicted of a domestic violence assault in 1995. Because of that record, a judge ordered him held on $5,000 bond. Unable to pay, he sat in jail until prosecutors offered him the plea bargain.

Deputy Prosecutor Kathleen Thompson said she agreed to reduce the charge because Stevens was unwilling to testify.

Stevens said prosecutors misunderstood her. “I never said I wouldn’t testify. I told them, when he was first charged, that the police report … was wrong. They made it seem like he attacked me and tried to rape me.”

She wanted to tell the judge that Miller, like his father, needed counseling to learn how to avoid resorting to violence.

In early October, Miller decided to plead guilty to the disorderly conduct charge. He was scheduled to enter that plea on a Tuesday afternoon, but the hearing was moved up to 9 a.m.

“No one from the prosecutor’s office called me,” said Stevens, who missed her chance to appeal to the judge for treatment.

Instead, Miller will have to go through treatment only if he reoffends while on probation.

Because prosecutors felt Stevens would not be a witness in the case, Thompson said her office did the next best thing. “We ended up holding a sword (of future treatment) over Miller’s head.”

Stevens said Miller’s own father was a batterer through most of his marriage.

After going through treatment, Max Miller Sr. said he urged his son to do the same. “I know it helped me.”

His son insists he doesn’t have a problem. “We’ve had fights, but I’ve never beat her,” he said. “I’m not a violent person.”

Miller conceded that once, when his wife was drunk and threw a cat on his face, she ended up with a bloody nose.

“That was because we ended up wrestling, more or less,” he said.

Her other accusations of being beaten by him “are just not true,” Miller said.

Stevens said she has little contact with her ex-husband since he entered his guilty plea. The time he spent in jail gave her the freedom to regain her self-control and independence. Now on welfare, she plans to return to secretarial work later this year.

But she remains concerned that Miller won’t get treatment.

“He needs this counseling and help. He’s still going to be part of our children’s lives. And he’ll have other relationships that may have the same problems we had,” she said.

“He learned this problem from his own parents. He needs to get some serious help.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo