abuse

Richard/Tracy, have you stopped the abuse?

Two articles headlined the newspaper this morning:

“Nothing seems to have changed”: Thousands of Wisconsin children abused, neglected despite all efforts to stop it

Domestic violence is Fond du Lac’s leading crime, police chief says

And the first thing that came to mind when I saw them was,

Have you stopped abusing your kids, Richard and Tracy?  I doubt it, but then, with DSS on your case after Richard choked Tracy’s girl, maybe they finally forced you to change your ways.

That girl must be about 19 now; I wonder what she’ll do now, where she’ll go, if she’ll still keep in contact with the one who almost killed her a decade ago and beat the crap out of her when she was little, or with the mother who screamed like a demon at her and called her stupid.

You tried to blame it on me when I avoided you, Tracy, tried to make all our problems my fault.  But no, it was all on your head: I wanted nothing to do with an abuser and a bully, someone who included me in her list of abuse victims.

And Richard, you tried to force me to be friends with such a person, even when I saw her abuse you and the kids.  I knew you had issues, but I thought you were trying to do better, until I learned what you did to your child.  I knew Tracy abused you, even hit you, but I didn’t know at first that you also abused her.  I also didn’t realize yet how you manipulated and abused me, too.

I don’t know why you guys still read here (happy 8th stalking anniversary in two months, BTW), because that won’t change.  I will never say I deserved any of it, or that you were innocent of child abuse.  I will never say you didn’t abuse each other.  I will never say you were kind to me.  I will never stop blaming you for everything that happened.  I will never want anything to do with you unless you repent.  And you couldn’t silence me: My friends and family know what happened and have seen your mug shot.

Meanwhile, I feel the same frustration as the professionals who try to stop abuse but don’t see results.  I post here, I share articles on Facebook etc., yet keep seeing the same old comments everywhere: “My parents hit me and I turned out okay!”  Um…no, not if you’re hitting and screaming at little kids.

Fallout from my Troll post=I keep fighting

The trolls, of course, got upset with my exposing their tweets to the world the other night, as was expected.  I discovered a new (to me) troll account in my notifications the next day, with a whole bunch of scolding tweets.  Instead of reading them, I blocked her (which made them all vanish) and reported her.

Just trying to choose five tweets while reporting her to Twitter Support was nerve-wracking.  These people are monsters.  If she thinks I’ll read all her book-long tweets to/about me, she’s deluded.

While glancing over and choosing the five tweets, I noted that these (and other) trolls complain about their “targets” asking for help reporting them.  They remind me of Trump and his cries of “presidential harassment.”

Victims of Twitter bullying often find that Twitter Support is no help, so they need to ask their friends in an attempt to get Twitter to pay more attention.  This is our survival mechanism–so of course the bullies try to turn it around on us, gaslight us, and project their own harassment onto us, for using the best means we have to get online justice.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the concern trolling I saw in those tweets.  “She blocks us for telling her the truth!”  No, I block you for being a bunch of bullies and a$$holes who can’t accept that other people can come to different conclusions than the ones you want them to…

And I block you for being creepy.  Like, seriously creepy.  Frickin’ stalkers who go digging for info on complete strangers.

One said to me yesterday, “We know everything about you,” and used my first name for her Twitter handle.  These trolls have done this to me before–specifically “Darcy,” three years ago.  It only confirms that they found my Facebook back then and were the ones sending me at least some of the weird friend requests coming in back during that time.

And yet–I never gave them my real name.  I never connect it to my online handle.  I don’t know how they got it.

Why bring these things to light? Why bring their wrath on my head every time I expose them for what they are?  Because these trolls have hurt a LOT of people over the past five years; a few of the people hurt are my friends.

People who do their best to track you down and learn “everything about you” when you refuse to give them that information, are stalkers, and no one to give any sort of credibility to.

That’s the kind of people these trolls are: bullies, stalkers, bunny boilers, psychopaths, abusers.  They’ve hurt countless people over the past 5 years with their harassment campaigns and refusal to allow people to come to their own conclusions.

This is what narcissists do to keep their victims under control.  By refusing to play along, we thwart them and their schemes over their victims.  By refusing to play along with the trolls, I become a threat to the triangulation campaign they have been running for years.  And by keeping my own mind, I’ve watched their claims fall to pieces–same as with everyone else who’s tried to control me in the past.

These trolls keep trying to bring me down because I’m a threat to them.  By standing up to them, I take their power away.  And that makes them angry, so they have to find ways to make me feel frightened or small.

You know what?   So what.  The more abusers try to shut me up, the louder I say it.  I proved this to Richard and Tracy eight years ago.  The more these trolls try to scare and ridicule me, the more I speak out.

Lots of people have deleted tweets and closed accounts to get these trolls off their backs.  I just keep blogging and tweeting.  (From my grandpa’s eulogy, it runs in the family. I also have Scottish ancestry: They’re fighters.)  Same thing on Facebook: Most comments are supportive, but I get laughs and snarks as well on my political posts. But that just makes me post more because our democracy is at stake and I’m trying to wake people up to it.

 

Lawmakers: Change WI loophole that lets children be placed with abusers (like Richard)

A story alert from the local paper just came on my brand-new (used) Samsung Galaxy S7 (my first actual, good smartphone, not some cheapo thing that doesn’t work):

‘Ethan’s Law’: Story on boy’s tragic final day moves lawmakers to close fatal loophole in Wisconsin law, improve child protections

Ethan Hauschultz was placed with an uncle who was a known child abuser, with convictions–but because he pled to lesser charges, social workers were forbidden to even consider the convictions as a bar to placing children with him.  This uncle, who could not use physical violence to punish, used other methods on the children under his care, which proved to be fatal.  Though it was actually another child who carried out the punishment, it was at the uncle’s direction while he was away from home.  Story here.

Now, two lawmakers want to keep this from happening again.

Today’s article would explain why Richard’s step-child, Tracy’s child, was placed back with Richard and Tracy even after Richard nearly choked her to death. He was charged with Child Abuse, but it was dismissed and the charges reduced to Battery after he pled no contest.  (Story here.)  I always wondered why the f@$k I saw all four of their kids, including the step-child, with Richard and Tracy after the charges and the conviction.  A man who can choke a 9-year-old child is not fit to have any children around him–and this was not the only thing he had ever done to her.  Richard and a mutual friend both told me of things that had happened before; the mutual friend said Richard had beaten the crap out of her when she was real little.  Yet there she was, still with Richard, rather than placed with her father as I would’ve expected.

This loophole in state law would explain why this happened.  But after the Hauschultz case hit the papers, lawmakers now want to change that loophole:

Hauschultz, who in 2009 had admitted to beating a child with a wooden carpentry tool, had been found guilty of felony child abuse. But through a plea bargain, the conviction went on his record as disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor that doesn’t involve violence.

That created a loophole that eventually proved fatal to Ethan.

Had Timothy Hauschultz been convicted of child abuse in the 2009 case, Wisconsin law would have barred human services workers from placing children in his care. But because there was no child abuse conviction on his record, caseworkers were barred from even considering the incident — though pages of detail were available in a public file in a courthouse a short walk from the human services office.

Jacque’s bill would bar human services workers from placing a child in the custody of any adult who’d admitted in court to abusing a child, pleaded “no contest” to a child-abuse charge or been convicted of a lesser offense via a plea bargain in a child abuse case.

 

Abusive Ex: Blame it on him, not mental illness

I previously wrote about this here, here, here and here.  New information has come to light to explain a few mysteries.  I intend to put the contents of this post at the end of the “Epilogue” chapter in my college memoirs.

If you’ve read the previous posts, you can skip the next few paragraphs.

In summary:

My abusive ex Phil–who manipulated, controlled, emotionally and sexually abused, and sexually assaulted me back in college–has mental illness.

I was his first wife, not legally but spiritually; this only lasted for several months, until he tired of me, having blamed me for his behaviors.  Because it was not legal, he had no trouble breaking it off and then moving on to someone else immediately.  (We’re talking maybe a week later.)

Then his next, legal marriage, only lasted for about ten years, ending 12 years ago.  In all those years since, he has not remarried–but was about to in July of 2018.  In those years since, we also became somewhat friendly again, with apologies exchanged, and communication via social media.  So I learned about his new fiancée through his Facebook.

But the following August, she revealed that Phil is severely mentally ill.  She said he has Bipolar II, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and other disorders which she did not name.

Her description of him as “wouldn’t hurt a fly,” and her friends’ descriptions of him as this wonderful human being, threw me for a loop because of how he treated me.  But she was beginning to see that “other Phil” that I had known–and said the illnesses were to blame.

They broke up; she said it was a combination of her not wanting to be treated the way the “other Phil” treated her, and him wanting to deal with his mental illnesses on his own.  She said he was on suicide watch.  She was supposed to be there as his friend, but then he “ghosted” her and she felt hurt.

New information:

Well, now she has revealed something else.  I’m not sure when she found out about it (November?), but recently she began posting memes about narcissism, liars, and the kind of man who has a string of “soulmates” who they wooed in the same ways with the same words–then tossed aside when they got bored.

(Some time ago, she re-posted a Facebook post he made about her: He listed all the things he loved about her.  The wording was the same as a list he made of all the things he loved about me.)

As she put it, he “checked out” months before August 2018, with “promiscuity” that put her “health at risk.”

So he cheated on her.  (I wonder if he still believes birth control is evil?)  Even this one, could not tame his inner beast.  Even this one, he tired of and threw away.  If she could not, then no one could.  She no longer speaks of his mental illnesses being to blame for his bad behavior.

And I can’t say I’m overly surprised: This same guy told me he wouldn’t be able to control himself over the summer if I went back home without him, which is one reason why I wanted him to stay with me at my parents’ house.  This guy would praise the physical attributes of every girl he saw out of the house, and every woman he saw on TV inside the house, and say he wanted to take them into the back of his van–then call me possessive or jealous for being upset.  This guy would tell me he wanted a harem, and which girls he wanted in it (including his brother’s fiancée), and then call me jealous.  But when I found myself falling for a nice guy in my friend-group, Phil became enraged with jealousy and then tried to force me into confessing my little crush to the guy.

If even Doris was not enough for him, then nobody can be.  If even she no longer excuses his behavior because of mental illness, then I have no reason to.  Earlier I wondered if a person with Bipolar and FAS can be excused for abusing and otherwise mistreating another, because that “isn’t really him.”  But it was really him.  It’s not just an illness, but Phil’s character.  Phil is a narcissist and to blame for what he did to me.

It also says that I am not to blame.  I still get little “time bombs” going off in my head when I hear or read something that reminds me of Phil saying I did something bad.  I start thinking, Was I really the one in the wrong?  But this tells me there’s no way I could have brought better treatment on myself from him.  Now there is somebody else, without my input, coming to the conclusion that he is a narcissist.  He hurt somebody else even while she still thought he was wonderful.

 

Reblog: When the Abuse Victim Becomes the Abuser’s Ally

John Crippen has just posted on Unholy Charade about abuse victims who help their abuser abuse others:

When the Abuse Victim becomes the Abuser’s Ally

What he writes of is just what I went through with Richard and Tracy.  I could never be entirely sure if Richard was just as abusive of Tracy as he told me she was of him.  There were indications that he could be just as nasty with her, that he himself was a narcissist.  But I can be sure of the abuse I witnessed from Tracy to other people, not just Richard, not just the kids, but other people they knew as well–even friends!

And one of those victims of Tracy’s abuse, “Todd,” experienced the same phenomenon I did: Even though Tracy was the one abusing Todd, Richard stood beside his wife’s abuse and then began abusing Todd as well.  Same thing happened when anyone–me, Todd, some other friend–complained about being abused by Tracy: Richard would stand by Tracy and help her abuse the person.

Pastor Crippen describes this exact same phenomenon, an abuse victim helping the abuser so much that it’s no longer clear who the real abuser is.  He explains that he is NOT talking about abuse victims who keep quiet out of fear of crossing the abuser, or victims who don’t understand what’s going on, but about abuse victims who are themselves mean and nasty to other people.  He describes, for example, a case in which the husband is patriarchal and abusive, but the wife herself targets and reviles the same people her husband does.  If anyone calls out her husband for his abuse, she speaks up and defends him and then holds a grudge against that person.

It was very hurtful to Todd when Richard did this to him; Richard then acted like Todd was the abusive one and that he was overreacting when he cut off relations with Richard over it.  He then went to Todd’s web forum and screwed it up, letting Todd blame it on a resident troll.

It was also very hurtful to me when Richard kept defending his wife’s abuses of me over and over again.  It was hurtful when she burst out at me in narcissistic rage one day, and he–instead of being apologetic and privately letting me know that she was wrong and misunderstood the situation and that he didn’t agree with her–participated actively in her abuse of me.  He also raged at my husband for sticking up for me, because my husband could see that I didn’t deserve what was happening.  When this happened, I felt so betrayed by Richard–yet when we cut off relations with them over it, they acted like we were overreacting.  Just like they did with Todd.

It felt like being on the playground with bullies making fun of me and raging at me, while I’m all alone, because there were two of them and this usually happened when they had me by myself.  With Todd, they made the disagreement public, and pulled in as many people as they could to help them abuse him.  With me, I know of at least one person they pulled in to their side, telling her lies to make her think that *I* was the abuser.  So instead of recognizing that I was legitimately complaining about how I’d been abused, she participated in the abuse, and became part of society’s problem of victim-blaming.

It’s triangulation, a tactic which abusers use on their victims, whether bullying, or domestic abuse, or spousal/romantic partner abuse, or whatever type of abuse.  It’s meant to convince the victim that she deserves what she’s getting, that the abuser is acting normally, that he’s the martyr dealing with her toxicity.

And when an abuse victim helps his or her spouse bully someone else, this is active participation in triangulation.  It’s frightening and confusing for the victim, who oftentimes is not equipped to speak up in his or her own defense.

I couldn’t understand it because Richard knew Tracy was abusive–he told me about it often–and told me even with her standing right there that friends would break off relations with HIM because they couldn’t handle HER.  Yet when she started raging at someone, he would step right in there and help HER.

Pastor Crippen writes:

These kind, sadly, are beyond help. I don’t presume to know completely what makes them tick, but in some way they have made the decision that the benefits of “standing by their man” outweigh the costs of exposing his abuse and leaving him.

This is a helpful post if you’ve been exposed to such behavior.  It helps me because I see that the baffling behavior I witnessed in Richard, does happen now and then.  It’s not unique to that situation, so it may have some psychological explanation (Crippen has a few ideas).  It validates me for statements I’ve made here before, that it’s wrong to stick up for and “support” your spouse when they’re abusing someone else.

Crippen both warns against getting close to an abuse victim who helps their own abuser–they’ll be “one of the angriest and harshest people you ever get sideways of”– and warns against becoming one yourself.

 

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