violence

Reblog: Subtle Signs of a Killer: Non-fatal strangulations point to future homicides

The following article, written by Brian Bennett, is very informative about strangulation and research done in recent years. Some quotes:

An idea was promulgated for decades that there must be external signs of injury such as marks on the neck and/or petechial hemorrhage in the eyes when strangulation occurred. It was believed that without those injuries the assault could not be proven and likely did not occur. This idea is far from the truth.

It can take as little as five pounds of pressure for six to ten seconds to render a person unconscious. … Signs and symptoms known to be associated with strangulation now include a raspy or hoarse voice, difficulty breathing, vision changes, fluid in the lungs, vomiting and involuntary loss of bladder/bowel control.

If a person loses consciousness because the brain has been starved of oxygen then there is permanent brain damage.

In reality, the act of strangulation itself is a lethal act regardless of an offender’s intent. It tells us that the offender has a propensity to use lethal violence and I would argue also demonstrates a mindset that lethal violence is justifiable against anyone. If an offender is willing to harm their intimate partner, child, vulnerable adult or anyone using strangulation, then they can kill anyone….
A study of 300 “choking” cases by the Family Justice Center Alliance in San Diego and Institute on Strangulation Prevention showed that a woman who is strangled even once is 750 percent more likely to be strangled again and 800 percent more likely to be killed later.

Research is showing that many of the domestic mass shooters in the U.S. also had a history of domestic violence and strangulation prior to their mass killings.

This worries me because my ex-friend Richard strangled his own step-daughter, who was only 9, until she passed out. He, by the way, was some 400 pounds at the time, according to court records. She reported it herself, which must have taken amazing courage–and there must have been physical evidence. Since so many incidents don’t have physical evidence, and this was the following day (IIRC), Richard must really have pressed hard.

The information in this article makes me worry that 1) he could do it again, 2) he could murder somebody, 3) she had permanent brain damage from this, and 4) his step-daughter could end up with some guy who chokes her again.

Especially since he used to do stuff for the Mafia and once told me his plans to kill an apartment manager.

Especially since, in an e-mail to me, Richard and/or Tracy jeered at me for “not having all the facts” in this case. Um…Exactly what “facts” make it okay that you strangled your daughter? Even if they become so-called pillars of the community, I know what kind of people they really are: the kind who would minimize strangling a child and threaten and make fun of and stalk the person who discovered the truth.

But back to the article. Lots more good information is in the article here. I encourage you to read it if you’re with an abusive spouse/parent/caregiver/etc.

Persephone’s Own Outrageous Stories of Phil’s Abuse–College Memoirs: Life At Roanoke–February 1995, Part 8

On probably Sunday the 26th, the most likely date, one of the sororities held an 80s party in the Pub. It was part of a theme week held by the fraternities and sororities. There was a party each night, starting with a 50s party and ending with an 80s or 90s party.

I just went to the 80s party, since I was most interested in that. On the day of it, 80s pop music was piped into Bossard during meals. Charles complained because those weren’t the 80s metal songs he knew. But the rest of us enjoyed it because we were into pop rather than metal in the 80s.

During the party, however, somebody apparently forgot it was an 80s night, and played a mix of songs none of us knew or that seemed to belong to the present day. It may have been a radio station.

In getting ready for this party, I found a shirt I’d never worn, that my mom gave me. The collar was torn–apparently a garage sale find. It was really one piece, but made to look like a sleeveless sweater worn over a long-sleeved shirt. The sweater part was green, and the shirt part was white and green-striped.

This kind of shirt was popular in 7th and 8th grade, but by the time my mom got it, it had gone out of style, so I hadn’t worn it. It was perfect for 80s night, however. I didn’t know how to roll the handkerchief-necklace that was so popular in 6th grade, but tried it anyway, rolling my big, brown scarf and pinning it around my neck.

Astrid remembered kids folding over and rolling their pant legs and pinning them tight, though I didn’t remember that; I just remembered fighting with my jeans every morning, wondering why the legs of all my new pairs had such tiny hems that I could barely even get my feet through them.

Nowadays, I only had two pairs of jeans, both either straight-legged or gently tapered, nothing like those mid-80s jeans. I wore one pair and pinned the cuffs as Astrid described.

I still had a big, plastic hair clamp lying around, popular in 7th and 8th grade, and held up the hair on one side of my head with it, just as the clamps were worn back then.

Several TV’s were set up with Ataris on the Pub platform; I sat there along with several other students. Both of my absolute favorite games were there: Pitfall and Demon Attack. Frogger was also there.

I played them the best I could, though I had a hard time working the joystick and fingering the button without my thumb getting tired. I guess I was rusty. There were two kinds of joysticks there: the small, black standard and the long-handled, easier-to-use deluxe version.

(By the way: Also check out Pitfall 2. I played that all the time on our Radio Shack CoCo computer in 1986 or 1987, usually listening to Whiteheart’s song “Fly Eagle Fly,” which fit with all the bats flying around.)

Persephone was also there; after a while we got to talking. We were there so long that my friends left without me.

She had finally broken up with Phil for good. (At least, that’s what she said then. I don’t know if they got back together later. I do know they were finally “done” before December.)

We had many things to talk about and agree on. She told me her own problems with him; we laughed, complained and agreed about the ways he treated girlfriends.

She still went dancing with him as friends on Saturday nights, and laughed as she watched him flirt with girls there.

She said, “Phil practically lived with me and Trina” in Muehlmeier for a few months. He didn’t like going home, where the dysfunctional living got worse. (Either that, or a summer with my family showed him how a functional family lives, and made his own unbearable.)

He was at least as bad with Persephone as with me, if not worse. She said:

“Once, he even slapped me. I slapped him right back so hard that he never did that again.” Good! Persephone didn’t seem like the type of person to allow abuse.

“He didn’t want me to be friends with you. That was suspicious. Was he afraid of something?”

“We were very unstable: We broke up five times!”

“He’s not to be trusted.”

“I couldn’t believe his immaturity. One night, one of his friends came over to my room to visit Phil and me.”

(It sounded like his Vampire Friend S–. He didn’t want to introduce me to this guy, for fear he’d steal me away–as he sometimes did with Phil’s other girlfriends.)

“This guy thought I was pretty, and tried to steal me away from Phil. Things ended up in a huge argument, and Phil ran away. We finally found him hiding under my bed!”

“This guy even got my roommate Trina to spy on me!”

“Phil’s minivan finally died because he knows nothing about taking care of a car.”

“Trina even had a crush on Phil. She and his friends used to spy on me for him!”

(That reminded me of September between our first and second breakups, when I felt like Phil’s friends were spying on me. Now that I knew he did this to Persephone, I felt less paranoid to think he did it to me. Since Trina was also her roommate, this was especially hard for her.)

“Oh, it was a major rebound for him. He’d call me by your name, and I’d say–” with an angry tone–“I’m not Nyssa.”

“He treated me like a child.” Just as he did me, and just as he did his mother. “He respects you if you’re his friend, but not if you’re his girlfriend.”

“I think he has an Oedipal complex. He complains about his mother but is trying to get a woman like her.” To be fair, wanting a girl “just like Mom,” especially if Mom is a wonderful person, is not so bad, but treating a woman like a child is bad.

“After he got your last letter, he called Pearl over Christmas Break to ask what was going on. Then he saw the school counselor, who advised him to stay away from you.” I was glad, because I’d asked him in the letter to do just that, because he was being cruel to me and I didn’t want to see him.

“I didn’t play Dungeons and Dragons with Phil. One night he complained to his D&D group because I wouldn’t have sex with him! Then one of the girls in the group came to me and scolded me!”

This woman should’ve known better than to scold another woman for not giving her body when she didn’t want to. Persephone didn’t buy it, of course, and was very upset about this.

I said, “What a loser.” If she didn’t want to have sex with him, she didn’t have to.

All these revelations confirmed to me that it wasn’t me, it was him. And that I was well rid of him, as painful as the breakup was at the time. He was not just immature, but controlling and abusive, while pinning the blame on others.

Index
Cast of Characters (Work in Progress)

Table of Contents

Freshman Year

September 1991:

October 1991:

November 1991:

December 1991: Ride the Greyhound
January 1992: Dealing with a Breakup with Probable NVLD
February 1992:

March 1992: Shawn: Just Friends or Dating?

April 1992: Pledging, Prayer Group–and Peter’s Smear Campaign

May 1992:

Sophomore Year

Summer 1992:

September 1992:

October 1992–Shawn’s Exasperating Ambivalence:

November 1992:

December 1992:

January 1993:

February 1993:

March 1993:

April 1993:

May 1993:

Junior Year

Summer 1993: Music, Storm and Prophetic Dreams

September 1993:

October 1993:

November 1993:

December 1993:

January 1994:

February 1994:

March 1994:

April 1994:

May 1994:

Senior Year

June 1994–Bits of Abuse Here and There:

July & August 1994:

September 1994–Divorce: The Long, Dark, Painful Tunnel:

October 1994:

November 1994:

December 1994:

January 1995:

February 1995:

March 1995:

April 1995:

May 1995:

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on December 28, 2014December 29, 2022

On Ray Rice: Domestic violence is never justified

I’ve seen the long video of Ray Rice hitting his wife. I’ve also read that some people associated with the Men’s Rights Movement are sticking up for Ray.

Now, I am firmly of the belief that abuse of men by women is a problem that needs to be taken more seriously.

My ex-friend Richard was and probably still is abused by his wife Tracy, including punches and slaps. (Story here.)

Mutual friend Chris also used to be abused by his wife (though current pictures/posts of them on Facebook as a happy couple, make me wonder if they got counseling and fixed that.)

But while I sometimes read the blog Shrink4Men, that doesn’t make me anti-feminist, and I do not agree with everything I see there.

I agree, basically, with the idea that women should not abuse, and that men need to get out of violent relationships. I love the many extensive descriptions of how women abuse, because they helped me a lot, back when I was still reeling from the things Tracy did to me and to others.

I did agree with Paul Elam’s statements on Shrink4Men that women should behave like adults in disagreements, and that they should not be allowed to behave like a toddler having a tantrum.

I saw for myself how Tracy could act like a toddler having a tantrum, and it was validating to find that this is not right, and that many others have experienced this with the abusive females in their lives.

But I don’t agree that feminists are the enemy. Feminism is not about women getting control over men, but about gender equality in every way. Some bad apples should not be seen as spoiling the whole movement.

Unfortunately, it appears that some men who are actually abusers, are using the Men’s Rights Movement as a cover.

Men being victims of domestic violence, does NOT mean that men are more oppressed than women, or that men should raise their fists to fight back.

Simple fact of the matter, is that men are usually stronger than women. You see in the video that Palmer does strike out at Rice, but that he barely flinches, while his blow knocks her unconscious. I also see Rice cornering Palmer before she strikes, making me think she was afraid.

This ESPN article describes more details, which make it clear that Palmer was protecting herself, and not the other way around:

One former staffer said Rice, the former Baltimore Ravens running back, spat in his then-fiancée’s face twice, “once outside the elevator and once inside,” prompting her to retaliate with movements that were ultimately countered with a knockout punch….
“When she regained consciousness she said, ‘How could you do this to me? I’m the mother of your kid,'” that same staffer told “Outside the Lines.”
With his fiancée still groggy, Rice dialed somebody on his cellphone and said, “I’m getting arrested tonight,” the staffer said. Police arrived in 10 to 15 minutes.

Reviewing the video a bit more shows that yes, he was spitting on, harassing and trying to hit her while she was trying to protect herself, that she did not slap him until he spat at her, that she must have been afraid from being trapped with him in the elevator, that she was NOT the aggressor.

Apparently she spit at him right before he threw the punch–but that was after he’d been spitting on and attacking her.

It reminds me, also, of how Richard once told me that if Tracy’s slaps and punches ever made it to his face, he would hit back. Richard is 6’5 and 400 pounds. Tracy is nearly a foot shorter than he, and probably half his weight. You do the math.

Richard said that no judge in Wisconsin would convict him. Yet a huge outcry has raised up against Rice, and he is being disciplined by the NFL.

No, it is NOT okay for a woman to abuse a man. But that does NOT mean a man should strike back. He could kill her!

The way to deal with an abusive wife is to get out. Sneak out while she’s asleep, if you have to. Get help. DON’T strike back. That’s a quick route to a jail cell.

For men to actually defend Rice for what he did, sounds like any man defending his actions after he has abused his wife, and trying to make himself the victim.

I do NOT support abusers who pretend to be the victim. I support true victims of domestic violence.

My husband and I would’ve been there for Richard if he ever tried to leave his wife and take his children away from her many abuses. I would’ve even been a character witness in court if he needed it.

But instead, he kept saying he loved her and would keep trying. Meanwhile, I kept witnessing and hearing about her abuses, while he kept making excuses for her. It was Battered Spouse Syndrome, or Stockholm Syndrome, playing in front of my eyes.

Tracy disgusted and sickened me with her many abuses, which she kept defending. I feared one day it would turn into worse. And I felt helpless to do anything about it. I am certainly no apologist for women who abuse men.

I wonder what else has gone on there that I don’t know about. You hear that what you’re told about abuse is just the tip of the iceberg. I wonder how long it’ll be before I hear that one of them has been charged with domestic abuse against the other.

Now Palmer is defending Rice. It’s the same thing. I’m not going to victim-blame her for staying with him and defending him, but rather wonder what drives someone to stay with and defend her abuser. Knowing the answer would help us concerned bystanders, know how to help.

Note: This is when I first began to realize that MRAs are not what I thought they were.

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on September 12, 2014October 9, 2020

When our abusers get honored: Dang newspaper tells me about my abusers

Recently, the newspaper told me Tracy graduated college, and her major. I’ve also seen her back in town recently, right in the same parking lot I pulled into.

From various IPs linked conclusively to them, it looks like one of them has been in town this whole past year, even while she went to college on the other side of the state–even though her IP location came from a city near the college for much of the year.

Her main IP address is screwy, because the locations keep changing even though the IP does not. Sometimes she’s in Eau Claire, or Madison, or Rochester MN….

And now the same IP shows up as Fond du Lac, then Madison, then Fond du Lac, then Madison…. Other local IPs from that Internet Service Provider, including mine, always show as Fond du Lac.

She recently used one other IP that showed Missouri, but it was identified by my stat trackers as her cell phone–and she used that same phone on my blog a short time later, from Fond du Lac.

And sometimes I get hits from Texas, someone who has used Richard and Tracy’s unique search terms.

I have no clue what’s going on. All I know is that now she’s graduated and was in Fond du Lac again back in June.

I’ve heard of people leaving town to get away from their abusers, but that’s not possible here: We own this house, and were in this town long before they were.

The other day, I open up the newspaper and it tells me that Tracy got some kind of honor at her college. A couple of years ago, it said she was in an honor society of some kind.

I did not want to see that. She does not deserve honors after the way she has treated so many people over the years.

But unfortunately, academic-based honors often have little to do with the kind of person you are, and are based solely on grade point averages, so even sociopaths and various forms of abusers can get degrees and honors.

Abuse victims want justice. We don’t want our abusers getting accolades. Just ask the daughter of Woody Allen what that’s like:

After a custody hearing denied my father visitation rights, my mother declined to pursue criminal charges, despite findings of probable cause by the State of Connecticut – due to, in the words of the prosecutor, the fragility of the “child victim.” Woody Allen was never convicted of any crime.
That he got away with what he did to me haunted me as I grew up. I was stricken with guilt that I had allowed him to be near other little girls. I was terrified of being touched by men. I developed an eating disorder. I began cutting myself.
That torment was made worse by Hollywood. All but a precious few (my heroes) turned a blind eye. Most found it easier to accept the ambiguity, to say, “who can say what happened,” to pretend that nothing was wrong.
Actors praised him at awards shows. Networks put him on TV. Critics put him in magazines.
Each time I saw my abuser’s face – on a poster, on a t-shirt, on television – I could only hide my panic until I found a place to be alone and fall apart.
Last week, Woody Allen was nominated for his latest Oscar. But this time, I refuse to fall apart.
For so long, Woody Allen’s acceptance silenced me. It felt like a personal rebuke, like the awards and accolades were a way to tell me to shut up and go away.
But the survivors of sexual abuse who have reached out to me – to support me and to share their fears of coming forward, of being called a liar, of being told their memories aren’t their memories – have given me a reason to not be silent, if only so others know that they don’t have to be silent either.

Just ask any girl who’s been raped in college, but her abuser went on to get a degree. Even a degree seems too good for our abusers. This does actually happen, as a victim’s concerns are minimized and the rapist is allowed to graduate:

Woman is accused by college of harassing her rapist

A graduating senior at Central College who was found responsible for “non-consensual sex” with a fellow student was given a choice: be expelled a month before graduation or stay in school with the conditions that he not walk in the ceremony and allow the college to notify a future employer and other schools that he’d violated the code of conduct….
A year-long investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that students deemed “responsible” for sexual assaults on campus often face little or no punishment from school judicial systems, while their victims’ lives are frequently turned upside down. –Lee Rood, Central College lets rape suspect select punishment

Scott is a graduating senior, so some people may wonder why I care anymore. He’ll be gone soon enough, so what if the school didn’t do anything?
When he was first found responsible, I was told that the purpose of these sanctions was to help him learn from this. It is clear to me he hasn’t learned anything, and that scares me.
When he gets his diploma, he will officially be a representative of what Macalester stands for, and I fear that he will represent my school as a place that protects rapists at the expense of the people they victimize.
If I return to Macalester for my senior year in the fall and get my diploma next year, I will also be representative of Macalester.
For better or worse, I will be tied to Scott forever. I will also be tied to what I see as a pattern of survivors of sexual assault who are forced to watch their school choose to protect the future of criminals over their own safety.
My fear is that if I stay, I will become a silent accomplice to rape. Not just to my own rape, but to the future people I believe Scott will victimize. –Anna Binkovitz, Sharing a degree with your rapist

Just finding out that my ex Phil is a math teacher or professor, makes me cringe. Him, molding young minds? The guy who psychologically abused me and even tried to sexually assault me several times? And of course, to be a math teacher, he had to get a couple of degrees.

Years ago, I told people I hoped he would become a monk, so he could not hurt more women or, as a priest, advise married couples. Instead, he went on to marry, have two kids, and get divorced, making me wonder how that woman and her children have been abused.

My bullies, Richard and Tracy, denied the truth of what I wrote in this blog about their many abuses of me and others. I had already told Social Services about the abuse in their home. They threatened to sue, and began to stalk me at church for a while, then by keeping tabs on my blog.

And that’s despite the fact–or maybe because–Richard had been convicted of choking one of his kids, proving I wrote the truth. I kept my blog up despite all the hell they put me through, because the truth needed to be told. I told my friends and family about it, too.

The Forum we all used to belong to, was convinced of my credibility when they saw the facts of Richard’s case on the state’s and newspaper’s websites.

Yet still Richard and Tracy imagined they could somehow threaten and scare me into believing I was a liar. Apparently they were the only ones who did not see Richard’s conviction as proof I was telling the truth about domestic violence in their household.

Yet I opened up the paper yesterday and read that Tracy had received some sort of honor at college this past school year.

I previously learned that Richard, while convicted, plea-bargained and got merely a fine and year’s probation.

So he’s out walking free despite nearly killing a 9-year-old girl, and I still see the kids with them both despite Tracy’s verbal (and sometimes physical) abuse, despite my detailed report describing how Tracy had been tormenting the children and exposing them to her domestic violence against Richard.

I want these people in jail for abusing their kids and terrorizing me.

I want Richard to have gotten the sentence he deserved: many years in prison, which he would’ve received if he hadn’t plea-bargained.

I want Tracy put in jail for punching Richard.

I want them to either shape up or get their kids put with better parents.

I want them to apologize to me on their knees.

I do NOT want them moving on with life, getting honors, manipulating and abusing other people, being told how wonderful they are, continuing to physically abuse and psychologically torture and scar their children. (They have hurt a lot of other people besides me.)

One consolation is, while Richard wanted to become an Orthodox priest, my priest tells me that’s impossible because of the child abuse conviction. And a friend who sometimes has to help hire people, was directed to screen out anyone with domestic abuse on their record, because of the nature of the job.

It boggles my mind (and my husband’s) that Tracy got a degree in business management. HER, a MANAGER? She can’t even manage her own household or temper! I fear for anyone who, in the future, is put under her supervision–just as I fear for her children under her supervision. I pray for her children’s safety nearly every day.

And I’m not the only one who has to deal with this. I see the same frustrations, anger at the injustice of it all, permeating other abuse blogs. For example, this one, because this woman, a PTSD sufferer, was spiritually abused by a predatory pastor, then reported him–yet now he’s been made senior pastor at a new church:

Just found out that Pastor Andrew Allison has been promoted to Singleton Baptist Church

I am really angry and I have a right to be. It is righteous anger.

Allison also occasionally checks up on her LinkedIn profile, which is creepy. Yes, those of us who have been abused know how creepy it is to be “checked up on” by our abusers! I get “checked up on” every week or so by mine! Keeping my blog up has required a lot of courage, and has earned me a strength I did not have before.

This kind of thing happens in our churches, and it should not. It’s not just a Catholic problem.

It’s also not just a Christian problem:

Narrow Bridge, movie addressing problem of Jewish leaders who are predators

Hopefully the more we spread awareness of these things, through our blogs or other means, the more things will begin to change.

Already there is an outcry about abusive pastors going on to other churches, or keeping their current posts.

Abuse victims of all kinds are spreading the word that this evil exists, so that hopefully society can begin to stamp it out.

“Narcissist” is becoming a household word, and Cluster B (abusive) personality disorders are becoming better-known.

Talk hard!

by Nyssa McCanmore
Posted on July 24, 2014September 12, 2020

Phil wants a divorce–College Memoirs: Life at Roanoke–The Long, Dark Painful Tunnel, Part 5

On Friday, while I worked in the library with Sharon, I told her I was sad and didn’t know what was going on.

My old Lit teacher Wesley came up to the desk and we chatted. Remember the crush I had on him? He looked a bit scuzzy now: unshaven, long hair.

He asked what I’d be doing after graduation, and I said I’d be getting married. (What a pity: He was now divorced and no longer my teacher. And the student he once dated, just told him she was married now. If I saw him a day or two later, who knows what would have happened?)

I saw Dirk standing by the copy machine, and felt uneasy. After a few minutes, Wesley went on his way.

Dirk, still by the copy machine, and silent till now, talked to me near the end of my shift, and said Phil was upset. I had no idea what he could be upset about, when he hadn’t waited around long enough for my answer, and it was good news. Dirk just said he knew what was wrong and we needed to sit down and work this out between ourselves. (So why bring it up, then? And why was I the last to know?)

He also told me Phil was pledging Zetas again. Phil knew I had problems with the Zetas, especially now that the cool ones had graduated. He gave me every reason to believe he wanted nothing to do with pledging after how they treated him as a pledge the previous year.

I said, “What? He knows how I feel about that!”

Dirk said, “He’s got to live his own life.” But wasn’t it our life together as man and wife? As if the opinion of his own wife didn’t even matter! How insulting! And how devastating.

I felt like crying, though I did not know what was going on, and had to choke back tears as Sharon and I walked back to the apartment.

Someone soon knocked at the inside door (I don’t know how he got in the building without calling me). Sharon went to answer it, then came back in our bedroom, saying, “Uh-oh, Nyssa, uh-oh!” She left us alone as Phil walked in.

He told me there were too many problems and he was breaking up with me. I couldn’t believe it. I was also upset because I had been faithful to the vows we made even when I wanted to break them, yet he just went ahead and broke them.

Now I finally learned that he petulantly thought no one wanted him to sit down when they offered him the little cushioned crate.

I don’t know what he expected to sit on, when there was nowhere else to sit. I did not see the milk crate as offensive, nor did I see sitting on the floor as offensive when all other chairs were already taken. It’s just part of college life; I sat on lots of floors.

I feel he overreacted big-time and took it out on me. I guess what was good enough for the rest of us to sit on, was not good enough for his majesty. (A quick Net search shows that cushioned milk crates are often used as extra seats.)

Yet he thought I should’ve stood up for him when my friends treated him “so bad.” But this was impossible because I didn’t even know anything was wrong. I’m not a mindreader, and I saw nothing at all amiss in the way my friends treated him.

He also said it looked like we were just watching some 90210-like “teeny-bopper” show, and he didn’t want to wait for such a show to get over with.

But this show was critically acclaimed, ahead of its time, and inspired the first-ever online fan campaign to get it renewed when it was prematurely cancelled.

Phil’s remarks insulted both my taste and my intelligence, and all my friends’ as well.

This tells me that because he didn’t consider the show worth his time, I wasn’t supposed to like it, either, or be excited about watching it, or do anything but jump to his command.

If he says now it’s time to talk, even though I have previously made plans and he made absolutely no effort to contact me about when he would stop by–oh, I’m just supposed to jump and do whatever he says right then because he said so.

I never had a chance to tell him I had chosen him over the other guy. Instead, without a word he had vanished to a party with Dave, where he told drunken party boys about our problems and lusted after some girls. He even wanted to get drunk and lose his inhibitions so he’d sleep with one of them.

Fortunately, he didn’t listen to the advice of drunken party boys, but tempered it with the advice of a married friend to give me another chance.

He said the drunken party boys told him, “Oh, just dump her.” He didn’t want to listen to them because they were selfish and drunk–

–but what was he doing, telling guys like that about our problems? These boys–

–who didn’t know me and only knew the slanted story of somebody who gaslit and abused me, and told lies about me to his friends–

–called me “possessive.” I wasn’t possessive at all. (Sharon, on the other hand, called him possessive.)

He said he’d been talking to a friend of his, a married man whom he often went to about relationships, and asked how he could break up with me when we were married.

This guy said it wasn’t long enough to be a common-law marriage. I think he said it had to be at least six months in Wisconsin. He also said he thought Nazarenes recognized it, but the Catholic church didn’t. (I had never heard of the Nazarene church accepting or not accepting common-law marriages.)

Phil conveniently forgot that this never bothered him before. He hadn’t cared who thought it was a “real” marriage so long as it was one in God’s eyes. We already knew that the church and the law would not call it a marriage, but as far as we were concerned, it was one.

At least, that’s what Phil always told me whenever I started to doubt. He was the one who kept having to convince me.

Also, we knew Wisconsin didn’t recognize common-law marriages in the first place, so what difference did it make how long we’d been together?

In a research frenzy, I later checked Pearl’s dictionary: It described two different types of common-law marriages, one based on length of time and the other based only on agreement. For the second, all you needed for a common-law marriage was an agreement to live as man and wife.

Phil’s confidant also asked if he loved me, and he did not hesitate before saying yes. Though after reading about abusers and narcissists, I now doubt that he ever loved me at all. You don’t sexually assault and emotionally abuse someone you love.

He complained about “us eating just because you’re hungry.” Say what? Was I not even allowed to say I was hungry and wanted lunch, not even in the middle of the afternoon, if he wasn’t yet hungry?

He said “I’m not your taxicab”–just because I was scared to death of driving and had no car anyway, so I asked him to take me places?

He complained about me telling him when to wake up and, supposedly, making his self-esteem drop.

So–

–begging him to wake up in time to take a shower and have a decent breakfast, instead of sleeping until 2pm and not showering at all for weeks at a time, and begging him to wake up on the last possible day he could get his brakes fixed so we wouldn’t get killed on the way back to Wisconsin–

–was horrible?

What a load of crap. I can’t believe I tried so hard to get this loser back.

All summer, whenever I doubted the validity of our marriage because it wasn’t legally recognized in Indiana or Wisconsin, he insisted on the validity and told me not to worry about it.

But now, he said our marriage wasn’t real. He could probably get away with that in his church because our marriage was never blessed by a priest (i.e., not valid in the Catholic church), but what about in front of God?

So, according to him, it takes two people to end a marriage if one is abusive, but only one to end it if the other person is not subservient enough.

And, apparently, Phil decides when a secret marriage is real and valid–which is when he wants it to be.

Well, I considered it real and valid, and this was not a breakup, not the end of an engagement, but a divorce.

All the anxieties of a divorced, conservative Christian woman came into play: Will I be an adulteress if I marry somebody else? Must I be reconciled to him or else never marry again? Will I be free to marry again because he deserted me–the Pauline privilege? Will he be an adulterer if he marries again?

I had spent all summer trying to be a good wife: supporting him when he had job trouble, vacuuming and dusting our rooms for him, washing and bleaching the skid marks out of his underwear, praying for his safety. And this was my repayment?

If there were any other reasons given at this time, I don’t remember what they were.

Basically, he blamed it on me. Yeah, right. I believe he just broke up with me because I wasn’t willing to give in to his constant emotional, physical and sexual abuse. (The physical abuse was, basically, the sexual abuse; they were intertwined in this case.)

By not letting him control me or make me the “victim,” I was doing so many “bad” things that I had to become obedient and change for him to come back to me.

If I were such a bad person, then why did I not act badly with my next three boyfriends? And why did I never cry with anyone as often as I cried with him?

Yet I hear that Phil, on the other hand, carried on to his next two relationships at least some of the things he did to me. He acted the same, he yelled, he manipulated, he controlled, he acted petulant when he didn’t get his own way, and he even slapped his next girlfriend Persephone (only once because she slapped him back).

Cindy later told me that she heard him yell at me in the Krueger lounge, so she didn’t like him. Then she heard him do the same thing with the girl he eventually married (and later divorced). My friends saw him be mean to her, and want his way, only his way, and that’s it.

Mike later wrote to me that abusers commonly blame their girlfriends or wives for their behavior. They’ll abuse and abuse and sometimes even go so far as killing them, yet still say their wives deserved it, that they did so many things wrong that it was their fault.

Phil fit the trait “unceremoniously discarding,” here: What is Abuse (“Overt Abuse”). For years, I wondered why an abuser would leave his victim, and thought that it must have been because I resisted. Of course, Dr. Phil might still say I allowed the abuse by continuing to stay with him. But now I see that abusers do discard, so maybe I don’t need to figure out a reason.

I could admit to doing some things I shouldn’t have, but he took no responsibility for his own wrongdoing. During the talk, I didn’t think of the things he did, of saying that he was no saint, but they began to come to me later on.

For some reason, the song “Insanity” by Boingo kept running through my head.

Like an idiot, I thought I’d be better off with him than without him (apparently forgetting all the emotional abuse of the summer), and begged him not to divorce me. I said, “But things were getting better!”

He said he had given me so many chances to change, and that I hadn’t done so, but if I changed within a month, we could get back together.

(ME? I had to change? I was not the abuser!)

He said we might change after seeing other people. I asked him for a parting kiss, but all he gave me was a peck on the lips. He said just before he left, “Keep the faith.” (What the heck did that even mean?)

After he left, I broke down and cried.

I told my parents, though I had to call them collect through the new 1-800-CALL-ATT because my phone card number stopped working for some reason. My mom could tell I was upset just from the way I said hello to her.

She had hoped I wouldn’t have to go through this again. I think she told me to eat something. She did tell me to go to that night’s dance with my friends, that it would be good for me, take my mind off things.

For at least a few days, I made a lot of collect calls, until my dad got a new number for me. I believe he switched long-distance carriers to Sprint, which was why the number didn’t work. The new number was very easy to remember, mostly made up of our home phone number.

I didn’t want to do a thing without my parents’ advice, for fear I’d mess things up if I did. I remembered how I messed things up with Peter when I acted on impulse.

Possibly at dinner, I met Persephone for the first time. She was a dark-haired girl with short hair, a freshman, Trina’s roommate.

Some of the other freshman girls had told her they came to Roanoke to get married. She laughed about it with us, having already discovered that Roanoke guys had a bad reputation.

She said, “That’s it, I’m not sleeping with any Roanoke guys!” This secretly made me glad, because then she wouldn’t be sleeping with Phil.

Either before or after I met her, Phil told me he was interested in a girl named Persephone. I soon found out this was the same one.

I went to the Friday dance, after all, even though Phil and I were supposed to go together and now we wouldn’t. This was supposed to be my chance to see him dance.

Well, I did see him dance, though it was across the room. It was hard for some time afterwards to hear the songs “Funkytown” (Pseudo Echo’s version) and “Delirious” (Prince) and remember his foot-stamping. He was a weirdo jumping-bean on the dance floor. Though I didn’t notice, he later said my friends kept giving him dirty looks.

Once, he danced over to me, and I said he did dance weird.

It felt good to dance and escape and work out some of my grief, though I couldn’t stay there long. I may have left alone, or with my friends.