violence

Jealousy Leads to Murder

From the article Husband Charged in Killing of Wisconsin Officer:

An Iraq war veteran told detectives that he stalked his wife for several days while she was patrolling the streets of the Milwaukee suburb where she was a police officer, then ambushed her in the early hours of Christmas Eve and killed her, according to prosecutors.

Ben Gabriel Sebena, 30, was charged Thursday with first-degree intentional homicide in the death of his wife, Jennifer Sebena, who was found dead in front of Wauwatosa’s fire station by her fellow officers before dawn on Monday. She was shot five times in the head.

During the interview, Ben Sebena “stated that he had been jealous of other men with regards to his wife,” the complaint said.  Less than three weeks before she died, Jennifer Sebena told a colleague that her husband had acted violently toward her and put a gun to her head, prosecutors said.

Update:

MILWAUKEE (AP) — An Iraq War veteran accused of fatally shooting his wife, a Milwaukee-area police officer, last year has pleaded guilty to a homicide charge.  Thirty-year-old Ben Sebena originally pleaded insanity to first-degree intentional homicide.

But two doctors agreed that while he has significant mental health issues, they don’t rise to the level of supporting an insanity plea.

Sebena was convicted Wednesday afternoon in Milwaukee. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Prosecutors will recommend Sebena be eligible for parole in 50 to 60 years.

The criminal complaint says Sebena acknowledged ambushing 30-year-old Jennifer Sebena while the Wauwatosa police officer was conducting a pre-dawn patrol alone on Christmas Eve. Ben Sebena told investigators he was a jealous husband and had been stalking her.  —SOURCE

Update:

An Iraq War veteran who ambushed and killed his police officer wife last Christmas Eve was sentenced Friday to life in prison for gunning down the woman he called his “one love,” and the earliest he could be eligible for parole is in 35 years……

“What you did was the worst of the worst,” Borowski told Ben Sebena before handing down the sentence. “You took from this earth the person who probably loved you more than anyone, even more than your parents. You’ve shaken an entire community and destroyed two families.” —SOURCE

 

Hoping Asperger’s Does Not Get Linked to Newtown Tragedy

Oh, great.  Now in the process of figuring out why Adam Lanza shot up the elementary school, his Asperger’s has been revealed.

Then, of course, there’s the usual refrain when someone does something horrific: He was a quiet person, kept to himself….It makes those of us who are quiet, shy, peaceful and gentle, get lumped in with murderers.

“He also said he met Adam Lanza, who did not make eye contact or engage in conversation” (CNN).

I used to be absolutely terrible with eye contact, and it is hard for me to engage in conversation, but I’m not going to go shooting up a school.  I can’t even bear to hold a gun, let alone shoot one.  No, I take out my frustrations through writing novels, memoirs and blogs with fake names….  😛

Also, when I hear, “He was quiet and kept to himself,” I can’t help but think, Was he really keeping to himself, or was he just too shy to make the first move, and kept hoping somebody else would do so?  Did he feel marginalized, ignored?

A mother has already written a blog post about this, Special Education: An Overlooked Factor to the Newtown Tragedy

As one commenter wrote,

I was twice devastated by this tragedy–devastated by the innocent lives lost and devastated by the implications that Adam Lanza had Asperger’s.

I worry that this will trigger the kind of reactive prejudices toward Aspies that we saw in America towards Muslims after 9/11, or towards Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor.

I worry it will make our schools and society even more reluctant to serve the needs of challenging children, and more quick to push them out the door.

As written on CNN.com,

Russ Hanoman, a friend of Lanza’s mother, previously told CNN that Lanza had Asperger’s and that he was “very withdrawn emotionally.”

CNN has not been able to independently confirm whether Lanza was diagnosed with autism or Asperger’s, a higher-functioning form of autism. Both are developmental disorders, not mental illnesses.

Many experts say neither Asperger’s syndrome nor autism can be blamed for the rampage.

“There is absolutely no evidence or any reliable research that suggests a linkage between autism and planned violence,” the Autism Society said in a statement.

“To imply or suggest that some linkage exists is wrong and is harmful to more than 1.5 million law-abiding, nonviolent and wonderful individuals who live with autism each day.”

Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist and autism expert at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, also said the gunman’s actions can’t be linked to autism spectrum disorders.

“Aggression and violence in the ASD population is reactive, not preplanned and deliberate,” he said.

Also see Groups: Autism Not to Blame for Violence

What shocks me is not the gun control debate–that always happens after a mass shooting–but people suggesting we should arm teachers.  (See the above CNN article.)  Are you kidding me?  Allow people in a classroom with guns?  Heck no!

And as for who can buy guns–Those guns belonged to Adam’s mother, so it would’ve made no difference if a background check was done.  While I do agree with background checks and banning assault rifles, let’s not bring in irrelevant details from this case.

I have Asperger’s; I am just like you

Leave autism out of mass shootings

Wives Abusing Husbands, Husbands Abusing Wives

Even if Richard never speaks to me again over this, it’s worth it, because I MUST speak out, because his family is in danger.  My CPS report was because his family is in danger, so I’m not sorry for it.  I don’t want him to suffer in silence, or his children, either.  I don’t want to read about them in the newspaper–again.

Turn the light on so the cockroaches of abuse will scatter.  Shine it on what’s going on.  Don’t be silent.

Here is a story of a couple in which the violence went both ways–until he snapped, and killed a cop and himself.

I post to raise awareness of women abusing men because my former friend Richard is abused by his wife Tracy, and because if he fights back, she could end up dead.  (Story here.)  And because my once-friend Chris was also abused by his wife.  So I know this goes on, that women do abuse, not just men, and I want it to STOP.

Here’s an episode of Dr. Phil on the subject, “Angry Women, Scared Husbands.”  It also shows that abused men are tempted to abuse back, which is very dangerous because men are often bigger and stronger than their wives.

Dr. Phil:

Somebody’s going to get hurt, and you don’t have the right to be doing this in front of those children, not verbally, not yelling, not screaming, not physically fighting. 

You do not have the right to do this in front of the children, you need to stop doing that, and if you cannot stop doing that, then you do need to separate until you can get this under control, until you stop doing that. 

Safety first, for you and for the children.  So if you cannot keep your hands off him, then you need to get away from her until she can.

If you can’t be together with the children present without yelling and screaming and fighting and demeaning, that changes who these kids are.  That is abusive.  You do not want to do that.  If you cannot do that, then you need to be apart until you can.

It’s not about him.  He is not the stimulus, he is not the trigger for this.  It’s coming from inside.

Now that doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that could change in the marriage.  It doesn’t mean that he couldn’t be more attentive and more responsive.  And we could talk about all that.  But we can’t talk about that because what you’re doing is so outrageous.

You have to stop the outrageous behavior before you can deal with the daily behavior.  And to do this, you need to learn some new coping skills for anger.

And I think you’re probably getting caught in what is called a neurological anxiety storm, where your brain gets into a loop,  and once it starts, you can’t stop.

I’ve seen Tracy provoke people with verbal abuse, intimidation, belittling, demeaning–am aware of her physical violence as well–and then, of course, the person reacts back with anger, and guess who gets pegged as the problem, who becomes Richard’s target as well?  The one whom she was provoking.

She’s done this to me, as well.  This is very dangerous behavior when it turns physically violent, because a man may hold himself off as long as he can, but one day feel he has to defend himself–and he ends up in jail.

Then, of course, there’s abuse the other way.  My husband was intimidated and threatened by Richard, and Richard has been convicted of strangling one of his young children, making me wonder how much of the abuse in his household originates with him.

Also, I was verbally, emotionally and sexually abused by my ex Phil.  There are many incidents recounted in my account, but here are a few highlights:

Sometime in February 1994, we went to a birthday party.  Phil started putting his arm around me and talking like the Looney Tune drunken stork, and saying to everyone, “We’re going out.”

People thought he really was drunk, but I tried to tell them he was just drinking Mountain Dew.  People got annoyed (even me), and I tried to get him to stop, but it didn’t work.

Then he left the suite, and someone closed the door behind him, pretending to have thrown him out. It was a game, though partly they meant it, being so very annoyed by him.  They thought he’d come back in a few minutes.

Instead, we got a phone call.  One of the guys answered and tried to talk to Phil, but he just kept plaintively wailing, “Nyssa.  Nyssa!”  So I had to come to the phone.

I said hello, but for a moment he said nothing.  I tried to get something out of him, but it was harder than pulling a tooth.  Finally he said, “I’m at the phone outside your dorm.  Are you going to come here, or stay there?”

I didn’t want to leave my friends, but didn’t feel I had much of a choice.  He wasn’t going to come back to the party, either.  Cindy, who’d long since left the party with the birthday boy and some others, found him there.  Unbeknownst to me until several years later, he said to her about me,

“She’ll come here, if she knows what’s good for her.”

If I’d known Phil had said such a thing, I might never have gone back to my dorm for him.  But I didn’t, so I went, and spent long hours comforting him.

I don’t believe I told him that what he did at the party was okay, because I still thought he was being obnoxious and annoying.  My friends thought he shouldn’t have made me leave the party like that.

Cindy told me his words several years later, and that they left not because of Phil being obnoxious, but because they’d had plans to go bowling at a certain time.  It was Ralph’s birthday party, but he left it early, and we all thought Phil was the reason.  Well, okay, maybe he was partly the reason.

One Sunday in summer 1994, Phil said something I never thought he would say.  Once before, he had threatened to hit me, then relented.

But this time, in the van on the way to church, somehow the topic of abuse came up in the conversation.  I don’t remember why, probably after some threat, I told him if he ever hit me, I would divorce him.

He said petulantly, “It takes two people to sign the divorce papers.”

His girlfriend after me, Persephone, told me that he went even farther with her, that he slapped her once.  But she slapped him back, and he never did it again.

This episode of Dr. Phil shows abuse going both ways:

[Update 3/19/13: This video has been removed, and I don’t recall which episode it was.]

I have a website page which collects various links, arranged by topic, on the subject of abuse.  I run it because of Richard, because of Chris, because of my experiences with Phil, to help others get out of this.

Women Abusing Men

Reaction to Women Abusing Men in Public

This video disturbs me greatly.  The couple may be actors, but the bystanders don’t know that.  What is the matter with people that instead of reacting to this apparent abuse the same way as if it were done by a man to his girlfriend/wife, they walk on by and even cheer her on, saying he “looked guilty” and they figured he deserved it?  I’m glad that somebody, at least, called 911!

I can understand if they were scared: Women who abuse their husbands/boyfriends/children are just as scary as men.  If you confront her, or if she discovers through other means that you feel she’s abusing her husband and children and needs to STOP, she’ll turn on you.  I saw this firsthand, which is why I’m so concerned about this subject.

I saw things Tracy did to her husband and children (such as verbal abuse, ridicule, hitting, screaming at the top of her lungs, smacking a tiny child on the back of the head), I heard from the husband about even more things (such as hitting and punching him, even worse verbal tirades, verbally abusing the children and spanking them too hard).

She tried to force me to be friends with her or else she’d punish me in various ways, such as accusing me of moving in on her husband, ridiculing anything I did or said, trying to shame me, going off on me in jealous rages, acting all sweet to my face while telling her husband how horrible I was, accusing me of nefarious motives for keeping my distance from her.

The psychological torture was subtle but strong; she kept pinning the blame on me for everything, just as she did her husband and children and anybody else she had a disagreement with, and saying I was the one who needed to change my behavior, that I deserved what I got.  (You don’t EVER deserve abuse!)

She convinced her husband to go along with it, even to agree with her.  She crowed in triumph, not just privately but publicly, when my friend finally betrayed me and allowed her to pull out the stops and verbally abuse me full-force and accuse me of things that were not true–when he knew DANG well that I did not deserve any of it, that I was innocent of her charges, that she was blaming me and yelling at me for things he had done, things that had been his idea.

The emotional fallout has been devastating as I try to sort out what happened and crawl back up from feeling just the way she wanted me to feel, like a worm, like I should be ashamed, even though I had done nothing to be ashamed of.

Imagine what it’s like to be related to or married to such a person, unable to just walk away and cut them out of your life.

So I would certainly understand if these bystanders were scared of the female abuser, because there is something to be scared of.  Women like this are dangerous.  They could turn the beating on you.  They could tell you to mind your own d*** business.  It takes courage to stand up and say hey, stop doing that!–courage that I wish I had had.

But no, these people walked by because they didn’t think it was that big of a deal!  One even said that she herself is too nice and should do more of what the actress was doing.

Women should know very well what other women are capable of verbally and physically, that they’re not all angels, because we deal with such females as this all the time growing up and in the workplace.

And imagine what it must be like to be the husband or child of someone who feels she has free reign to abuse you–and you can’t get out, whether because of the stigma, love, lack of resources, or the very good chance that you’ll be the one arrested or losing the children to her.

But there’s still a stigma against men who are abused, that they either deserved it or are wimps.  That a small woman couldn’t possibly harm a larger man.  It just isn’t true, and what about the children who are smaller than the woman?

Then people try to tell their stories and hear things like, “What did you do to get her so mad?” or “You should forgive!” or “Don’t air your dirty laundry in public.”

I post to raise awareness.  I feel helpless because I did all I felt I could do, but it wasn’t enough, I couldn’t stop it.  But if society starts treating men who are abused the same way it treats women, maybe things can at least improve.

–reposted from Facebook, May 9, 2011

The Pain of Being In/Watching Destructive Marriages, Domestic Violence and Stockholm Syndrome

I’ve seen far too much of the evil of the world:

An old middle school classmate and his wife have been married maybe a year and a half, but ever since they got married, their drama has been playing out on my Facebook news feed.

There’s abuse, cheating, all sorts of nasty stuff going on; somebody leaves, their Facebook walls are full of complaints, they get back together and they’re all lovey-dovey posting cutesy things that I really don’t care to read (too much like being a voyeur, and I’ve never felt comfortable with other people’s PDAs).

It’s probably driving everybody crazy who reads their posts.  [Update: It’s been less than two years since I posted this–and they’re divorced, have been for a little while now.  So at least that drama is over with.]

Today, the wife posted this song by Rihanna, “Love the Way You Lie (Part 2).”  I don’t know this song, not having listened to pop music for about 10 years now.  But the lyrics are full of Stockholm Syndrome; read them at RIHANNA – LOVE THE WAY YOU LIE PART II LYRICS.

Video:

I tracked down Part 1 as well:

Lyrics are at Eminem-lyrics-love-the-way-you-lie-feat-rihanna.

I was once in an emotionally abusive relationship (Phil) that had the elements of physical violence being very likely in the future.  My friends and family all grew to hate him, but I didn’t know why.

Yet I kept trying to hold it together, even debased myself by begging him to come back when he–disgusted with my refusal to just sit back and take his abuse without protest–left me.

When he came back again two weeks later, it was to a broken, submissive person who was desperate to do whatever he wanted, just to keep him from leaving again.  But I did one thing wrong in his eyes, and off he went again.

It lasted nine months, but the baggage lasted for years.

One of my cousins is in a physically abusive marriage.

My friend Catherine married a guy who, with his controlling ways and desire for a subservient wife, reminded me of Phil, but she divorced him.

Another friend married her college sweetheart, but he began doing drugs, began cheating, they got divorced, and she discovered bruises on their son (from the guy’s new girlfriend).

I saw firsthand an abusive relationship (Richard and Tracy) because it was in my house, saw her slap his arm in anger, saw her control and intimidate him, saw her decide who his friends could be, heard her scream at the kids all day long, heard her pick fights, pick on him with put-downs disguised as jokes, order him around and accuse him of things, then heard from him after they moved out that she was punching him at home and spanking the kids too hard.

He told me he put the children in the closet once and may have to do it again.  He told me that if his wife hit his face, he’d hit her back.  I saw her slap a tiny toddler hard in the back of the head.  I saw her go nuts on two of the kids one day, with no clue what they’d done wrong.

The things I heard and the things I saw made me fear that one day, I would hear about them on the 6:00 news, unless I reported them to Social Services (only to find that Richard had already been charged with child abuse before I reported).

But he kept telling me these things were happening, then denying the truth of it when I told him I saw it, too.  He kept excusing her abusive actions, not just to him but to his friends, because her abuse was not just contained at home.

Then I heard that he himself was an abuser, had choked one of his kids to unconsciousness (a few seconds more would mean death), had once beaten the same child mercilessly when she was little.

But he’s so entrenched in Stockholm Syndrome that not only does he stay, but he lets her abuse his friends, and blames the friends for it, as her abuser-by-proxy.

Both are now stalking me for trying to get the story out–of what she did to him and what she did to me–to try to get the abuse to stop, accusing me of defamation, even though I am telling the truth, am using fake names online, and I have in my possession an e-mail and record of a phone conversation which prove I’m telling the truth.

(I held onto them just in case Richard would need an ally in court.)

My other proofs are listed in Now I’m Being Stalked, which also includes the narcissistic and DARVO e-mail they sent me a few months ago.

They’ve traumatized me severely, so severely I had to take to blogging to deal with it, and are now re-traumatizing me, on purpose!  The lengths an abused person can go to, to defend their abuser, is just mind-boggling.

And this when all I wanted was to be there for Richard, to help him see the truth of what was going on.  But who knows, maybe one day he will finally come out of the FOG (Fear, Obligation, Guilt) and come to us.

Another friend told me his wife was abusing him, trying to keep him from seeing his best friend (who happened to be Richard), would slap his kid on the back of the head, and he would leave, but he kept going back to her.

Now I advocate online through my blog and website, and on Facebook as well, to spread awareness of abuse, to let people know that women also abuse, to provide links to help for people in these situations.

The above song is especially painful because it’s full of Stockholm Syndrome, keeping the persona in a relationship with someone she knows is bad for her, because she’s addicted to him and the drama.

It’s painful not just to be in this, but to watch it, the shock waves extending not just to the couple, but to children, family and friends.

Abuse Tears Families Apart: A Sister Mourns the Loss of Her Brother

 

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