Domestic violence is a crime that hits home physically for a lot of families, but the abuse isn’t limited to punching, slapping, or kicking. It can be mental, emotional, sexual, and even financial. In 2016 alone there were over 70-thousand domestic calls reported to the police in Tennessee.
In DeKalb County the Haven of Hope now offers a domestic abuse support group. To lead the group, Haven Clinical Director Kay Quintero turned to one of their clients who survived her traumatic situation. We’ll call her “Sally” to protect her identity.
“There have been women [attend group] who have been in abusive relationships for 27 years, and the only reason they got out of it was because their partner died. There’s been physical abuse and a lot of sexual abuse. The thread that we all find is that we’ve been manipulated mentally.”
Sally, who escaped to DeKalb County from a state north of Tennessee, suffers from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome).
“One of the therapists saved my sanity [by treating] my diagnosis of PTSD” Sally said. “I’d go out and see a Ford F-150 that looked like my ex’s, and I’d start a full-blown panic attack at the grocery store.”
A few months of therapy, and her life has been turned around. Still, the hellish situation she endured for 13 years remains firmly in her memory. Sally was married to the man she thought was her soul mate. They were well-to-do successful members of the community, but when the couple had their son, Sally says they drifted apart and he started having affairs, so she filed for divorce in 2008.
“Once I filed for divorce is when the abuse was ramped up. He was at the very minimum narcissistic, probably psychopath, what we call Cluster B disorders.”
“The biggest red flag I missed was the complete lack of empathy that he had.”
Though she never sported a black eye or any other wound from domestic assault, she lived in another form of abuse. A stay-at-home mom, Sally had no money and couldn’t afford to leave the house when the bitter legal action began.
“He told me he wasn’t going to give me any of the money and that he was going to file for sole custody so he wouldn’t have to pay child support. He let the accounts go dry. I didn’t have money for groceries. I had to put my lawyer on a credit card. He would come home ranting and raving, trying to get me to settle, trying to make my life difficult.”
“The judge would not remove him from the house. I had to put a restraining order on him in my own home. He could not come into the master bedroom. I pretty much lived in my room for about a year.”
Although Sally wanted to leave her situation, she didn’t have the money to get out.
“I was beside myself mentally,” she explains. “There was no way I could have worked. The city we lived in the nearest one bedroom apartment cost $1,100 a month. I was stuck.”
She says fear is a powerful motivator that prevents victims from leaving the abuse.
“The abusers prey on that. There was another woman in my little town who was going through the same thing. The day she filed to have him evicted from the house she went missing, and he was named as a person of interest. She was never found. I woke up one morning in my home, and I heard a noise outside, and they were dragging the retention pond by my house, looking for her body, which they never found. That hit home for me.”
Frightened, she sent out a secretive email.
“When you have to write an email to all your family and friends and say, ‘I’d never kill myself, and I’d never leave my child. If anything happens to me, he did something. That was probably one of the hardest things I ever did.”
Sally now says she didn’t realize she was the victim of abuse until she removed herself from the situation. Today she is encouraging other women who are dealing with domestic abuse to reach out to the Haven of Hope for help.
The group meets at the Haven of Hope. Call 597-HOPE to find out the days and times for meetings.
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