Real crime story: Interview with a 40-year-old woman who was a victim of intimate partner violence.
Starting Point: Divorce
“What happened was basically a lovestory that went wrong. I was married to my husband, the father of my three children, for almost 16 years. Things went downhill in the final three years of our marriage. But it wasn’t until I fell in love with someone else I had met online, that I finally plucked up the courage to end our marriage. My husband reacted badly. We had agreed that he’d stay in the house until the divorce was finalized, and I wanted to spend as little time as possible around him. So that first weekend after I had told my husband that I was leaving him, I went to see the guy from the internet, Mark. I hadn’t met him in real life before, but it went really well. When I came back home, things started to deteriorate even further. I lost 22 pounds in two weeks’ time. I couldn’t take it anymore. So I asked my husband to move out.
How The Crime Story Started
Within two months after meeting up with my internet love for the first time, Mark moved in with me. That was in April. The divorce was finalized on the 19th of June. Looking back, alarm bells were going off in my head already at that time, but I ignored them. I now realize that he pressured me to have him move in with us. He was very sweet, but I now realize that he made sure to first listen to what I wanted in a relationship and in a man, and then told me that that was exactly the kind of person that he was.
Once he was here, living with us, he basically made sure that my daughter moved out as soon as possible. He bullied her so that she didn’t want to live with us anymore. He was constantly provoking her, and physically pushing her. His entire body language was one of dominance and aggression. And my daughter is easily provoked. So when he got physical with her, she packed her stuff and left.
Not that the relationship between me and my daughter was great to begin with. It’s one of the things that led to the divorce. I tried to be strict with her, to be consistent when it came to rules. But her dad let her do whatever she wanted behind my back. I think she lost her respect for me. I think she was happy to have a reason to move in with her dad.
And then my boys… Mark intended to do the same thing that he did with my daughter with the twins, too: get them to move out. One of my boys has Tourette, the other is autistic, he has PDD-NOS. My sons told me, “Mom, whatever happens, we’re staying with you.”
The alarm bells were ringing louder and louder, but I still wouldn’t listen.
Becoming Isolated
Mark started isolating me from the people around me. He cut all ties with them. In no-time, friends were no longer welcome at my house. Acquaintances, neighbors, colleagues; none of them were allowed to be here anymore. He even managed to break off all contact between me and my parents. It goes to show that you can come a long way through manipulation. Every morning, he would bring me to the school where I work, and after work he would pick me up. He didn’t want me to be in contact with anyone.
He didn’t have a job himself. He just sat in my house pretending to be the king, while I had to bring in the money. He still had his own house in another city, but he couldn’t pay for it anymore. I’ve been so stupid. In the beginning of our relationship, I was very open to him about how much money I was making. He never told me anything. So I really offered myself to him on a silver plate: “Exploit me, use me.” Looking back, I feel as though that’s what I did. Perhaps this hadn’t happened to someone stronger, I don’t know.
I was so naïve. I had to reach this age to learn that. I was brought up in a very protected environment. Over the past two years, I have really learned how some people function psychologically, how any of this is even possible.
He was addicted to marihuana. He smoked a gram per day. Not that I noticed. My nose doesn’t function properly, so I can’t smell anything. In the end, my kids told me. They were complaining to me that they were having headaches. So I asked them, “How is that possible? I smoke too, don’t I?” My kids said, “Yeah, mom, but he doesn’t smoke cigarettes.” I had to ask them what weed is, I didn’t even know, can you believe that?
Violent Development of the Crime Story
He beat me up badly once. We were at his house. My whole body was covered with bruises. I had a bruised sternum, it lasted for a week. He didn’t really hit me. It was more like pushing. He’s a big man, with big muscles. And I was like 120 pounds. If he pushed me, I’d end up on the other side of the room. That was in the third weekend of June. He told me he had drunk too much, that he was sorry, and that it wouldn’t happen again.
And then at the end of August, he did it again. That time, it was in my house. I had tried to end our relationship, and he got violent. That second time, I told him that he was not going to do that to me again. And I think I made that quite clear. Because he didn’t do it again. On the other hand, I also avoided confrontations after that.
My boys have had a very difficult time. They’ve had to delay their puberty for two years. They’re starting to catch up again now. He was violent towards one of my boys. He threw him from one side of the room to the other, against the front door. My son got a sprained wrist. My other son always made sure to stay out of it. He just wanted to support me.
I have let this man terrorize my boys, even though I think I’m a good mother. But if you let your boys being terrorized…
I let him push me twice. I told him, “Don’t let it happen a third time, or I’ll throw you out of the house.” And he didn’t do it again after that. But with my child… When he pushed my child, I told him, “This doesn’t happen a second time, or you’re out.”
Domination and Threats
You see, in the beginning, he tried his best to be nice. But at the end, he would ask me five questions, and I would have only time to say three words, before he yelled the next seven questions at me. I was being dominated, terrorized, and tyrannized.
At one point, I found out that he had my ex-husband’s and his new girlfriend’s cell phone number. He was sending them threats by text message in the middle of the night. I had told Mark confidential things about my marriage. I had told him about one of the main reasons why I wanted to divorce my ex-husband. I understand that he was reacting to that, but the way in which he did it was so wrong. It wasn’t up to Mark to start threatening them in the way he did. You see, my ex-husband had a thing for choke sex. Sex was only good for him when he got to choke me. So at one point, you know, the lights go out, everything goes black. So, we started sleeping apart. Before I even fell in love with Mark, my husband and I had been sleeping apart for three months. I slept in my son’s bunk bed.
When you finally come out of that situation, and you think that you’ve found a safe place and a supportive person, that’s when things start coming back to you. I finally realized what had been done to me. What I had allowed my ex-husband to do to me.
Anyway, this fantastic new boyfriend of mine, who was so good to me, and to my kids, and to my ex-husband, I stayed with him for a little over a year.
Getting Out
So the first time I tried to end the relationship, he got violent. And then after that I wanted to end it, but I didn’t know how. I thought I was all alone. I also stayed with him because I felt bad for him. He had never processed the loss of his brother. I thought, I can help him process the loss of his brother and then the great guy that I know is underneath it all will come out.
Perhaps I couldn’t end it earlier, emotionally I mean. There are so many factors that play a role. An ex-husband who said that the guy that I was looking for doesn’t exist, only in my dreams. That I wouldn’t be able to stay in any relationship. Those are things that help determine that you stay in an unhealthy relationship for too long. That you don’t ask for help.
You are so ashamed that you ended up with a guy like this.
When he said that he didn’t ever want to have a job again, that changed something inside of me. Up to that point, he had always said that he wanted to go back to work. But so many things had already happened. And then when he said that, when he made clear that he was going to exploit me, I knew, “enough is enough”. I knew that he wasn’t going to change.
He decided that he wanted to go back to his own house to think about whether he still wanted me. I had kind of pushed things to go that way, because he had made it clear that nobody would ever get him out of this house.
So when he did leave on his own accord, I immediately changed the locks. That was on the 19th of February. I had them changed within ten minutes after he left. He had refused to give back his key, because he wanted to go in and out whenever he pleased. But this is my house. He hadn’t paid a penny for the entire year. I always paid everything for myself, the kids, and for him. So I thought to myself, “Well, this handy woman surely can change the locks all by herself.” So that was solved.
And that’s when the craziness really started.
Stalking
In March and April, the stalking started. That’s when I got scared. He was calling me on my cell, on my landline, sending messages over the Internet. Calling the school where I worked. Suddenly showing up at my doorstep. His house is 125 miles away from here. I thought I was safe – I mean, 125 miles is pretty far away. But no, he would drive all the way down here to show up at my house or at school for half an hour.
He kept me up at night, too. He would start calling me at half past 1 in the morning. Cell phone, landline, cell phone, text message, landline, and so on. Until four or five in the morning. And I had to get up at seven in the morning to go to work.
He threatened that he would come by, that he would manage to get into the house, that he knew where I worked, that he knew all of my routines. Wherever I went, he knew where I was and so he could show up at any moment. That was the constant threat. Just purely frightening me. Not “I’ll kill you” or “I’ll stab you to pieces”, but just “I know where you are and what you’re doing at every moment of the day.”
I never used to lock my door. Now I started to lock it. And I thought to myself, “Look at me, sitting in a locked up house, I don’t even dare to leave the door open, let alone sit in my garden.” I was scared that he’d suddenly show up and I wouldn’t be able to get away from him. It took four months before I dared to sit in my garden again.
Reporting to the Police
The police came once when he showed up at my school. But they told me that they don’t get involved in marital quarrels. That I had to handle it myself. And that otherwise, I should call some type of television show, “All you need is love” or something (MA: this is a tv-show where lovers are brought back together). So I felt like I was being taken very seriously. Not. Of course, this was a male police officer. I get it, what they must have thought: “How can an intelligent women get into a situation like this?”
After he threatened the school two or three times, my boss called the police. Mark had told my boss that if he didn’t get to speak to me right way, he’d start handing out compromising photos of me at school. So my boss responded, “Whatever someone does in their own time is their business. But this is a threat to the school.” This second time, the police were there in no-time.
The police advised me to change my landline, cell phone number, and e-mail address. I had a profile at this social networking site, and the police told me to remove it. So I did. Then I set up a profile at another social networking site, and he came to stalk me there. But I just stopped responding. So that was the only thing the police told me: cut all new ties that he finds to connect with you. But that would mean that he still influences my life. If I have to stop his efforts to contact me, he is still in full control. So I set up a new profile at the same social networking sit. You see, all my friends there are kids from school. It’s just fun. It’s crazy not to be able to do that because some crazy person is terrorizing you.
It’s just not fair. He can continue to do what he does without punishment. In the meantime, I have to prove that I did everything to avoid contact with him by keeping a diary of at least two months. And if he continues to stalk me for longer than two months, only then can I report him to the police.
But he knew that, too. So the stalking lasted for six weeks, and then I wouldn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks. Then he came back for six weeks, and then again he’d be gone for three weeks. And then again six weeks. All in all, this whole thing lasted for almost a year.
Effects of a Real Crime Story
What really affected me was the thought that I, a fragile woman, would be grabbed by this strong guy. If he shows up, I don’t stand a chance. I would disappear and never show up again.
I started sleeping really badly. I lay awake for nights, being exhausted as a consequence. You feel like a prisoner in your own life. You feel like Big Brother is watching you, as though there are camera’s in your home and as though you’re being watched every second of every day, even when you rationally know that that is not the case. It makes you very insecure and anxious. You don’t want to do things by yourself anymore. It was there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You are constantly being overly cautious and on the alert. I was almost afraid to go out at all. My boss sent me on sick leave for two weeks.
It felt terrible to be completed isolated socially. It felt terrible that we were being terrorized and that I didn’t see a way out of it. It felt terrible that my whole life was being controlled by someone else, a person I had absolutely no control over.
I used to go running, but he knew when and which routes I took. So I changed my running routine. Now, I only run with my son or with the neighbor. Never alone.
I starting going to work earlier. I used to go at 7:45 am, but after everything that happened, I went at 7:30. After work, I didn’t go home at 3:30 pm anymore, but at 4. I stopped doing that only a month ago, going back to my old routines. In the beginning, a colleague brought me home. I started grocery shopping in a different town. I still go there to this day. It’s become like a new routine.
Recovery
I’m slowly starting to loosen up again. I’m slowly going back to my old routines. My whole social network had fallen apart; I had no one left. All that time I thought, I’m all alone, I have no one left. But within a week, I had half of my friends back. When I was finally starting to talk to the neighbors again, they told me they’d keep an eye on me. They said that if Mark would turn up in our street again, that all of the guys in the neighborhood would stand up for me and go get him.
I gave him 4,500 Euro over the course of the year that I was with him. It’s not documented as a loan anywhere, so I don’t have a leg to stand on. At one point, I came up with a way to get back at him for it. Yes, look at me, being all criminal. You see, there’s this gift tax that people have to pay, and I thought, that’s how I’m gonna get him back. He’s gonna have to pay taxes over that loan. But then my tax guy said: “Well, if you let him pay a gift tax, then the tax authorities can start digging into him living here during that time, and then you’ll get in trouble. Is that worth it to you?” Then I thought, no, I don’t want to get into trouble just to get back at him. So in the end, did I do anything to get back at him? No. Was I able to come up with anything better than this? No, because it’s not in my nature. I think you have to be a mean person to think of a way to get back at someone. I said once that if he ends up standing in front of my car, that I’ll step on the gas. But I wouldn’t.
What I would like to do is go to his place with a group of bikers. Just to show him what it’s like to be threatened. It’s the idea – it’s not something I would actually do. It just seems great in my mind.
You know, I was a little vengeful after he left. On February 19th, I got new locks. On March 10th, I got my first motorcycle lesson. And I thought to myself, you know what, I’m only gonna go out with guys with motorbikes from now on. I had just made a new, fake social media profile. New “friends” there would need to be checked via webcam before they were forwarded to my real profile. That’s how I met my current boyfriend. There were only two months in between Mark and my new boyfriend. I’m not afraid that the same thing will happen with my new boyfriend. Some people just have it in them.
The positive thing about everything that happened is that my relationship with my sons would never have been as strong as it is if this hadn’t happened. If we hadn’t had to go through this together, we’d never have such a strong relationship. That’s something that I can appreciate.
It’s over now. He’s no longer contacting me. His last message was in January. But it no longer affected me. That was the first time that I thought, “this is something that I can laugh about.” It wasn’t a threat, either. Just liking or un-liking something. Maybe he’s still monitoring my profile from a distance, I don’t know. I’m no longer afraid that he comes back. I’m becoming looser when it comes to locking the house.
It’s been a year. I just need to get over it.”
This real crime story of a victim of intimate partner violence is part of the “Crime Stories” series. These real crime stories show how crimes can affect lives. They were recorded as part of the author’s criminological research.
