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Just Walk Out A Story of Survival 1995 Standing in the shower with the warm water running down her face, Susie can taste the warm, salty tears mixing with the shower water as she opens her mouth to sob. Oh no, she cries as memories of herself as a girl of fifteen sitting in a corner crying and holding her stinging cheek come flooding in on her like the water pulsing over her face. Why must I keep having these horrific flashbacks? Im out and Im safe, so when will these memories stop haunting me? I have to find a way to purge this agony from my mind. Pouring the creamy liquid atop her pile of wet golden curls, Susie lathers up her hair, digging her fingernails into her scalp. She tries to purge the pain from her mind by scrubbing her scalp fiercely. It just doesnt work; it never works. So the show begins rushing to the front of her mind like a horror movie that she cant tear her eyes away from... In the 1960s, times are hard for Susie and her family. Her mom has one to many mouths to feed. Susie's father had left them and remarried before she was a year old. It is easier for her mom to just give in to her daughters constant pleas to marry this older man who has promised to take care of her and provide for her. Believing he will fulfill his promise to care for her precious daughter, she signs the papers and they drive to South of the Border where her daughter is wed. "Just promise me youll let her finish school," Mom pleads with John. "Sure, I promise," he agrees. "Its unbelievable! Im fifteen and mom let me get married!" Susie exclaims to her new 21-year-old husband. The young bride looks forward to a Father Knows Best type of home where life is perfect and discipline is gentle and loving. Two weeks pass and her marriage is blissful until... One evening while Susie is packing the things in her old bedroom to take with her into her marriage, John is helping her and comes across an old diary of Susies. He flips through the pages and sees that his innocent girl-wife has actually had a crush on another guy before he met her. Susie tries to play this off thinking its no big deal. All of a sudden John is shouting and calling her names! --SLAP!!!--- Down comes his raised hand hard across her soft young cheek as he shouts, "Let me tell you one thing, little girl, you had better let that be the last time you ever lie to me!" John storms out of the room leaving Susie dumbfounded. What in the world just happened? The words themselves hurt Susie worse than the slap did. This was the man who loved her? What had she done so wrong? Feeling guilty for upsetting her new husband, she promises herself she will never do anything to make him angry again. Many years later, Susie will learn through counseling at the YWCA that The 1992 Journal of the American Medical Association published an article called "Violence Against Women - Revelance for Medical Practitioners," and in it is stated that Studies suggest that from 1/5 to 1/3 of all women will be physically assaulted by a partner or ex-partner during their lifetime. Susie will also learn through counseling that according to the National Woman Abuse Prevention Project in Minnesota, one of the behaviors common among men who batter others is showing extreme jealousy and possessiveness which often leads to isolation of the victim from other family members and friends. If she had only known this sooner. One month after they married, John moves Susie to Manassas, Virginia a town far enough away from her family and friends that she cant be influenced by them, as John put it. Things arent going well in their relationship and he blames it on her familys influence. "Honey if we can just be to ourselves, I know I wouldnt be so edgy all the time." Family influence? In the 1960s, families do not interfere with fights between married couples, primarily because the woman almost always ends up doing something stupid like turning against her own family to defend the animal who is abusing her! Susie begins to grow lonely while John is at work. She has no phone or any way to contact anyone because she has no idea where the post office is or how she would get there since she couldnt drive. One really warm day she has the door to their matchbox trailer open trying to get some air when a little boy about six years old comes by and makes friends. He says, "Hi, my name is Bobby and I need an empty bleach bottle so I can make my baby sister a bank. Do you have one?" Susie smiles and says, "Hello, my name is Susie. I have one that is almost empty and as soon as I finish washing the sheets out in the bathtub, you can come back and get it." Bobby leaves Susie to her work not knowing that he has somehow stepped on the toes of a married man. That afternoon John answers the door and Bobby asks, "Wheres Susie?" Johns face turns red and he shouts in a rage, "What the hell do you mean Susie?! Are you referring to MY WIFE?!! Her name is Mrs. Stipes, you little bastard! You dont have any business here. GET OUT!" John screams at Susie that she is never to refer to herself by her first name again. Hurt by this, Susie writes to her mother the next day telling her how unhappy she is and asking what she should do. Not having a stamp to mail her letter with, she stuffs it into a shelf thinking she may one day send it. This was not to be. John finds the letter. This is to be one of the worst beatings Susie will receive in her marriage to John. He beats her until she cant stand up any longer. Cowering down onto the floor on her knees, she begs John to stop. As Susie takes her hand away from her bruised and swollen lips, John sees the blood on her hand. John realizes hes gone too far and he cradles Susie in his arms begging her to forgive him. "I didnt mean it, I love you and would never do anything to hurt you!" He promises to never hit her again, a promise he will make with nearly every beating. Pulling herself away from the horrible flashbacks, Susie, now safe and warm in her own cozy apartment, walks over to the refrigerator and takes out an alcoholic cooler trying to force herself to relax and put some of these memories out of her mind. She sits back in her velvet winged back chair (one of the few things she managed to retrieve from her 27 years of marriage) and stares at the TV screen only to be reminded of the evil that men are getting away with as the verdict of a confessed woman beater comes back as innocent and he becomes a free man. Bending over to cry like a wounded animal into her cupped hands, Susie lets go of all the pent-up anguish she has been holding inside since the beginning of that nine-month trail. Although the trial was for murder and this is what O. J. Simpson was pronounced innocent of, Susie still felt like he was guilty. She has seen that angry look in the eyes of another abuser and knows what they are capable of. As she leans back in her chair thinking she has cried it all out, fresh tears well up inside of her as the flashbacks continue to haunt her. Susie remembers missing John so very much while he is working, especially since he forbids her to make friends that she can talk to while he is away. Standing in the door, her heart aches for just the sight of him. She knows its time for him to come home from work and she is standing there waiting for a glimpse of him. Just as she catches sight of him coming around the corner, her heart leaps with joy and she throws her arm high in an excited wave. As fate would have itat just the moment John sees Susie wavea car full of rowdy teenage boys speeds by between them hooting and hollering at Susie. She barely pays them any attention because she is so relieved to see John is finally home. John jumps out of the car and pushes her into the trailer. He starts to scream at her as he repeatedly slaps with the back of his hand, "Slut! What are you doing waving and flirting with those boys?! When will you get it through that stupid head of yours that you are a married woman and you belong to me now!!!!" Once again after the beating, John takes Susie into his arms and rocks back and forth shedding tears of his own, "Oh Susie, Im so sorry. But you have to be careful not to make me so angry. Sometimes, I swear Id rather kill you than think of you with someone else." Frightened and hurt, Susie begins to realize something beautiful inside of her is dying. Slowly the love and trust she felt for her husband was beginning to fade. There are just so many signs, that young Susie does not know about, that warn how this man will never change. Susie learns to see these signs later in life. As she goes more often to her counseling sessions, she well learn that there are four forms of battering: Physical battering, sexual battering, psychological battering and the destruction of property/pets. There is more than one kind of battering and ALL are considered forms of abuse and should not be tolerated. Psychological battering is considered abuse and it happens when there is no contact with the victims body, but the victim is attacked with psychological weapons. It is done in the context of a relationship where physical violence has already occurred (as opposed to "Emotional Abuse"). A wide range of behaviors which include aggressive acts done by the abuser to the victims body include pushing, pinching, spitting, kicking, slapping, choking, burning, and pulling hair. Some of the more severe are stabbing, shooting, clubbing, etc... Get the picture? Its ALL wrong and ALL abuse. During the 1970s, Susie tries to leave John several times. On one of the first occasions, John stands in her mothers front yard screaming and crying in a fit of rage after Susies middle brother, Wayne, turns him away from the door. Finally, everyones nerves get so upset that the police have to be called to get him to leave. In 1994 a female police officer tells Susie that police dislike being called for domestic violence. The woman says the main reason is that 9 our of 10 times no charges would be pressed and they would leave worrying about the woman. Like a lot of abused women, Susie believes that a young woman provokes the assaults and deserves to be beaten. A woman does not cause battering, although she may trigger anger in her partner. Many times an assault occurs without any trigger from the woman. The batterer acts of his own volition, consciously expressing his rage violently upon another human being, and has within himself the power to refrain from battering the woman. One would think that during pregnancy the abusive man would treat the woman with tenderness and love. The general view in our society is that the conception of a child strengthens the love between a man and a woman. This is not true in an abusive relationship. A batterer very often begins his most violent attacks during the partners first pregnancy. The fear of losing her total attention and love often provokes the insecure batterer to strike out against the "threat" of a baby. Although in Susies case, Johns insecurity surfaced from the very beginning. It grows even worse with her first pregnancy. When Susie is in her eighth month of pregnancy with her first baby, John comes home from work in a particularly sexy mood. Susie suffers from chronic morning sickness. This is not like the usual dizzy spells that send a woman to the bathroom in the morning during the early stages of pregnancy. Susie suffers from constant nausea and vomiting around the clock. She constantly fights dehydration and weakness. She was on three different medications before they found one that helps her to at least cope with daily life at home. But this doesnt slow John down. He complains if she pulls away in time to run to the bathroom, but after Susie vomits on him a couple of times he tries not to stop her. On this particular day, Susie is trying to cook supper. They are sharing a house with her older brother Bubba and his wife and two children who are sitting in the living room at the time. As John slides his arms around Susie, she turns the stove off with a groan, "I really dont feel well, honey. Please dont tonight." Susie tries weakly to pull away, but John spins her around and slaps her hard, "You are my wife! I have husbandly rights." He starts pulling her out of the kitchen but she manages to pull out of his grasp. She lets out a whimper as he grabs her by the hair and starts to pull her out of the kitchen. She tries to keep up with him but he is moving too fast. Just as she grabs onto his wrists to lighten his pull on her hair, she falls. John doesnt slow his pace one bit. He marches right past her own brother who is sitting on the couch with his wife. Bubba has a pained look on his face but doesnt say one word to John as he drags her across the floor by her hair like a caveman. Tears are streaming down her face as she desperately tries to stand up so the pain in her head will ease up. John throws her on the bed and demands his husbandly rights. Later, Susie lies crying and Bubbas wife does all she can to ease the situation as John sits crying and begging Susie to forgive him. Some time later, the beatings take on a new twist that made it impossible for her to endure. John had been brutally beaten as a child by his own father. To him, discipline means a firm hand, or belt as is usually the case with their little girls. At first it is just the two daughters. Two little toddlers doing toddler things like writing on the wall with crayons. John never punishes just one child. He would punish both of them to make sure he gets the right one or as a warning that they should prevent each other from doing anything to upset him. Off comes his belt. Susie buries her face in her hands crying as she hears her little ones screaming. The sounds of leather striking the soft flesh of her babies is more than she can bear on more than one occasion. She has to stop him! Stepping between them, Susie pleads with John to stop. He gets furious and grabs her very hard by the arms and slams her against the wall and shouts at her, "How in the hell do you expect me to teach them anything if youre going to interfere?! Theyll never respect me if they know youll come to their defense every time!" Susie thought to herself, "Respect? Respect you?" Something isnt right here. She is determined to get her children away from him. Susie takes a job as a waitress and leaves John once again. This time Susie hopes to make a safe home for her children. Starving would be better than watching him beat her children and having him beat her and call her degrading names. She then petitions for and gets custody of her little girls. John calls and comes around constantly using the children as an excuse to see and badger Susie to let him move in with her. Johns always late with the child support or misses it all together. The bills pile up and the girls are hungry. Susie just cant do it on what she is earning. She knows she can go hungry but not her girls. The social services told her it would take up to 60 days to process her application. John is being particularly nice and very convincing that he had changed. She needs so much to believe him. After six months, Susie gives in and lets John move in only to have the abuse start all over again. Unlike victims of strangers, victims of marital violence have legal, financial and role relationships with their assailants, making it difficult to decide what to do about the violence. Women do stay in violent relationships "for the sake of the children." The fact is that most children say they would rather live with one parent than in a violent home. If not separated from a violent father, children often repeat the observed behaviors in their own adult relationships, thus perpetuating the cycle of violence. Susie is not aware of this or she would have tried harder not to go back to John. During the calm/honeymoon stage, a man can be very loving and caring, showering his partner with affection. The batterer is frequently described by the victim as a good father and a considerate partner, especially in the calm/honeymoon stage. Susie looks back and remembers the night of the conception of her third daughter with bittersweet sadness. She knows in her heart that there were many times that she really loved her husband more than her very life, which HE treated so poorly. Things seem to calm down. John is happy with his job and for the first time in years he is actually holding a regular job. Hes becoming good friends with Bubba so they all move into a trailer park near each other. Ali, Susies sister who is two years younger than she is, has a baby boy! John wants a boy so very much that Susies heart softens toward him. "Gee, its been months since hes actually hit me," she thinks. "I want to make him happy and try one more time to give him a son." Nine months later, their last girl is born. Susie could do no more. In a last effort to please him, she names her daughter Joan, trying to make it as close to his name as possible. It doesnt take long after that for John to return to his old ways. With the birth of her third child, Susie is becoming a woman at 21. She begins to look at her past and the hell she has gone through as a girl. She starts to get really upset with herself for not standing up to John regardless of what the consequences would be. She will not allow him to hit her baby! She found herself taking more and more abuse as she refused to allow John to beat the children. Her sister Ali sees what is going on and she becomes her main source of encouragement. "Susie, youve got to get away from the jerk before he kills you!" She pushes Susie to go for her GED so she can get into college. It isnt easy. The first thing she has to do is take all her babies and walk the fifteen blocks to the library to check out books so she can study for her GED. There was no way John would let her take classes at the high school. She never lets John know what she is doing until the time comes for her to go and take the test on a weekend. She has to convince him to drive her to the testing center and wait for her. (John always waits for her anyway, to make sure she didnt sneak off with some guy!) After the test, she drops into the car seat exhausted. John smirks, "Gee, you gave it your best shot; its over now." Susie thinks it is all over. However, it is just the beginning. Six horribly long weeks later, Susie gets a large envelope in the mail from the testing center. Her hands shaking, she opens the envelope and something with a golden seal on it falls to the floor. She slumps to her hands and knees and picks up her official GED. She can hardly believe her eyes. "My God, I did it," she whispers in awe. Susie cradles the diploma against her chest and rocks back and forth crying with joy. She cries because she knows this is her first stepping stone to freedom. After seeing the movie called The Burning Bed, which is about domestic violence, Susie really starts to take charge of her life. She sees for the first time in her life that she is not alone and this is a problem faced by many women. This gives her the strength to take the necessary steps to enroll in a local community college. This is where she also gets a job and is finally able to take care of herself in hopes that one day she will be able to get out of this situation. The physical abuse mixed with psychological abuse and threats continue. The precious love that Susie once felt for John is replaced with a desperate desire to be the only person on either side of the family to remain married to just one person. John grows older and Susie becomes physically stronger and more aware of her rights as a person. The mean and hateful abuse continues until one day John has a stroke and for a couple of years is very dependant on Susie to take care of him. From this point on, the psychological abuse intensifies to make up for his physical weakness. Several years of this go by and finally Susie realizes the girls are grown and married but she is still to emotionally weak to leave John. Her nerves are growing worse and shes constantly falling apart. Johns insecurity because of his not being able to hold a full-time job (like he ever did), is making him project his failures onto Susie and she feels it weakening her further still. She tells John that she must do something to build her self-esteem. A friend at work, who knows how John is treating her, recommends a womans support group at the YWCA. John thinks this is just some more classes she is taking, so he doesnt question it. He hates for her to take night classes but he knows that she gets a nice big financial aid refund twice a year as long as she stays in school, so he allows it. Going to the YWCA group sessions gives Susie a whole new insight into what is and has been happening to her for so many years. For nearly a year she gets counseling and learns how she has a lot of help and support when she feels she needs to get out of a dangerous situation like domestic violence. Her plans start taking on more meaning, but she still has doubts. Susie decides to go see a lawyer to see what happens to her if she leaves her disabled husband. (Some people were telling her that it wouldnt be worth it, to just stay and take the abuse or shed have to support him for the rest of her life.) Does she have grounds to walk out? "More than likely," is the lawyers reply. They never like to give a positive answer. Then he surprises her with the same words her sister said years ago, "Look, no matter what the cost is to you, the mans a jerk, leave." Susie still has doubts. She is just plain scared to death that it will fall through again and she will end up back with him. Then the lawyer says the words that will ring in her ears like a silent song prompting her to take action: "One day, youll have taken all you can take, and youll just walk out." Susie thinks about those words for weeks, "Just walk out." After years of trying, Susie knows the love is dead between them. John has emphasized over and over how he controls her. One day Susie comes home from work to have John greet her at the door with an angry face and he starts to badger her, "I want to know exactly how much money youre getting for going to school! I have an RV sitting in the backyard and I want $2,500 to pay for it." (This happens every semester. Susie gets money to pay for books and tuition. There is a little left over to ensure transportation or any other living expenses incurred going to college, but John always makes a big purchase and Susie has to pay for it.) Susie is hedging on giving him the exact amount because she knows he will take it all. "Im really just too tired to discuss this right now," says Susie as she puts her purse down on the TV. John sits in front of the television and shovels mouthfuls of food in (that he has prepared for himself since he is home all day) as he snarls, "Im tired of you lying to me." Susie sighs and walks into the kitchen. Shes just too tired after working and going to school to fix herself supper so she slowly walks to the front door and stares out. John is talking but she can only see his lips move. She hears something about him dragging her up to the school and making her go before the financial aid counselor and have him tell him how much money she is getting because the university prohibits this information being given to anyone but the student. John has that scary hate-filled look in his eyes as he spits out while eating, "If youre lying to me again, Ill throw your shit out in the street!" Maybe it was the horridly mean look on Johns face, or maybe it was the thought of being humiliated once again, or may it was those words, "Youll just walk out" ringing in her ears, but Susie just goes totally numb all over and calmly walks to the TV and picks up her purse. She turns to John and says very softly, "I want a divorce." (Words shes never used in any argument.) Then she just walks out. She floats out to the car as if on a baggage ramp. She drives to her sisters where she stays until John realizes shes not coming back. Three months after Susie made the decision to set herself free, she is sitting in her living room and picks up a class paper to read for homework. It is an essay that she will need to critique in class. It begins with a girl having problems with her boyfriend. Susie does a double take and starts to read again. She has just finished reading some literature on domestic violence and after going to many counseling sessions, Susie is seeing what are called red flags (unjust jealousy, possessiveness, threats and sulking and the need to control the woman) all over the place in this paper. Susie decides then that girls and women everywhere need to know these signs. Even Susie admits to herself that if love tries to blind her again, she may not be able to acknowledge the warning signs, but she herself needs to do something to help these women in order to help purge some of her own pain. She sits at her computer and begins to pour her heart out on paper. The National Woman Abuse Prevention Project puts out flyers that tell us that typically, when trying to understand why men batter, people want to look for what is "wrong" with them, believing they must be sick in some way. However, battering is not a mental illness that can be diagnosed, but a learned behavioral choice. Men choose to batter their partners because the choice is there to make, and, until quite recently, there has been no consequence for these actions. Battering is the extreme expression of the belief in male dominance over women. To understand why men may choose to batter, it is important to look at what they get out of using violence. Men use physical force to maintain power and control over their relationships with their female partners. They have learned that violence "works" to achieve this end. Many batterers grew up in homes where they or a sibling were physically abused or where their mother was abused by their father. In one batterers program, for example, 70 percent of participants came from violent homes. In fact, witnessing domestic violence as a child has been identified as the most common risk factor for becoming a batterer in adulthood. According to The Journal of the American Medical Association from 1992, only in the last 15 years has domestic violence been recognized as a serious, society-wide problem, rather than as occasional incidents that result from psycholo-pathology of the individuals involved. One myth about battered women is that once a battered woman, there is no way out and if she doesnt get out, she will find the same kind of mate again. However, women who received counseling/supportive services are less likely to accept abuse from their current partner or to choose another abusive partner. Susie decides to take action and become part of the solution rather than the problem. She no longer considers herself a victim of domestic violence, but rather she sees herself as a survivor. She went on to do all she could to get her story out and invoke public awareness encouraging people to work towards changing this behavior. Other than sending manipulating messages through Susies children and family, John has stayed out of her life to date. Her pain is still great, causing her to seek professional help; however, she prays that time will make the horror of remembering a little less painful and endurable as she tries to tell herself, "Not all men are abusers."

Postscript to Just Walk Out of 1995
Its now going into 1999 and Susie is living the kind of life she only thought happened in fairy tales. Just going on to become a strong woman and believing in herself would have been achievement enough; however, her particular story does have a fairy tale ending. She found a gentle, loving man and is happily married to him. She continues to spread the word against domestic violence in any way that she can with her husbands full support and love. Susie now realizes there are so many forms of domestic violence. There are not only women who are abused, but Susie has learned that there are men as well. But what really tears her apart is the sadness in a little ones eyes when that child is so confused because the child loves this big person who has a hand raised against the unsuspecting little one. Im very proud of Susie and how far she has come and I pray that everyone who ever faces this kind of situation seeks help. There are links in my site to help. If you know someone in this kind of situation, please dont turn a blind eye. Dont argue the abuser or even talk bad about them, just make the abused aware that there is help out there. We can all make a change; it cant happen without you. Love and courage to all from Nancy (Angel)