opportunity to feed their children many even the selling their own organs to unscrupulous dealers in shady under the counter deals. next america is suffering from a hidden epidemic of domestic violence and delves deep into the mindset of abusers and their victims. courtship of abuse to me. i can sum it up in one word despair. and i just prayed that if you didn't find me if i could just live through the night that i would get my kids out of here because i knew that what was going to happen was that he was going to kill me.

i love this guy in a promise to be his wife into honor and respect and cherish him in this is what he did to me. the look on my son's face. stoics into it and stop this dad. it's really important to ask her are you being hurt are you afraid to go back home if we don't as we won't find out. she had a bag packed that was in her bedroom share another bag packed that was in her car our assumption as she told him that he was that she was leaving. the portrait of abuse is fine that is extremely frightening extremely dark even for it looks silly k. now that as a community we can provide that ran from. just

one thing for the most violent divide both involving parents reporters cover stories every day. of domestic violence in america they shine the spotlight on famous men arrested for murder or assault of a girlfriend or wife the daily headlines reveal secrets of private people victims and abusers hidden from view until police investigate. many stories fail to name the crowd as domestic violence or put the crisis in context. at least four million women are affected by abuse every year it is a public health epidemic and we must do more to save women's lives.

if you think that of for women you know. and realize that one out of every four women is being abused it's appalling domestic violence can affect people from any age range any social economic background any racial or cultural background we've seen women from asian countries who married american man and moved to this country and then were abused we've seen people from some of the middle eastern countries who are abused as part of their culture so it can hit anybody can just be anyone it can hit doctors wives policeman's wives ministers' wives many victims don't understand that domestic violence includes verbal abuse psychological abuse physical abuse and sexual abuse. it's

real it's visible statistics or are not lying here they are telling us what's going on all. i always knew that i wanted to be an artist my father i would go for sunday drives that he would ask who would want to do up us like you know i want to be an artist when i met this man i fell in love with him all psych ok you know i think i'll give love a try it was twenty five. dream it well we were the military. may for two years dated for one year. live very first if it was. only got married i got pregnant amanda and i and i was pregnant i was excited we're both very excited. and. losing my baby and to

a pregnancy so i came whole you know after recovery and you know for recovery after breast surgery my husband picked me up and he threw me. and i don't even know what set him off wiring arkan but he picked me up and threw me across the road and ows all the hours that goes like oh my god my sisters are going to rip what am i going to do it's like his soul was just empty as start to get physical with the choking. this reliving that just thinking about it you know what see clips of my life just just flashing in my head you know am i going to die michael made my way you know what's happening to me to the point i couldn't breathe i would guess prayer but just something with it myself just made me just want to fight you know continue to live. i just had to. choir member the night that i made the decision to leave from that moment to the

next morning i was in a war zone. first he beat me until i was unconscious held me down on the floor put his knees on my shoulders. burn my marriage with a cigarette burn my arm with a cigarette. kicked me in the left ear until i was unconscious. and stripped me of my clothes and threw me in the back yard and it was twenty seven degrees below zero with the wind chill that night we were in wisconsin and it was january so i ran to the garage and i knew i had to hide so i found a tarp and i wrap myself in that and i hid in a corner behind something and i heard him come in and he had a stick and i heard him poking around in the garage. and i just prayed that if you didn't find me if i could just live through the night that i would get my kids out

of here because i knew that what was going to happen was that he was going to kill me because he told me so many times and that night he he promised me that he kill me and that he those kids would never see their mother my youngest son was at home at the time and he was. upstairs but he heard his father yelling and. he came down and his father just continued to attack me and he threw me to the ground in the hallway and then while i was down and i was trying to calm myself he started kicking me. and my son the look on my son's face was the scariest thing ever similar because you know it can stop his dad it could help me i can remember pleading for my life as the mother of his children please don't hurt me i'm the mother pure children they need me when i pick myself off before i realized that not only was i quitting for my children's life but i was playing for my own and i

couldn't be a mother. if i wasn't existing and that was the lightbulb moment for me when i said this has to change and only i can change. a lot of people are not aware that within domestic violence many women are. sexual abuse is probably the least talked about for the first eighteen years of my life i was told or had the sense of i was i was nothing i meant nothing i was not loved so the first guy that walks by and says i love you that was yet wow somebody loves me and it was all i needed and i was so blinded by that that i couldn't see all the other little signs that were there and then as we got into marriage and i had a child all of a sudden it happens things change when you get pregnant you have

a child well i breastfed and the first thing you know i was like well those are my breast not my son's and i'm like i'm breastfeeding him so he lives and he was threatened and felt jealous. no one gives you necessarily the rules i mean of when you get married this is the rules of being a wife in a lot of times and even now the a mindset is when you say i do oh well you're supposed to perform sexual acts in bed and but as with consent and that's where the difference really lies is that. i wasn't consenting i mean i would say now and i would say no and i would say now and it didn't matter. they got to where we would call it a dead fish engine imagine being married to somebody. in your bedroom cured telling him that ok i'm going to lay here like a dead smelly fish then you can just hope yourself in

a it's what i did how every other night for years. and that was what my marriage was. i love this guy and i promise to be his wife into honor and respect and cherish you know this is what he did to me. but you can't go talk to somebody about this because they'll turn around and say well you married a huge chose him and so where do you go what do you do you. mean so i kept my mouth shut. because that's but i learned today growing up three. young lady less than twenty years of age married came in the office pregnant and off followed her through her pregnancy and i noticed towards the inert probably in the last trimester of her pregnancy she frequently would come in with bruises and

there'd be bruises on her abdomen she came in one day with with a black eye and her husband was all ways right there and i would ask her if she wanted to talk about anything what's going on and she always had a reason why she was had these bruises. and i guess i believed her that in pressure . about three to four weeks prior to her delivery date she came into the emergency room and she was in shock from blood loss. the baby was dead and she had huge injury to her adman probably from boots i think probably he had been kicking her. baby dead and she died and in that taught me a very significant lesson had i had the opportunity to have spoken to her privately . we had a very good relationship i think she would have told me if there was a problem. and after they had ask every person i saw everything was at home and are

you happy and i learned how to screen for. i think that there are still in american society the view that what it curbs behind closed doors remains behind closed doors and what happens between two intimates a husband and a wife or a boyfriend and a girlfriend really is their business the media generally reflects to some extent what is going on in society and it very much comes from this patriarchal idea of men as ruler and then in order to take control of his possessions which included house property cattle children and females spare the rod spoil the child that also translated to women as well so essentially what happens with the woman is she goes from being under the rule of her father that is then transferred to her husband and i think this is often why people find this somewhat humorous but it's really not

humorous. women that talk back women gossiped a lot and women that just were not under very good control it was deemed necessary to use force not. ten years. so there is only one way to beating kicking those types of things that plays into the idea that women essentially that are being abused somehow are deserving of that abuse they have brought it on their head picking their husbands there's the possibility of adultery they don't know when to shut up they push them too far and so essentially they're asking for it in this plays into how in the criminal justice system we treat women who are abused which traditionally has not been very well and so there is a general kind of perception in the hierarchy of power structure of the females are

still under males and that the man knows best and if the man is resorting to violence somehow it's because either it's necessary and or she brought it on herself so we see this in that scene in titanic where he tells her you will not embarrass me you are going to be my wife and you will abide by my rules. yes. practice if not yet by law so you will. time she learned what comes first marriage or her job and up with leftovers and dishes and thing she can't even find time to sew want to form. and

work or eating your brain to make something out of himself his wife doesn't look after her. she competes with me and my out of me and i like a fool i was getting a wife oh sure who is boss his home is his castle he is the boss there and he rules. and he rules badly. and you have somebody that is not very empowered to do much except to try to survive try to make nice try to walk on eggshells try not to make him mad again and he always tells her it's your fault you made me angry because you did this or you didn't do that if you get that kind of information just thrown at you especially if this is not the first time you've been battered but before you got into this relationship you may have had another and another relationship and certainly may have gotten back to what it

looked like in your family of origin if mom did not leave her battery husband your father the chances of you getting away. i less the battered wife. that doesn't leave. is expressing one of the sad symptoms of being battered is that even become unowned and you really have as sense of hopelessness except to try to knock. trigger their rage of the batter who has often out of his insecurity made real threats that are quite believable. if. most batteries tend to minimize things they tend to think well it was

a one time thing or she made me angry i didn't hit her that hard i you know i didn't mean to do that i also provide counseling to the women i've heard on several occasions when i hear that door closed i shiver and that's sad to imagine in your own home being scared by hearing the door close and it's not a stranger coming in the door it's it's there are no answer spells. my name is richard i'm thirty five have been married for almost three years now. and we have three children together and i also have two stepchildren so total five we grew up pretty similar you know not a lot of fighting a lot of drugs alcohol all so we definitely share common bond that we've kind of helped each other see what avenues we don't need to go to i have tried to avoid the conflict saying oh it made unhappy times when growing up as

a kid my parents divorced when i was five when on that relationship my dad got a relationship. violence there physical and verbal it's not a choice i want my life i want my wife to be my wife to the day we leave this earth remember him and i member being handcuffed. to the most embarrassing moments of my life. balance not is not only physical you know it's verbal emotional and i got arrested spent fourteen hours in jail never been in trouble with the law. and you know it's just a new experience said that i didn't know. what my relationship status was today lose my family that was the biggest thing to me. what happens to my family it's what my life is about now is my family and i denounce. it.

this violence is a way of obtaining power and control this violence is usually accompanied by jealousy also a fear of losing power and control it is accompanied by verbal abuse and put downs again as a way to obtain power and control as you can see it's a me perfectly ordinary house and he really just wrecked their house about twenty minutes and they were in this this is their at the master bedroom and he went right above the bed i mean you can see whore baby killer and everything else where they divorced at the time they were really separated the time she just asked him to move out he got really jealous he came in the room said you're not sleeping with me you're sleeping with somebody else put the hand down sort of we were into the ground put a gun into the mouth the ten a seven year old were in the room screaming don't kill mommy don't kill mommy and the only reason he stopped or five minutes of that was

because the kids were getting hysterical and he made the mother leave the house blanket and moved out for a while but she has injuries even up out down on her he said when he had her on the ground she was down a nice i mean he had the gun execution style right in front of children in amount of. strangulation relationally is exactly where the thumb mark went in yet again and come out in her mouth in front of the women as. if she leaves that is not necessarily going to make the violence go away many times leaving will cause an increase in the violence because again why do we have the violence it's power and control if hit the victim leaves now that is a slap in the face to power and control. we have three children are mental i was an attorney she was a very brilliant girl tremendous sense of humor very down there. arthur and

a very kind caring person he was a placement they were married close to three years her friends tell me that he dragged around by her hair so any bruises on her head you know would not be visible and the body bruise would not be visible one morning at five thirty six thirty in the morning got a phone call and we were in said bonnie is no longer with us. and we thought. what there's been a car accident he said there's there's some sort of problem here bonnie shot herself as far as we now she had a bag packed that was in her bedroom she had another bag packed that was in her car our assumption is she told him that she was leaving him and he shot her and then wiped the fingerprints off the gun obviously money did not choose. who and did in camera called nine one one said that his wife each other's. voices in the back

or. she was not. and she was calling from want to help and as far as losing a child that's devastating but to even more so was to see my parents. lose a grand on. that. i watched the most good learning. ever that he had been arrested he was subsequently released. and was not charged with murder da said they didn't have enough evidence to indict him the judge said it's in my court. so we did get him and when we first found out about the fact that she was

abused and had been abused for three years we were stand up because domestic violence doesn't happen to people like us people with college educations and this happens to poor people. this doesn't happen to two attorneys to doctors wives this type of thing kirk her comment on under massive violence would be. that it's every. wealthy british style. sometimes. markets finance scandal. find out what's really happening to the global economy

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