instead failed to topple the government but nonetheless change the course of history for the soviet union. and now on our team our special report portrait of abuse examines america's leading cause of traumatic injury to women domestic violence stay with us. courtship of abuse to me. i can sum it up in one word despair. and i just prayed that if you couldn'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 the promise to be his wife into honor and respect and cherish you know this is what he did to me. the look on my son's face for the first stoic saying that i can 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 them. 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 the abuse is fine that is extremely frightening extremely dark even though it looks silly and now that as a community we can provide that ran from. just

one case of domestic violence provide 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 it 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 at the demick 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 any more 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. to sticks or are not lying here they are telling us what's going on all. i always know that i want 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 i'll 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 got married in the very first event was. well we 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

a tubal pregnancy so i came whole you know after recovery and you know for recovery after a 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 stitches are going to rip what am i going to do it's like his soul was just empty and start to get physical with the choking. this reliving that just thinking about it you know i would see clips of my life just just flashing in my head you know am i going to die mike and i and mike you know what's happening to me to the point i couldn't breathe out a gasp or air but just something with it myself just made me just want to fight you know continue to live. i just had to. fire 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. and burned my marriage with a cigarette burn my arm with a cigarette. kicked me in the left ear until i was unconscious. and stripped me in 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 it 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 we can stop his dad 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 now 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 in the end as we got into marriage and i had a child all of a sudden you know it happens things change when you get pregnant you have a child well i breast fed and the first thing you know i was like well those are my

breasts 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 and you can just hope yourself and 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 in to honor and respect and cherish you know in 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 hugh chose him. so where do you go what do you do you. mean so i kept my mouth shut. because that's what i learned today growing up i think. young lady less than twenty years of age married came in the office pregnant and i 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 that i 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's 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 brains out to make something out of himself his wife doesn't

look up to him. she competes with. my own out of me and i like a fool i was getting a wife oh sure who is boss his home is his cash so he is the boss there and he rules. and the rules badly. spoiled 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 sad enough become a noun 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 batterers 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 again scared by hearing the door close and it's not a stranger coming in the door it's their partners or spouse. my name is richard i'm thirty five have been married for almost three years now. and we have three children gather and i also have two stepchildren so tall of five we grew up pretty similar you know not a lot of fighting a lot of drugs or alcohol so we definitely share common bond that we've tried to help each other see what avenues we don't need to go to i have tried to avoid the conflict to say how it made unhappy times when growing up as

a kid my parents divorced when i was five my mom got relationship my dad got a relationship. the 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 did not feel.

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 he just sits on the perfectly ordinary house and he really just wrecked their house about twenty minutes and we're in this this is there are 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 tunas 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 behind and moved out for a while but she has injuries even up out down on her knees when he had her on the ground she was down on new year's i mean he had the gun execution style right in front of children in the mouth close up of strangulation relational you see exactly where the thumb mark went in yet again and come out in her mouth in front of the limits of it. 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 our middle child by was an attorney she was a very brilliant girl tremendous sense of humor very down. and there are three 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 a body bruise would not be as 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 chips. in them cover it up called nine one one said that his wife each other's. voices in the

back or. she was not. and she was calling for one to help and as far as a losing a child that's devastating but to even more so was to say my parents. lose a granddaughter. that. i watched the most. and 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 stamped because domestic

violence doesn't happen to people like us people 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 a free. if if. if if if.

if. if you want to order. this is true still keeps its secrets but now it's time to reveal the shooting to the soviet files on. plans. closer. to. the language of approach. because the future flights. are two types to the max air show. as you know song was sixteen years old when he committed these murders that's not to say that song so or should not be punished for his crimes sean is being punished

no rational person can deny that song has been punished is being punished and will be punished. by sours must be executed for the brutal crime committed this is a punishment this is not. imagine. saying. cause him. any mercy on me whatsoever. no i didn't come here just for justice. and heard the rumors. start really small. while martin. and my dad is now.

last time the close up team was naamua beach where the gold rush still gets people hiked up. this time margi goes to cure old region. where the local government is giving power back to the people. where every orphan will be adopted. where locals turn their land into a tourist paradox well come to fruition should close up on our t.v. .

approaching.