A Call for Help (from "My Short Stories (Book One)") - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

The fight broke out, as it usually did, around midnight or shortly afterward.  There was always a lot of arguing, followed by a lot of yelling and then high-pitched screaming.  Finally, it would end with what sounded like a very physical fight.  Someone was getting the pulp beaten out of her.  Usually, someone else in the neighborhood would then get alarmed enough to call the police, to try and prevent a possible homicide.  But, it seemed to those who heard this commotion on a nearly daily basis that it was only a matter of time before one happened.  Sooner or later, this poor victim was going to get beaten so badly that she would not survive.  What were we to do?

I knew that our errant neighbors were into drinking alcohol.  It was a well-known fact.  I didn’t know much about excessive drinking at the time, however, except that people who regularly got drunk were more likely to cause trouble.  The current suspect in this case was the husband of the family, Evan Jones, whom we thought was regularly beating his wife, Julia.  The husband was considered hard to get along with anyway, and his wife often looked too afraid to say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  But, who knew what set him off?  The police had removed him from the situation many times and thrown him into jail to “sleep it off” for the night, but he would always be released the next day and return home, only to do a repeat performance the next night.

His wife would never press charges against him – she seemed too afraid to do that - and her husband was too smart to ever leave any visible physical evidence on her body of his drunken rages.  So, he was left to continue his rampages, beating her viciously and yet, never having to account to anyone for his heinous actions.  No one in the neighborhood dared to stand up to him either – he was way too intimidating to most people.  A few of the men wanted to stand up to him, regardless of that fact, but it took courage for them to even consider it.  We had to do something for Julia before Evan beat her to death.  But, what?  I resolved to find out what could be done without having to risk my own safety.  It was clear that anyone who crossed this bully was going to pay dearly.

So, I started to do some preliminary research on the topic of physical abuse.  I discovered that, once beatings start in a home, they can become a regular occurrence or pattern, which neither the abuser nor his victim seem able to stop.  I also discovered that the victim (usually female) rarely, if ever, causes her own misfortunes.  The abuser, usually after indulging in heavy drinking, loses control of his temper and emotions and looks to the nearest scapegoat upon whom to vent his rage.  That scapegoat is usually a family member, like his wife or one of his children.  Curiously enough, if the perpetrator chooses to vent his rage on one of his children, he may pick one child over the others, in particular, and ignore the others to a large extent.  This beating behavior can escalate over time if it goes on long enough, from beatings with an open hand, to using a belt or wooden spoon, to using even larger objects such as a vacuum cleaner tube.  It may even escalate to using a closed fist.  If left unchecked, the abuser may eventually resort to extremely violent behavior with lethal weapons, such as a gun or knife, or even to sexual assault, such as spousal rape.

Evan Jones’ reputation in the neighborhood was that of a bully.  So, he wasn’t just mean to his wife, he was mean (at least verbally) to everyone around him.  The way to deal with bullying behavior, in general, was to never accept any of it, passively.  The key was for the victim to leave the scene immediately (or as soon as possible, with no excuses required) and to call the police, if necessary.  Since Julia Jones had never left her home on her own, or called the police herself, she may have inadvertently and innocently encouraged Evan’s bullying by negatively reinforcing it.  If he never had to account to anyone for his actions, then this was an excuse for him to continue his bullying behavior.

I felt that Julia really needed to join a support group for battered women so that she could build the courage to leave him, or at least, learn how to deal with it.  And, it would take lots of courage on her part.  He was not someone who should be treated lightly.  I felt that he had the ability to take his beating behavior to the next level with her, if he so chose.  The first trick was to get her out of her home long enough to get her to a support group meeting once a week.  Her husband could not be trusted with that kind of knowledge, so he must never know what she was really doing.  That is, she would have to make up an excuse to leave the house, and go to the support group meeting without his knowledge or consent.  If he ever found out what she was doing behind his back, he would probably react violently.  Who knew where that might lead?  All I knew was – I wanted to help her, not get her hurt or killed, plus I didn’t want to get myself hurt or killed either.

The second trick was for me to obtain her cooperation with my rescue efforts.  Even if she did want to be rescued from her terrible situation, she needed to know that she, herself, was largely responsible for her own extraction.  In other words, she could only expect to get help from others if she was willing to help herself.  If she decided to stay despite the harm that she was enduring, there was very little that anyone else could do for her.  So, one day, I called Julia (while Evan was at work) and asked her, “Julia, would you like to go shopping with me?”  We weren’t really going to go shopping that day, but it would get her out of her home for a couple of critical hours. 

Julia replied, “Yes, Nina, I’d love to go shopping with you!  I don’t think my husband would mind me doing that with a female neighbour.” I didn’t tell her at that moment what my real intentions for her were, but she would find out soon enough.  Now that she had agreed to accompany me, I had to find a support group that met during daytime hours while Evan was out of the house.  The meeting time should be the most likely time that Julia could sneak out of the house without Evan’s knowledge.  Luckily, I did find a suitable support group for her at a local YWCA. 

The YWCA is an ideal place for such meetings since this organization caters specifically to women’s needs, particularly those who need urgent attention and help.  In the support group meetings, there are qualified and experienced volunteer counselors – psychologists who do pro-bono work for women’s causes.  The psychologists were women too, as, it was reasonable to assume that women in trouble would most likely seek help from other women.  In addition, women in all kinds of abusive situations would attend these group meetings and share their experiences with each other.  Not only did these women get the support they needed, but they also got great advice, coping strategies and effective methods of dealing with their abusers. 

There, everyone has her own unique story to share, but the stories all have a common thread – the victim, a woman who feels utterly powerless, is made to feel even more powerless and worthless by her abuser.  The typical victim’s story goes like this:  “I’ve always tried so hard to please him [my tormentor], but it doesn’t seem to matter what I do, he always seems to get angry with me.  Then, all it would take is one little misstep or something equally minor on my part, and he’d lose his temper completely and start beating up on me.  I always had to say to the doctors at the hospital that I’d fallen down the stairs or something like that.  Otherwise, the doctors would have called the police and had him charged with assault and battery.  That would have set him off and made him really angry with me.”

The victim’s self-esteem and self-confidence would inevitably be seriously eroded over time, which would actually help perpetuate the abusive behavior.  The victim would then feel more and more victimized and helpless, and less and less able to deal with the abuse.  In other words, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the victim was always the loser and the abuser was always the winner.  It was a win-lose situation always benefiting the abuser that would never end for the victim until the victim’s death or the conviction in a court of law of the abuser. 

But, why weren’t abusers being successfully charged, prosecuted and convicted in the courts?  One premise is that the courts have to have some physical evidence of the abuse, or at least, the testimony of the victim and / or one or more witnesses to the particular offence.  Without evidence, a victim of physical abuse had very little chance of getting some legal relief or justice, not to mention the fact that most victims were too afraid of future retribution to want to file charges in the first place.  Small wonder Julia was so reticent about filing charges against Evan and taking him to court – she would have had to live with the result if, by some miracle, he was acquitted.  She was smart enough to realize that the odds of success were not in her favor.  He had too much of a chance of being released without a jail term being imposed on him and of returning home to vent his rage on her in ever more heinous and harmful ways.

There was a critical question to be answered:  was it alcohol overindulgence that made him abusive or his own mean nature?  In Evan’s case, it probably would have been both – a naturally mean personality fueled by alcohol’s reduction of his inhibitions.  Either he had to quit drinking altogether for good, or consciously change his behavior and attitude, or both.  From where I stood, it might be possible for him to quit drinking with the help of organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous, but I seriously doubted that he could, or would, be able to change a personality that had taken him a lifetime to develop.  Possibly, it had all started when he was a child, I surmised.  It was probable that he, himself, had also been physically abused as a child and this had created and fueled a rage that just grew over time until he was finally old enough to leave home.  Ironically, without getting help for himself from a support group for abusers, he might never gain a complete and true understanding of the early roots of his own victim-hood. 

Essentially, it was the job of the psychologists who counseled the support group that Julia attended to increase her own awareness of how the abuse began, why it was continuing and how to end it.  The courts would also try to do their part (although there was no guarantee of justice) when the evidence that they needed was there.  But, in the absence of such evidence or testimony from the victim that would tend to convict the abuser, other steps had to be followed.  The only thing that could change over time would be that the courts might be able to convict an abuser without the testimony of the victim.  In that case, a police report taken at the scene (along with the policeman’s testimony) might suffice in its place.  Ironically, it would take the cooperation, ideally, of both the victim and her abuser to stop the abuse, both in the present and future. 

published by Authorhouse, copyright 2011, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.