In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter Twelve  Portraits A Woman’s Experience—STALKING She was an eighteen-year-old single mother and he was twentyeight years her senior when their relationship began. She later learned he had been married twice before and she had been the oldest of his three brides. She now serves a sentence of twenty-five years to life for killing her husband. The dating relationship was like the moon. It was great. Wonderful. I guess it was everybody’s fantasy relationship. The guy comes to the house, picks you up, go to a nice restaurant. He brings you flowers all the time, calls you all the time, makes sure you got home okay. We dated a couple of months then we moved in together. Then it was about a year when we got married. Nothing changed in the relationship when I moved in with him, other than we didn’t go out. Or if we did, we didn’t go out as much. We were together all the time. The first time I experienced any abuse from him was on our wedding night. I didn’t get to the bedroom on time. I walked into the bedroom and I got slapped. I went flying into the wall. He said, “You better learn what your wedding vows said. To love, honor, and obey. Learn it.” I thought this couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t the same person. I do remember saying, “I’m stuck. My God, I’m stuck.” The next day he told me that he was sorry he hit me but I shouldn’t have made him do it. I couldn’t go to a rescuer—because he’d be killed. I knew. I knew Norman would find me. He’s found me before. I’d always left him when my daughter was out of state, when I knew he couldn’t get to her. That was always in the summer. 129 I would leave and not tell anyone I had left. And he always found me. He always found me. And I don’t know how it happened , because I’d go someplace and be a prisoner in that place because I wouldn’t go outside. I’d hide in the car, do something. I’d think I did it all right. The last time I made it all the way to Arizona. I was hiding in one of these little hotels along Route Sixty-Six, no phones in the hotel, no nothing. I was hoping he’d think I went on the main drags, not the tacky old ones. And he found me. He found me. I took the cottage in the back, didn’t use my real name. He found me somehow ; I never knew. But from that day, I lost it. I came around the building, and I froze. I’d just gone two buildings down to the grocery store, a little market. I came back and there he was, leaning against his car. I walked up to him and said, “How did you find me?” He said, “Never mind that.” That’s when he told me, “If you ever leave me again, I’ll kill them all.” He meant my family. I knew he was serious. He had all their addresses. He knew where to go and I knew he’d do it. If he was crazy enough to threaten it, he was crazy enough to do it. I knew he would. That was the last time I tried. I was just waiting for death. I was already dead emotionally. So I was just kind of praying that it wouldn’t take as long to die physically as it did emotionally. The police attitude toward me was “a piece of dirt.” I was “the low-life bitch who shot her husband.” That’s exactly what was told and said. A Woman’s Experience—COERCIVE CONTROL They met when she was twenty-four and he was twenty-seven. Dating was wonderful. After the wedding, things were not so wonderful. She now serves a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for spousal homicide. Direct attempts on my life? Like when he held me down and choked me, left marks on me? Or I’d wake up in the middle of the night with a gun pointed at my head. Or him sticking a gun in my mouth and threatening to pull the trigger. Digging a hole on our property, telling me it was my...

Share