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1 Safe and Unsafe Living After nearly 17 years of marriage , Charlotte Harris tried to leave what she described as a physically abusive relationship by moving out of the duplex she shared with her husband and two children. Angered by the breakup, police said, Dannie Harris yesterday drove to the apartment where his estranged wife had taken refuge and killed her. One of the couple’s two daughters was inside the . . . bathroom after her father, carrying a shotgun, forced his way into their second-floor apartment at 251 Apple Tree Court, Captain Randy Boehm said. . . . Since June 13, three judges have barred Dannie Harris from having contact with his estranged wife. [In an affadivit,] Charlotte Harris [had written that he] told her “We weren’t through” and started choking her. He also threatened “to but a bullet in my head.” . . . The abuse had persisted throughout their marriage, [a neighbor] woman said. “Charlotte said he told her many a time” that “if she divorced him, he would make sure no one else would have her.” The [neighbor] woman’s husband . . . said Dannie Harris “said he was going to kill her several times.” Columbia Daily Tribune, July 31, 1997 T H I S M O R N I N G I WA S at the shelter by 8:10. I had an interview set up to tape record a resident’s story. This is maybe the fourth or fifth appointment I have had with this particular woman. It has been difficult to get her to commit to a time and date. She keeps saying she will; she tells me she wants to tell me her story. She understands her story has a kind of power, and she is the power broker, suddenly. Last week she gave a portion of her story to a couple of newspaper reporters and her words were included on the six-o’clock news. But she keeps missing appointments, asking if we can postpone, telling me 21 22 W O M E N E S C A P I N G V I O L E N C E she’s not feeling well or is too “messed up today” to do it. I learn patience here; I tell her that’s fine. I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be around; how about Friday? Sure, she tells me, and by now I know that Friday may come and go and I still won’t have her story. But I would love to hear her story; I want it for this study—and so I wait patiently, hoping someday we will sit down together and she will tell me what has happened to her. So I am here early and the place is short-staffed. I am here to tape record a story, but soon after I walk in, I’m releasing one woman’s mail to her from the shelter’s safe box even as I’m reaching to answer the phone. Only Karen is in the office, trying to answer three phone lines at once. I answer a line as I try to take off my sweater. I know the script: “Shelter—can I help you?” This time it is a call for Sally, the director. I check to see if she’s in; she’s not; I take a message. I run to the bathroom before that line or the two others begin to ring again. I make it, barely. “Shelter—can I help you?” This time I don’t get off so easy. This woman wants to talk to Karen: She’s in jail—her husband beat her Saturday night and so she “cut him.” Of course, by the time the police arrived, he was bleeding profusely and claiming she tried to kill him; she told them, no, he’d been beating her all night and raped her twice, and that she was just fed up and escaped to the kitchen and grabbed the closest knife and cut him when he lunged for her. But she’s in jail and worried about her kids, could she talk to Karen or maybe Barbara, the DOVE (Domestic Violence Enforcement) coordinator, who facilitates interaction between victims and the police? The other line is ringing, so I put her on hold and indicate to Karen, who is still on line 1, that she’s needed on line 2, while I answer line 3. The phone looks like a Christmas tree, all lit up with blinking red...

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