insurgent49
  updated weekly
 home - contribute - donate -  message board - events - links - contact us - archive
March 17, 2006
Breaking the Cycle
by Katy Parrish, insurgent49

     Four years ago, I was preparing to fly to Fairbanks to see my mother on her deathbed. On Valentine’s Day in 2002, she suffered a violent blow to her head and was left to lay in her own vomit and excrement for hours until her drunk husband sobered up enough to call her primary physician. He told the nurse, “Cathy won’t wake up.” The nurse called 911. 

     My stepfather didn’t tell the hospital social worker that Mom had two daughters.  It took her gut instinct and some courage to do some digging in order to find us.  When we first spoke on February 23, 2002, she assured me that despite Gordy’s insistence to discontinue life support, they would wait for my sister and I to get there. She explained that mom’s head injury was so extensive that the local neurosurgeon had to “evacuate” her brain. She was in a vegetative state.

     On February 27, upon our arrival at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, the detective who met us stated, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but we would have more evidence to prosecute your stepfather if your mother had died.”  Even though emergency room personnel discovered a distinctive throat-hold, fingerprint pattern of bruising around her neck, there wasn’t enough physical evidence to arrest him.

     I started writing this story to focus on the fact that 70 percent of abused women advocating for primary custody of their children end up losing them to their abusers. That’s what happened to me seven years ago. While composing this, I realized that domestic abuse had plagued four generations of women on my mother’s side of the family and now my own son is experiencing it in his father’s home. My great grandmother, Nona, survived her throat being cut by her second husband and traveled in steerage from Italy with her six children to the Bellingham, Washington in the late 1920s to escape her abuser. Today, I am back in court seeking modification of custody because the cycle continues. I am writing this in hopes that it will help women facing domestic abuse avoid making the same mistakes I’ve made.

     After ten years of abuse, on Christmas night of 1998, I left my ex-husband after he violently pushed me into our Christmas tree. I was pulling a beautiful, sage infused turkey out of the oven, and in a drunken rage he blew up in front of our son, two other children, his best friend and his wife. I ran out of the house in socks with my son, no purse and locked myself in his friend’s car. He circled the car like a predator, menacingly threatening me and was finally coerced back into the house by his friend, with his 22-caliber pistol in his coat. I didn’t call the police, because his friend was there to calm him down and I was afraid that if his commanding officer found out, he would be discharged from the Army and my son would lose his medical benefits. This was mistake number one. Instead, I had his friend drive us to a motel for the night. Two days later, police removed my ex from the house armed with my temporary restraining order. When we got home, the turkey was still in the oven – sage shriveled and rotting with stuffing.

     Weeks later in domestic violence court, his friend and his wife lied under oath and successfully swayed the judge not to grant a long-term protective order. However, she did grant me primary custody and assigned a visitation schedule.  Eleven months later, after mediation where he threatened to take our son from me if I didn’t reconcile with him, an investigation by a biased court appointed guardian ad litem, and a $27,000 custody trial where my attorney did not mention domestic abuse, he was granted primary physical and joint legal custody. I was emotionally and financially devastated. I couldn’t believe that after eight years of being the primary care giver of a child who experiences special health and developmental needs that I could lose primary custody. According to a study by the American Judges Association, batterers are able to convince authorities that the victim is unfit or undeserving of sole custody in approximately 7o percent of challenged cases. After never coordinating any medical, therapeutic or special education services, let alone never reading any bedtime stories to our son, he took him to Olympia, Washington with his pregnant wife. I went to Hell and back.

     My journey to Hell led me to Kodiak Island where my sister and her family were living.   Known as the “Devil’s Den” because lost souls tend to gather there to celebrate with grand pity parties, Kodiak gave me many life lessons for which I am still paying dearly. Now that I’m back, I am no longer a victim of his abuse and my own poor choices. I am a survivor and I will never let his attitude or anyone else’s be my disability again.

     Ah, life lessons. I learned that even though my ex-husband never beat me so bad that I had to go to the emergency room, those years of verbal, emotional and “minor” physical assaults are considered domestic abuse. I learned that even though I was a middle class, college educated woman, working in the social service sector, domestic abuse knows no class, educational or professional boundaries. I learned that the shame I felt, especially because I was working in social services, kept me from getting the help I needed at the time. I learned that neglecting simple things, like my bills and a few traffic tickets, and using my grief for an excuse, could snowball into an avalanche leaving me buried for years. I learned that the superficial effects of retail therapy, self-medication with alcohol and the prescribed use of antidepressants were not the answers I needed to heal my soul. As a fellow survivor confided, “It’s a special kind of craziness, and if people haven’t experienced it, they don’t get it.”

     When I filed for divorce in 1999, close friends told me there was no way my ex-husband could ever get custody of our son. They didn’t know that in the 1980s in family law courts across the United States, the pendulum had started to swing towards fathers winning sole custody more often than mothers. This is the situation that remains today.  According to Lundy Bancroft, in his book When Dad Hurts Mom, “The fathers who are taking advantage of this imbalance are largely abusive ones; researchers have found that abusers are twice likely as non-abusive men to seek custody.” 

     What can women do when confronted with the reality that they are in abusive relationships? First, stop thinking that domestic violence is only happening to those poor women on public assistance being beaten up by violent drug users. Professional men with pristine community reputations are capable of abusing women without sending them to emergency rooms. Verbal putdowns, financial control, and manipulative threats are all forms of domestic abuse leading to deep emotional scarring that can take years to heal. Seek counseling and resources from local domestic violence organizations and other organizations like Alaska Moms for Custodial Justice. Watch the movie, Breaking the Silence: Children’s Stories, a PBS documentary, and take parenting classes to help your children heal from this horrible cycle.

     When preparing for your custody case, make sure the attorney, custody investigator and child therapist involved understand the effects of domestic abuse. Read When Dad Hurts Mom by Lundy Bancroft and other books and resources listed on Alaska for Mom’s Custodial Justice website (www.custodyprepformoms.org) for more specific guidance on preparing for your custody case.

     Whatever you do, accept the reality that the odds are against you and be prepared to persevere. Your children are depending on you to keep them safe. And today, as my wonderful attorney with her fourth degree black belt in Judo reminds me, “You have to stay focused.” Remember, our abusers know how to be very charming and polite, especially in the courtroom. Never loose your cool and play the victim, no matter how much his lies hurt. Court appointed officials feel nothing but disdain for histrionic women.

     Finally, try to make all of your decisions based on love for your children and not fear and hate for your abuser. Retaliation against him will only alienate you from your children and could potentially deny you access to them. Be open to visitation if he is getting counseling. Who knows, maybe he might admit to the pain he is experiencing and try to break the cycle. It is rare, but miracles do happen.

     The statistics are clear. Most of the men who abuse women have experienced their mothers or caregivers being abused or have been abused themselves. What is also clear is that children who suffer trauma lose the neural connections between the emotional center of their brain and their frontal cortex where logic maintains a balance. Literally, the anatomy of their brain changes and their impulse control decreases. I guess that’s where Jesus got his words: “Forgive them father, for they know not what they do.”

     Yes, I can hear you asking, has she forgiven her ex or her stepfather or her grandfathers? No, and I don’t know if I ever will. It would be helpful if they admitted doing something wrong. Maybe someday I’ll get there when I’m more spiritually evolved. In the meantime, I will devote most of my energy to healing my son and myself, serving others, and honoring the memory of the women who have survived and died before me.

     For more information on domestic abuse and custodial justice for mothers please visit or call:

Alaska Moms for Custodial Justice: www.custodyprepformoms.org

Alaska Women’s Network: www.alaskawomensnetwork.org/domestic_violence.html

Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis (AWAIC): www.awaic.org - 272-0100

Alaska Women's Resource Center (AWRC): www.awrconline.org - 279-6316

Standing Together Against Rape: www.staralaska.com/scripts/home.asp   - 276-7273







Katy Parrish is a freelance writer and media activist who can be reached at takebackthemedia@hotmail.com.
- Columnists -

Editor's Desk
by Aaron Selbig

Red Alert
by Soren Wuerth

Alaskan In Exile
by Neil Zawicki

The
Bramble Bush
by Kevin Morford





- related items -

www.stonesoupgroup.org
Stone Soup Group homepage
Copyright 2005 Insurgent Media. All Rights Reserved.
in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership.