Editor’s Note: The names in this story have been changed to protect the victim. October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Carrie was married to a man for three years who was physically abusive to her and her son. Her story began when she was out at a bar in 2005 with her friends and was introduced to a guy. They dated two years before getting married in 2007. She said her ex-husband liked being in control with her and her two children. “It got to the point where there was inappropriate discipline and he was very military-like to the children,” Carrie said. He put her children down verbally and had her son do pushups for punishment. “We were living together for months and he began shoving me and had the mentality that women were below him,” Carrie said. When she told him it did matter what she had to say, he would shove her in front of her children. “I thought if we got married he would change and not be abusive,” Carrie said. She lived with him for two months after they were married, and then he moved out temporarily. Before her ex moved out she recalls an incident when he pushed her son. “My son went to the bathroom and accidently peed on the toilet seat, and he threw a towel on the floor and yelled at him to clean it up,” Carrie said. “I told him not to yell at my son and he pushed me against the wall.” He moved out, and she continued to live in the apartment with her two children. “He told me he had learned to compromise, and that was the magic word I was looking for, and that was all I wanted, so I married him,” Carrie said. However, after they married abuse toward her and her son continued. “One time my son started eating before we prayed and my ex-husband pushed his head that hit the counter,” Carrie said. The last straw was on Mother’s Day. Her ex’s daughter got in trouble because she stole money from her husband’s mother and Carrie found the money. His parents said his daughter stole the money because she was being bullied by Carrie’s children. “I said it is funny my child is in trouble because his kid is and he marched back up the steps and pushed me up against the door and said, are you calling my mom and dad a liar?, and I said no,” Carrie said. He pushed Carries’s son up against the closet door and said if he wanted to bully someone bully him. Carrie told her ex to leave. He took a barbecue lighter and threw it at her and kicked her a couple of times. He had moved out and was staying with his parents, and he came to my apartment, and I told him he needed to leave but he said he was going to stay. “I wasn’t scared, I was just annoyed and thought by the time we get up in the morning he will be gone,” Carrie said. “He asked me where I had gotten my phone and I told him I had gotten it myself. He told me I had gotten it from a guy. “He came in the room I was in and started to choke me and I told him he needed to leave,” Carrie said. Carrie said he hit her lip and it was bleeding, and he came back at her and started chocking her again. In the police report it said he put a pillow over her face to smother the sound of her screaming. “I thought right there he was going to suffocate me and I was going to die,” Carrie said. Her son was at a friend’s house, but her daughter was in the home and she saw him hit her mother. “I told my daughter to run and I didn’t know if we were going to get out of there or not,” Carrie said. “When she screamed he stopped hitting me and ran out of the house.” Carrie ran to the neighbor’s house with her daughter. She called the police who called an ambulance for her. She had broken her hand and sprained her foot from falling down the stairs. She was on crutches and a leg brace and her body was bruised. The police took photos of the injuries. Her ex-husband turned himself into police once she told him he was at his parents. After getting out of the hospital, she then stayed with her son and daughter at her mother’s home. She filed for a restraining order against her husband. Her ex did not get jail time, but two years probation and was ordered to pay $10,000 for her medical bills. She has been divorced since March. She is now studying psychology because she wants to help women who have been abused. Carrie said she looked at her kids and herself and she knew that would be her life forever if she let the abuse continue. “I couldn’t live with the anxiety anymore and walking on egg shells and I finally said enough was enough,” Carrie said. “You have to love yourself first and I learned to do that.”
