DOMESTIC IN PROGRESS: Domestic violence survivors share stories of heartbreak, healing

May 30--Editor's Note: This is the second in a four part series on domestic violence in Rogers County. Statistics show 85% of domestic violence victims are women. For the purpose of this article, when law enforcement uses female pronouns, it is to represent all victims.

For their safety, we have changed the names of the women who shared their stories in this article. The story includes details some may find graphic in nature.

For every statistic about domestic violence, there's a woman whose life has been forever changed.

Beyond the data, police reports, and protective orders are women who have survived.

While no two stories are the same, there are common threads between them--they want the world to better understand domestic violence.

Three women who have lived a period of time in Safenet's domestic violence shelter after experiencing violence in their lives, have shared their stories with the Progress in hopes of making a difference in someone else's life and shedding light on the often misunderstood issue of domestic violence.

"I had to learn to be able to stand up again. I had to learn to breathe again."

Jane and her ex-husband were together for nine years, the first four of which were bliss.

"We never had an argument. I really felt this man was my soul mate. I never knew what love was, so I thought this was it," she said. "What I considered love, I'm finding out now was control."

She said at some point the drinking got really bad.

"The first abuse was him just throwing a glass and breaking my nose with it. That was the first of the physical, but there was a lot of emotional.A lot of control. It started to get really bad when the meth came in. I guess he'd been doing it all along but I didn't know," she said. "There were a lot of minor things in the beginning. I'd leave for a weekend and go back. Then I'd leave for a month because there was a lot of punching and hitting me in the head. I'd go stay with a relative or friend but knew in my heart I wasn't going to stay gone."

Then the control got worse.

"I wasn't allowed to have a TV or a phone or talk to my kids or go anywhere. And I stayed. I couldn't make a decision by myself. I had lost all self control. All self worth. I had lost my ability to know who I was anymore. He told me who I was, and that's who I was. There were mind games but the physical abuse was every couple months so I told myself "that's not too bad..I can handle this.'"

But on one December night, she said everything took a turn for the worse.

"He walked in the house, I had dinner ready as always. He walked in and I remember standing in the living room and giving him a hug and asking 'how was your day?" He said 'I quit my job and I spent all day digging your grave. Today's the day you die.' He looked me in the face and I looked in his eyes and he wasn't there. He was gone. I didn't even recognize that person."

She recounted the scene that followed--her taking blow, after blow.

"I felt my ribs break," she said. "I was begging him to call 911, I couldn't breathe. I knew something was wrong."

Jane said she'd had to go to the hospital before, and she'd made up a story to cover for him every time.

But this was worse.

"He had threatened my children, threatened me, if I went to the cops. So, I never did. But this was the worst beating I'd ever taken," she remembered. "It was about 2 hours of me begging to go to the hospital and him being psychotically sweet, that's the only way I can describe it. It didn't even sound like his voice, he was gone. I said 'where's the man I love? How could you do this?" He just kept saying "today's the day, I've always told you 'til death, to the grave.'"

As she continued to struggle to breathe, she told him, "You want me dead so bad, you go get a gun and shoot me."

"At that point something changed in him. His shoulders dropped, his head dropped, he dropped to his knees. He then went and got the phone and called 911. I was done. I thought I was going to die, I couldn't breathe. He finally called 911 and just kept asking "are you going to tell them?" I told him that I would tell them I went out to get firewood and fell on the stairs," she said, adding that her ex-husband continued asking if he could go to the hospital with her and she said simply that she didn't know the rules.

"The ambulance came, the guys came in the house and looked at the room where everything was tipped over and the food was all thrown and there was blood from my nose on the kitchen floor. They asked me what happened and I told them I'd gone out to get firewood and fell down the stairs. They just looked at me," she said. "They brought the stretcher into the house. They were really smart. They asked where my ID and my purse were and I said in the bedroom, which was 35-feet from where we were. They told my ex to go get my ID and purse. He didn't want to leave the room. They said 'sir we need you to do it now" very forcefully. He did. They looked at me and made eye contact and I just shook my head no. And they knew, they just knew."

She said when her ex-husband came back with her purse, he learned he would not be riding to the hospital with Jane.

"He said 'then you're not taking her" he came up to the stretcher and tried to unbuckle it and pull me off. He said "you can't go unless I can go." They threatened to call the cops because they were taking me," she said. "He told me 'I'll be there within the hour.'"

She said, "At the hospital I told them I fell. I couldn't say it. I wouldn't say it. I knew what would happen so I stuck to the story."

Jane was rushed into surgery--and woke up three weeks later after a medically induced coma.

Her broken ribs had punctured her lungs.

"I had to learn to be able to stand up again. I had to learn to breathe again," she said.

"The day before I was discharged I had the head nurse and a counselor ask me where I was going to go after I got discharged. I said 'well I'm going to go home' and they said 'well then you're not released. We will not discharge you to go back home."

Jane cried as she recalled, "I didn't have anywhere else to go. My friends were his friends. Anybody I had that didn't' involve him I'd lost because I wasn't allowed out. I'd never felt so alone or scared in my life. I didn't have anything, he had everything."

But it wasn't long before she found herself at Safenet.

"I had nothing- no money, no clothes, no shoes. I showed up here and of course they got me everything I needed," she said. With life back on course she left to spend time out of state with a friend.

"I don't know how but he found me. He told me he'd been clean and sober for a few months and I believed him. He seemed like the man I'd fallen in love with," she said. "We came back to Oklahoma and everything was great for about two months. He came home drunk one day and beat me. That was the first time I got life-flighted because he hit me so hard I started having seizures. We'd been arguing, screaming, yelling a lot. The neighbor next door said when he didn't hear me yelling anymore he thought I was dead and he called the cops."

Jane said again and again she covered for him, went back home, covered for him, and went home again.

Cops came and my ex ran out the back door.

Police came to the hospital and asked me who did it and I lied.

I covered for him again and went home again- and each honeymoon time got shorter and shorter.

Then one day she knew she'd had enough.

"I knew I didn't have another one in me. I still loved him but I couldn't go another round," she said. "I'd lost talking to my kids. I'd lost my friends. I'd lost my ability to know how to live. If it wasn't for Safenet I'd be dead."

She said there are misconceptions about domestic violence, and domestic violence shelters.

"What people need to realize when they hear the word shelter--it's a safe place. This place is our safe zone, it's our serenity, it's freedom. It's everything that we've never had."

She said, "A lot of people judge domestic violence, especially for women who go back. It carries a stigma. But what people need to understand is that they've controlled every aspect of our life to the point we don't have a life anymore. It's not just getting a black eye or thrown against a wall it's the fact that they've slowly taken everything away from you. You no longer know how to exist without them. They've taken complete control. And when you're finally ready to leave, you leave with nothing. And people don't understand."

Jane said she had a message for women who are where she once was.

"What he's doing isn't okay. He's not going to stop. He's going to lie and you're going to believe he's going to change. You're going to go back seven, eight times but it's not going to stop. It's not going to get better. You have no choice but to seek help. And this place literally has given me my life back....A lot of us haven't had a home we felt safe in for many, many years. If it wasn't for this place I would have gone back, and I would be dead."

Now, living in a safe place, surrounded by care and support, Jane said she's starting to remember herself.

"Now that I can breathe, I'm remembering who I was before," she smiled. "My favorite color is purple, I love writing poetry--I have an identity."

"I used to look at women like they were stupid, especially for going back. Then it happened to me.

Jill first lived in the shelter in 1992 as a small child.

She said her family moved to Claremore to the Women's Shelter when she was a child, after her mom found herself in an abusive relationship.

"As an adult I lived in the shelter for three months. The day I came here I really had nowhere else to go. They were helpful and made me feel welcome... I didn't have any belongings I was able to bring with me, so they gave me a new blanket and all my necessities and everything. I went to counseling sessions. I felt like I wouldn't be able to do it on my own and they showed me that I can, and I am."

For her, Safenet was about empowerment.

"They showed me that I can do it. I went and got a job, they took me to get my work shoes. When you don't have a job for a long time you feel like you can't do anything and they helped me get over that," she said.

"I used to look at women like they were stupid, especially for going back. Then it happened to me," she said. "And looking back I wish my mom had known more about domestic violence, that she'd gotten us into counseling. But she was focused on survival and holding it all together."

In a message to other women, Jill said, "Don't let anything hold you back. Don't be afraid to take that first step towards leaving, it's worth it--physically, emotionally, in all ways."

" I kept thinking I'm going to go back because I love him and they taught me it's not about him, it's about loving myself."

Beth and her husband were together for seven years. Together they had a dog and a picket fence and picturesque happiness.

"Until one day we didn't," she said. "I still don't know what happened to him."

When the abuse began, Beth said she blamed herself.

"We'd been together so long I thought I'd done something wrong. I didn't want anyone to know. I was ashamed. I carried all of the guilt and didn't think there was anyone I could tell. The stigma and shame kept me from doing something a little sooner," she said. "I was in a domestic situation and the police were called and they brought me here. I did leave and went back. It lasted for a day, the police were called again. This time I didn't' want to leave here. They gave me hope, they gave me something I didn't' feel at home."

That time she sought refuge in the shelter for six months.

"I kept thinking I'm going to go back because I love him and they taught me it's not about him, it's about loving myself, " she said.

"What want to say to other women is just leave. Leave and stay gone. Make it through one hour at a time. Stay gone an hour, then two, then stay gone a night and make your goal to stay gone the next night. You don't have to look at it as the rest of your life. You don't have to look at your whole future in that single second. Get through five minutes instead of panicking over the next five years," she said.

"And what I want everyone else to know is that domestic violence isn't just something that happens to poor people, to uneducated people, it doesn't discriminate. You probably know someone who is in that situation because of the stigma and judgement they're afraid to tell you."

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