Fear can keep victims trapped in violent relationships

Editor's Note: This is the second in a two-part series on domestic violence. The first appeared in Sunday's Southeast Missourian.

Thirty-two men sit on Missouri's death row.

Of the 51 people who died at their hands, 33 -- nearly 65 percent -- were female, and at least a dozen cases involved people who were related, lived under the same roof or had been in romantic relationships with the killers.

In Southeast Missouri, one of the most notorious cases is that of Russell Bucklew, who is on death row for the 1996 shooting death of Michael Sanders.

Bucklew's ex-girlfriend, Stephanie Pruitt Ray, and her two young daughters had been staying with Sanders at his home in Cape Girardeau County while they hid from Bucklew, who had threatened and physically assaulted Ray in the past.

After the shooting, Bucklew kidnapped Ray at gunpoint and raped her.

In 2012, of the 41,494 domestic violence cases reported to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, 70 were homicides.

To put that in perspective: Based on population estimates and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, as of Wednesday, any given human had a 1 in 1,843,467 chance of being killed by the infamous Ebola virus.

Based on 2012 Missouri State Highway Patrol data, a victim of domestic violence in Missouri has a 1 in 593 chance of being killed by an intimate partner.

In other words, for victims of domestic violence in Missouri, the odds of being murdered are more than 3,100 times as high as the odds of being killed by the disease that has captured the public's imagination for weeks.

Fear

Becky Holloway, legal advocate for Safe House for Women, said on average, victims of domestic violence try to leave seven or eight times before they finally get away from their abusers for good.

The reasons for staying vary, said Cape Girardeau police chief Wes Blair, who in August spent several days undergoing training to learn how his department could improve its response to domestic violence.

Some victims depend on their abusers' income, Blair said. Others may stay because they are new to the area and don't know anyone, or they may be reluctant to break up their families, especially if they have children, he said.

In many cases, victims stay because being beaten seems safer than leaving and risking more severe violence, Blair said.

"It's the fear you know versus the fear you don't know," he said.

That was the case for "Sue," a Navy veteran whose ex-husband abused her for 10 of the 12 years they were together.

"I had gotten to the point that I was just tired. I was just done. But I was so scared. ... I just was petrified because of that control. It's basically, 'If you leave, I'll kill you,'" she said.

Sue finally left after her ex-husband fractured her eye socket during an altercation about a year ago. Family members saw her injuries and called the police, she said.

Police response

Blair said domestic disturbance calls are not unusual.

"I don't think we're seeing a higher number of them than other places do, but that's still the most common call that we respond to," he said.

At the training in August, Blair learned ways to improve officers' handling of those calls.

"The big take-away for me from it was we really focus on incident-based policing rather than course of conduct," he said.

For instance, a woman might report her ex-boyfriend broke her window. Officers responding to the vandalism may not realize the perpetrator has a history of stalking the victim, sending her unwanted text messages or otherwise harassing her.

"Are we really looking at the bigger picture?" Blair said. " ... We in law enforcement are not always good at looking for course of conduct in those crimes -- especially domestic violence. We go and investigate the assault that happened right then."

A pattern of behavior can indicate a more serious problem and give prosecutors more to work with, he said.

Blair said he plans to review the department's policies and practices, compare them to what he learned in August and work on stalker awareness -- another component of domestic violence.

"With electronic (media) now, that is such an easy thing to do," he said. "You can stalk people from the comfort of your own living room."

One in six women will be stalked by the time she graduates from college, Blair said.

Electronic stalking is relatively easy to track and can enhance the charges against an abuser -- if officers are aware of it, he said.

"How many people get those borderline text messages that they just blow off?" Blair said.

'Get out'

Domestic violence tends to escalate over time, Blair said, and second chances can be dangerous.

"My advice is to get out of that situation," he said. "Just because it's the first time doesn't mean it will never, ever happen again."

Sue said her ex-husband began with verbal abuse -- calling her "stupid" or "ignorant" and questioning the way she dressed.

"He was just very vindictive, very mean, very controlling, and I couldn't wait to leave. I was trying my darnedest to find a way to get out of there," she said.

Sue's friends were aware of the situation, but they didn't offer much help, she said.

"They could have said, 'Well ... you can come stay at my house,'" she said. "They could have alleviated the stress. ... They could have said something, but they just let it ride out."

Sue, who lived in St. Louis at the time, found Safe House for Women through an Internet search, got on a Greyhound bus to Cape Girardeau and never looked back.

Role models

In the long term, reducing domestic violence will depend, at least in part, on education, Blair said.

Children who grow up in violent households may not know how healthy relationships work, because they've never seen one modeled, he said.

"I think it's people that are wired wrong that didn't have good relationships modeled in their homes when they were growing up," Blair said.

In addition to poor role models, children who grow up in violent households may have anger issues, he said.

"You can't expect them just to grow out of that," Blair said. "They've got to be taught how to interact in a family. They are being taught; they're just being taught the wrong things."

Society doesn't help, Blair said.

He cited the case of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice, who was suspended from the NFL indefinitely after being caught on video punching his fiancee in the face.

Some fans responded by wearing Rice's jersey to show their support for him -- a move Blair called "disheartening."

"That's a very sad commentary on our society," he said. "It's almost like saying, 'Violence on women is OK as long as I get to watch my football game.' It's disgusting and discouraging. It's not OK."

epriddy@semissourian.com

388-3642

Pertinent address:

Cape Girardeau, Mo.