Published: June 25, 2009 10:44 am      

LOCAL NEWS: Survivors recount struggle to break free from domestic abuse

For many domestic violence victims, it’s just how things are.

And if you don’t think you’re in an abusive relationship, you’re like many of the survivors of about 10,450 domestic violence cases logged in Erie and Niagara counties last year.

It is a world of eye-popping numbers and what’s worrying victims’ advocates now are statistics indicating the final expression of such abuse, murder, are on the rise.

Thirteen women killed in Erie and Niagara counties since November didn’t have the numbers on their side.

Thirteen women killed in a final desperate act by an estranged partner in just the last six months — a number exceeding yearly statistics for more than a decade.

Hardly a day goes by that the news doesn’t carry a police brief summarizing some stage of ongoing domestic abuse, including everything from daily reports of harassment to imprisonment, assault and now increasingly, murder.

The victims, at least the ones who survive, tell terrifying stories.



Abuse takes many forms

It might end up making headlines, but the cycle of abuse starts in very subtle ways.

“We were only together for six months, but those six months were incredible,” one survivor, “Jane,” said recently.

One of two local women interviewed recently by the Tonawanda News, Jane tells a harrowing story.

The News has promised not to reveal Jane’s identity, nor that of a second woman, “Mary.” In order to accomplish this, some of the details of their cases are being withheld. Jane’s case is still being sorted out by prosecutors and police. Mary’s abuser remains at large.

But what is now a story that must be told in secret, for Jane, it began like any other.

“They say abusers overcompensate in the beginning and he did. I mean, he just kind of came in and he was doing everything for me. He was cleaning house, he was doing laundry, he was making sure my kids were taken care of. He made life very easy for me — we were happy. I thought he was it.”

Though she had never before been hit, Jane was attacked to within an inch of her life barely eight months after the relationship deteriorated. What’s worse, the escalating abuse wasn’t hidden. Judges and police knew well the nature of what had been brewing and had arrested her attacker numerous times for his actions.

He had suddenly gone “crazy” Jane said. He began harassing her work, prompting meetings with her boss; she was reported to child protective services; he began eavesdropping nightly at her window and threatened to sabotage her life.

Law enforcers followed protocol, but the system failed to prevent what should have been Jane’s murder. It was by the grace of God that she survived.



A disturbing list

Several other such cases seen recently throughout the Tonawandas alone are reason enough to be concerned, victims’ advocates say.

The case against Thomas Simcoe started Sept. 29, 2007 in North Tonawanda, when police received a 911 call from a young boy saying that Simcoe was attacking his mother.

She was beaten brutally before police found Stacey Simcoe in a pool of blood on the floor of their home.

Throughout the trial, however, testimony uncovered years of abuse by Simcoe, including jealous rage over his wife’s platonic relationship with a male friend. Harassing text messages, suicide attempts designed to keep his wife from leaving him, as it seemed obvious she would, and ultimately violence followed.

After the trial came to a close Oct. 15, a judge sent back guilty verdicts on all 11 counts, including first- and second-degree attempted murder. Two months later, Simcoe was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

Late last month, a Falconer Street woman survived after she was shot eight times through the window of her apartment by her estranged lover. The man, Timothy Hance, was found to have killed himself along Buffalo’s waterfront just a few hours later. Police say the woman had been issued several past restraining orders against Hance.

One day earlier, Stephen Shepherd stood before a judge accused of murdering his wife Constance in their Town of Tonawanda home. Buyers of the couple’s home, sold at auction on May 6, discovered Constance A. Shepherd’s body two weeks after the sale and called police.

Town of Tonawanda resident Julius Franquet was arrested in December for allegedly intentionally injecting a lethal dose of Demerol into his girlfriend, Annmarie Paciorek. He stands charged with second-degree murder.

These are just a few such stories to make headlines recently, usually only following a death or violent episode of a sensational nature. But the violence is usually just the tip of the iceberg, say those like Jill Townsend and Maria Angelova of the YWCA of the Tonawandas, a group that offers a range of free services, from counseling victims of abuse to providing temporary shelter.



Survivors speak out

To talk to others who have survived is to hear similarly painful and shocking tales.

But from one story to the next, shock turns quickly to outrage.

Appalling are the similarities in many abuse cases, according to data produced by Townsend and Angelova.

The pair recently agreed to facilitate talks between the Tonawanda News and two such survivors.

Both women continue to attend counseling and group sessions offered by such agencies.

“Mary” is from a different part of the country. Both she and Jane have in some form given up the lives they once led, driven from normalcy in the face of abuse. In Mary’s case it was after years, not months, of unreported strife.

The two women are of different ages, religious persuasions and backgrounds. Advocates say the crime of domestic violence doesn’t discriminate based on such factors.

Both were threatened economically, emotionally, socially and ultimately physically by men that police and the justice system could arrest but could not detain.

Jane and Mary, speaking separately, each gave examples of the kind of abuse most battered women can recall: Intentional, continual abuse based on power and control rather than mere differences of opinion.

“First of all, I didn’t know I was in domestic violence,” Mary said. “I stayed in it mostly because of religion. I’m a Christian and the Bible says forgive — and how many times do you have to forgive ... pretty much endlessly.”

While she eventually relocated to get away from her estranged husband after decades together, it was a misconception about religion that kept her ensnared.

“Jesus saved my soul when I accepted him as my lord and savior but the YWCA saved my life,” she said “(He was) a habitual liar; I should have stayed away from him. He cheated on me when we were dating but I didn’t know how violent he was until after we were married — and then I was told by someone that we were married for better or for worse, ‘til death do us part … so I turned to the Lord and started praying a lot for him. As far as religion goes, I just really think that people who are using certain scripture verses to stay in it — God doesn’t want you to be (abused).”

When she left, it was after nearly two decades including various violent episodes, but only one call to police.

Just one in seven incidents of abuse are reported, according to statistics produced by Angelova in a recent report.

Mary’s husband had punched her in the head on that one occasion, before actually calling authorities himself. He threatened that she would be arrested and even went so far as to injure himself in order to make the story more believable for police.

The ploy failed, and he was arrested, resulting in a stay-away court order.

Victims’ advocates might call attention to the fact that his attempt to have her framed is one form of physiological abuse, sometimes more gratifying to the abuser than violence.

“The mental abuse is in some ways worse,” Mary said, though both were themes of her ordeal.

Jane said reality set in more suddenly for her, just a few months into her relationship. It all began when she offered a cup of coffee to the father of one of her child’s friends. The innocuous gesture flipped a switch in Jane’s abuser and set into motion a chain of events driven by jealousy and paranoia.

And just like that, the ideal partnership had somehow shattered.

“Things went downhill from there, really downhill,” Jane said. “I knew something was going to come to a head. I just didn’t know what it was.”

He had gone from cooking and cleaning to stalking. He began calling and sending her threatening text messages, eventually so much that police granted Jane an order of protection — an order which Jane’s abuser regularly defied, resulting in multiple arrests.



Law has limits

Jane said her attacker had been arrested more than half a dozen times in the previous months — the months after the happiness suddenly, bizarrely vanished.

A series of subsequent stay-away court orders had been violated on more than 100 occasions, she said, if every phone call or stalking incident had been reported. Advocates stress stay-away orders as a necessary step in escaping violence, and that though sometimes they may appear ineffective, involving law enforcement is ultimately critical when someone is threatening you.

“The YWCA encourages victims to get orders of protection because that is the only way law enforcement and the justice system can hold offenders accountable. But we encourage law enforcement and the justice system to impose stricter sanctions,” Townsend said, acknowledging when red flags of domestic abuse appear, abuse often escalates.

Nevertheless, based on both women’s stories the law ultimately failed to provide safety for them and their children. Advocates wonder why, if so many of the men who abuse do so in similarly calculated ways, more isn’t done to lock them up when the evidence of abuse can be documented.

Instead, many abusers use their intimate history with victims to draw them back in.

“You’re almost afraid not to take his phone calls because you really don’t know what he’s going to do next,” Jane said.

“Who’s really keeping you safe? You know what I mean, you’re really just out there to dangle. So you’re thinking, ‘I’ll just take this one phone call and he’ll calm down and everything will be OK.’ And that’s what you’re thinking in your head. And then when you call (the police) and you’re telling them what’s going on they’re telling you, ‘you can’t answer those calls.’ But you know, you’re home safe in your house, but I’m sitting here by myself with my kid and I felt like a sitting duck, which is what, in the end, I ended up being.”

Arrests of a perpetrator are often numerous leading up to an attack, followed by as many slaps on the wrist.

In Jane’s case, she said a letter by a police detective to a local judge eventually begged unsuccessfully that the man be held in jail as the number of violations pushed the charges from a misdemeanor to a felony. But the law and legal discretion resulted only in his continual release on bail, usually around $250 per incident.

Prior to an attack, stalking, theft, destruction of property, betrayal and harassment might have foreshadowed the violence to come. It is one reason why Townsend and Angelova want to see more training and cooperation among law enforcement, local media, schools and other agencies.

In her case, Jane and her future attacker had broken all contact. Then there were three more arrests, all related to phone calls in breach of the renewed stay-away order, bringing the total to seven or eight.

Incidents including a ransacked apartment and a stolen car had not resulted in any arrests.

A county assistant district attorney pushed to have the man brought before a grand jury, citing the possibility the man was guilty of tampering with a witness in an effort to increase the legal stakes.

“Now they’re just trying to get him on anything, and at this point they were all felonies because there were so many arrests,” Jane explained.

Despite the efforts of police and prosecutors, Jane’s abuser was held in jail only once, for a single night and was released the next day.

Two high-ranking members of the local police department, she said, then wrote to the judge asking that he be held on higher bail, she recalled.

The letter, it seems, could not affect change.

Lawyers made deals, with the DA asking for two A misdemeanors and the man’s attorney asking for one B misdemeanor because at one point early on, Jane had voluntarily allowed him to come back to her home in order to drop off possessions.

The defendant turned down the deal.

“There was one last phone call to me. That’s the last time he called me. Well guess what, my restraining order ended (the day before). So that’s when I called the cops right away and they’re going to arrest him again ... well that’s when we find out that the restraining order was no good anymore,” she said.

A new one was issued some days later.

“I thought he was out of town, I thought he was gone. I was clicking my heels,” she said. “I’m not worried about anything, and then (a few days later) police called and said he’s despondent, he didn’t show up for court. We just want you to be aware, they said, keep your doors and your windows locked.”

The warning, in hindsight, was credible.

Jane was left for dead after a vicious attack just days later. That she survived would not have been expected. One local police officer agreed the sustained attack announced hatred.



Why women go back

These themes and others repeat themselves in the stories Jane and Mary told, women who have survived but for whom survival might continue to command their attention for years to come. Both continue to attend group sessions, the kind provided by the YWCA, where they find support from others and a better understanding of their past circumstances.

According to advocates, the decision to seek help can be difficult.

Women are often responsible to dependent children, in denial, afraid, or in Mary’s case, beholden to religious doctrine.

Both victims had made the mistake of going back before, in Jane’s case the final violent act; in Mary’s, the courage to say enough is enough.

“So now what does every woman do?” Jane asked rhetorically, citing her attacker’s promises and a meeting arranged to drop off her possessions after he abruptly moved out, having become filled with jealousy.

Woman after woman, she acknowledged, takes the abuser back — usually before the abuse reaches it’s crescendo — suspending their disbelief for one last chance at reconciliation, or out of perceived necessity, to protect her children or because her very means of escape, a car or money has been sabotaged.

They return, more often than not, to a newly enraged abuser only to be abused in an ever-escalating attempt by the person they once loved to maintain control over them, to keep them from leaving.

Women are at a 75 percent greater chance of being killed if they attempt to leave than if they stay, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

Mary, explaining how she took her husband back after she was issued an order of protection following the incident, said he cried when telling her he wanted to change. He offered to attend alcohol and substance abuse counseling, she said.

“Even though everything inside of me was saying ‘he’s not going to change’ I said well maybe this is the last time,” Mary said. “Maybe I’ll finally get what I’ve been praying for all these years ... “He didn’t change one bit … (days later) he just looked at me and said ‘I lied … I just did what I had to do to get you to drop the charges.”

After he moved out on his own, Jane allowed him back to drop off some of her things, she said, and admitted she was open to working things out at that time.

Police were livid, at one point threatening to arrest her for willingly breaching the court order.

“He calls and he’s apologizing, which, they all do ... big mistake. Now they want to arrest me. I never dealt with anything like this. I just had no idea. I was so stupid about what was going on here. I totally loved him. There was no question ... It wasn’t one of my better calls, as an adult.”

Mary said: “I can tell you today that I will never go back into that situation, with him or anyone else.”