Breaking Free: Domestic Abuse & Self-Defense, Part 2

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is Part 2 of a four-part series on domestic abuse and self-defense. This article analyzes the challenges, obstacles and dangers of escaping an abusive relationship.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Sabrina Hendley was standing next to her pool, still wearing her bikini, with a hunting knife pressed against her throat.

Earlier that evening — May 26, 2018 — Hendley’s husband, Mark, had forcibly held neighbor Lora Polatz underwater. He then turned on his wife before abruptly exiting the pool area. Hendley was consoling her distraught neighbor, hoping she wouldn’t go home and tell her husband what had happened, when Mark reappeared.

“He came behind me and he just wrapped the knife,” Hendley explained. “And it was like right there on my throat. And I was scared. And I’m doing everything I can to pull it back away from my throat. And the knife was sharp and it’s hurting me. And I honestly don’t know how I still have my fingers.”

Polatz stood in front of them, according to Hendley’s account of the events, and shouted at Mark, urging him to stop. That’s when he removed the knife from his wife’s throat and slashed at the air in Polatz’s direction, attempting to get her to back off. Hendley took the oportunity to escape, breaking free and running to the front yard to hide.

“I feel bad for running,” Hendley admitted. “Because now I just left [Polatz] with him with the knife. But I ran because I didn’t think he would attack her anymore. I was thinking he’ll come after me.”

Hendley said that she heard screaming and that her husband then came outside to grab her. She shouted that she wanted a divorce and that he needed to leave as he dragged her back into the house. Her father, who lived with the couple, then appeared and asked what was going on.

Mark assaulted Hendley’s father just outside his bedroom, punching and choking him, unbeknown to Hendley, who had slipped out the back door, hoping to lead her husband away. Once she realized she had not been followed, she reentered the house and saw Mark mean-mugging her father.

“He was staring at my dad so hard at one point that I feared for [his] safety,” Hendley stated. “And I wanted to knock [Mark] out of it. So, I hit him upside the head as hard as I could. He didn’t flinch. And all of the sudden, he looked at me, and he hit me.”

Hendley fell onto the bed. She got up and convinced Mark to leave her father alone by saying she wouldn’t divorce him. She wouldn’t leave him. They then went into the master bedroom, where one of their young daughters was sleeping. There he knocked Hendley to the ground and began rummaging through the closet where the couple kept their firearms.

“There’s no reason to be in that closet,” Hendley said. “None. Especially not tonight. And he was just like scrambling, looking for something.”

Hendley and Mark argued. And then she sat down on the edge of their bed, hoping to de-escalate the situation. That’s when she noticed the hunting knife from earlier, an unholstered pistol and a loaded magazine sitting next to the pillow. She picked up the pistol and demanded that Mark tell her what was going on.

“My daughter’s right here,” Hendley recalled. “I wasn’t expecting this to be where everything was going. I mean, who expects that you’re about to die? No one expects that someone has planned, literally, to take you out.”

Hendley said that her husband turned away from the closet. He had a blank expression on his face. His normally blue eyes appeared black. He seemed like a completely different person. She chambered a round, thinking that she had to be prepared if he was going to attack.

And when Mark started toward her, she aimed for center mass and fired one shot.

When Enough is Enough

Needless to say, it’s best to leave an abusive relationship before it becomes a life-or-death situation. But it’s not always that simple. Abusers are almost always charming in the beginning. They slowly escalate their negative behavior. And, over time, their victims become beaten down, demoralized and oftentimes unable to access the resources they need to attempt an escape.

Nevertheless, it needs to be done. And the women I spoke with said it came to a point where a line was crossed and they simply could no longer tolerate the situations they were in.

For Shirley Watral, author of Heels to Holster, that moment came when she was in the shower, cleaning up after a league volleyball game. Her boyfriend, a smooth-talking subcontractor who had become more and more controlling, had let himself into her apartment and quietly slipped into the bathroom. When she got out, she was shocked to find him sitting on the toilet, holding her towel. Why hadn’t he been invited to the game? Who were these people she was playing with?

For Concealed Carry Magazine Editor at Large Beth Alcazar, the moment arrived when she became a mother. She was married to an Arab American man and had initially dismissed many red flags as cultural differences. But she became so diminished by his lies, mistreatment and manipulation that she became a shell of her former self. When her daughter came into the world, she made the decision to get out.

“She was my saving grace,” Alcazar said. “Because I thought, I can go through this confusion, and this emotional anguish, and the sadness, and this day-to-day trauma. I can go through it. But I am not going to allow her to go through it.”

For Amy Smith*, who works in marketing, the moment came when her husband of nearly 20 years raped her after a party they had hosted at their house. He had kept her isolated for years and became enraged when she expressed a desire to be more social. The party apparently caused him to snap. And afterward, she found herself bruised, sitting on the edge of the tub, wondering what had just happened. She moved into the spare bedroom the next day. And that weekend she purchased a lock for the door, installed it and put the key in her bra.

“I lived like that for almost two years in absolute terror of this man,” she recalled.

She thought, I need to get a job. I need to save some money. I need to hire an attorney. I need a divorce.

An Escape Plan

Leaving an abusive relationship can be dangerous because of the potential for violent escalation. In the face of rejection, an abuser can easily switch to a lethal mentality. So, it’s prudent for the abused to consider the obstacles he or she will likely face moving from “victim” to “survivor.”

That’s why I reached out to Julie Weintraub, who runs the nonprofit Hands Across the Bay in Clearwater, Florida. For years, she and her team have worked to promote domestic violence awareness and prevention.

Weintraub, who is also a prominent South Florida businesswoman, traced her interest in domestic violence to her childhood in Cohasset, Massachusetts. There was a pretty girl she admired and often saw around town.

“She was dating a guy and tried to break up with him because he had major issues,” Weintraub said. “And he ended up shooting her and killing her. The whole town was devastated. The mother was devastated. And I remember how upset and in shock I was.”

I asked for her thoughts on leaving an abusive relationship — beyond the commonplace advice to call the National Domestic Violence Hotline (800-799-7233), lean on friends and family for moral support, and have a “go bag” packed and ready. Her advice ran to the practical.

“You need to make a plan,” Weintraub indicated. “No. 1 thing is to slowly make a plan to make sure you are able to leave in a way that you never have to go back. If you just wait until it’s a huge fight on a Saturday night and you leave, you’re going to have to go back.”

In her experience, it’s the going back that gets the abused killed — going back for a blender, a school shirt or a favorite pair of shoes.

Weintraub advises setting some money aside, making a plan for work, making a plan for children and more. All of the proverbial ducks must be in a row.

“And [the abuser is] going to try and contact you,” she stated. “And you must never have any kind of meet up with [an abuser] you have left.”

Weintraub is also one of the rare victim advocates who encourages women to get armed and trained. And she’s not afraid to voice her support for concealed carry.

“You want to leave and be willing and able to defend yourself with deadly force, if necessary,” she said. “Women can no longer be sitting ducks, existing at the mercy of the men around them.”

Weintraub also warned women to lower their expectations in terms of the help they could receive from a shelter. She’ll tour her local shelters and see them organized, with pantries full of food. But it’s a Potemkin village. In reality, she said, the pantries are bare, things are a mess, and the women she sends their way aren’t even provided transportation to work.

“Most of them are very poorly run,” she stated.

Another problem is safety, Weintraub said. Shelters in her area will use “bed fillers,” that is to say, usually drug-addicted homeless people. These women end up costing the shelters less because they’re not availing themselves of the services the shelters are obligated to provide. Weintraub will send a shelter a schoolteacher and hear back later that the teacher was robbed in the middle of the night.

To further illustrate her complaints of mismanagement, Weintraub pointed to the recent news involving Tiffany Carr. The former head of the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence agreed to pay back $2.1 million as part of a settlement in a series of lawsuits centered on the state’s attempt to claw back “exorbitant” compensation paid to Carr and members of the nonprofit’s board of directors.¹

Financial Control

The financial aspect of domestic violence is too commonly overlooked, according to Kim Scouller, a financial professional with the Georgia-based firm WealthWave. She tries her best to get the word out through speaking engagements and media interviews.

“One of the primary reasons women stay in or go back to abusive situations is because of the financial obstacles,” she indicated. “They’re financially dependent on their abuser[s]. And if children are involved, it makes the situation worse.”

In Scouller’s estimation, 99 percent of domestic violence victims are also the victims of financial abuse. But because the other aspects of abuse are so reprehensible, this tends to be overshadowed.

For an abuser to take complete financial control of a victim, she said, it requires financial control. It never looks like abuse in the beginning. Instead, it looks like love: “Let me take care of the bills. Let me handle the money. You just take care of yourself.”

“And it ends up, over time, where the partner has taken complete control over the finances,” Scouller stated. “And you don’t have access to money or information about money.”

There are three main types of financial abuse.

The first is the aforementioned financial control, where an abuser can drain a victim’s accounts, criticize spending or demand detailed accounts of how every cent is spent.

The second type of financial abuse is economic or career sabotage, where an abuser wants to prevent the victim from improving his or her situation economically, either through a career or academics.

“The abuser will work hard to get [the victim] to quit,” Scouller said. “To have them be late or miss work or miss school. Be a constant source of harassment in the workplace. To the point where an employer has to make a difficult decision.”

The third type of financial abuse is economic exploitation, she indicated. This is where an abuser runs up the credit cards or takes out a lot of debt in the victim’s name.

“This is a real insidious kind of financial abuse,” Scouller said. “Because it lasts for years after the victim leaves an abusive situation. They’ll end up paying off credit cards. Filing for bankruptcy. Maybe there are judgment liens or tax liens they have to pay.”

For those who have made the decision to leave their abusers, Scouller recommends putting a financial safety plan into place. Start stashing cash. Get a separate bank account and a separate card. Get your credit report. Take photos of important documents in the house, such as birth certificates, social security cards, passports and marriage licenses — even the bank account statement if you can access it.

“Because when you leave,” she said, “you may not be able to leave with anything but the clothes on your back and the phone in your hand.”

When asked for any advice about dealing with the aftermath of financial abuse, Scouller offered the following words of encouragement:

“Don’t give up hope,” she said. “It’s OK if you’ve got to start over. And it’s OK if you’ve got to start over from scratch if you’ve got kids. Because the example you give your kids is that of a person who went from being a victim to being a survivor to being a thriver.”

The System

And then there are the legal considerations. What about pressing charges? What about seeking a restraining order or a protective order? And what’s the difference between the two? In order to shed some light on these issues, I first spoke with Mary Lynn Caswell, the director of the Domestic Violence and Stalking Unit in Columbus, Ohio.

“We are a specialized unit in the Columbus City Attorney’s office,” Caswell said. “We have six specialized prosecutors and close to 25 or 30 advocates.”

The advocates are all people with college degrees, either in social work or criminal justice, who meet survivors at the beginning of a case at an arraignment. And then they help them access protection orders in the criminal section — either domestic violence temporary protection orders or criminal protection orders.

Caswell pointed out that her unit only helps with protective orders because in Ohio there isn’t the option of a restraining order (a civil order) in intimate or family relationships. She also said that most domestic violence laws are statutory state law. And she has strong feelings on the value of protection orders in the context of domestic violence.

“Our survivors tell us all the time, ‘It’s just a piece of paper,’” Caswell stated. “But we think they are a very effective tool. Because it sets a firm boundary with an abuser, to say, look, this relationship is over. And the courts take action much more quickly if they see a protection order in place.”

Under Ohio law, a protection order violation is a “preferred arrest” situation. So, if law enforcement has probable cause, the preferred course of action is to make an arrest. And that gets the abuser before a judge more quickly than a summons.

“And then if the behavior of that abuser is escalating,” she said, “that protective order allows for a very quick response and a quick correction of the behavior.”

When asked about the danger of escalation through seeking a protective order or filing charges, Caswell didn’t mince words.

“I mean, if you’re to the point [where] you’re deciding [whether or not] to file charges, I would argue that the behavior has already escalated,” she stated. “What I often say to survivors is, ‘Doing nothing hasn’t worked. Doing something may or may not work.’”

I next spoke with Chico, California, Attorney Brenden Blake, who has 10 years’ worth of experience in domestic violence law. The bulk of that experience has come through criminal defense, but he has represented victims as well. He drove home the life-changing consequences of a domestic violence conviction in California for both offender and victim.

“There’s not really an ‘out’ if you have a domestic violence conviction to [being] held pretty seriously accountable,” he indicated. “Whether it’s a misdemeanor or a felony, you’re going to be taken to task. The system is heavily invested in intervening in domestic violence cases. I see situations where the person who calls law enforcement is almost surprised how strong the reaction is.”

The caller is usually surprised that the abuser is given a move-out order, that he or she will have to do classes, and that he or she will potentially be incarcerated.

“I think it’s important that everybody involved realizes, especially as a victim in a case, that if you do want and need and desire that protection, that it will be there for you,” Blake said. “But once that process starts, it is to a large extent out of your hands.”

Stalking and Additional Violence

Once victims leave abusive relationships, they can find themselves being stalked or subjected to further violence. This is something that Watral knows all too well.

After she began distancing herself from her abuser, she would get the feeling that someone had been in her apartment. There was the 15-hour imprisonment in his home discussed in the first installment of this series (“Fear, Shame and Despair”). She received a VHS tape from him of two strangers having sex. And an informant for her sheriff’s office discovered that Watral’s abuser was plotting to kill her by blowing up her car with plastic explosives.

Only after he was arrested, put on trial, convicted and sent to prison was Watral’s ordeal over.

“All stalkers are different,” said Laura Richards. “But if we’re talking about the rejected, those who have had a relationship, it tends to be motivated initially by wanting to get the victim back.”

Richards is an internationally recognized expert on stalkers. She worked as a criminal behavior analyst with London’s Metropolitan Police for a decade before turning to other pursuits. She now runs a podcast called Crime Analyst from her home in Southern California.

“But, when they don’t get what they want,” she said, “they then want to harm and damage the victim. It can very quickly oscillate to, ‘Well, if I can’t have you, no one can.’ And that’s when we start to see it go into the very dangerous territory.”

During her time with the Metropolitan Police, Richards was the first reviewing officer on the case of Clare Bernal. The 22-year-old woman was stalked and murdered in Harvey Nichols, a luxury department store in the exclusive Knightsbridge area of London. The case drew international attention.²

“I realized that my colleagues in the Met didn’t understand stalking,” she indicated. “It was predominantly women who were being murdered. And they were coming to us. And they were telling us they were scared. And we were taking statements from them. But we weren’t doing anything really proactive to try and understand the psychology of it.”

Richards defined stalking — a pattern of unwanted, fixated and obsessive behavior that is intrusive and causes fear of violence or serious alarm and distress — as part of establishing Paladin, a stalking-victim-advocacy organization, in 2013.

“I think the alarming thing with someone when they’re being stalked is you don’t know how extensive it is,” she stated.

Virtually every aspect of your life can be intruded upon, Richards said. Stalkers will not only physically approach their victims but also might divert emails, employ webcams or use victims’ cellphones and apps to geolocate them.

“The ability to use tech and just press a button means that every part of your life tends to be invaded,” she stated. “The impact on you is that you are on eggshells. And you feel like you’re being paranoid. But you have to risk-assess absolutely everything.”

Every stalking case is different, Richards said, and, consequently, the only blanket advice she can give is to trust your instincts — and to act on them.

“If you feel you’re in danger,” she stated, “follow that. Call 911. Go to a place of safety — a shop, a public place, a place where there might be cameras — if you feel instinctively that you’re at risk at any given moment.”

A common misconception, Richards said, is that only celebrities accrue stalkers. Another — commonly promoted by police, in her experience — is that nothing can be done. “There’s a lot you can do around intervention and prevention,” she said. “And, primarily, it starts with education. And bringing in specialists. And raising awareness.”

A Matter of Life and Death

Meanwhile, back in Florida, Hendley was forced to take aim at her abusive husband and fire a single shot. The round connected. And he backed up into the bathroom and collapsed.

Part 3 of the Domestic Abuse & Self-Defense series examining domestic violence and guns will appear in the April 2023 issue of CCM.

*Amy Smith is a pseudonym.

Endnotes

(1) Mary Ellen Klas, “Florida claws back $5 million from nonprofit after spending scandal,” Tampa Bay Times, Aug. 26, 2021, TampaBay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/08/26/florida-claws-back-5-million-from-nonprofit-after-spendingscandal/.

(2) True Crime Central, “Clare Bernal | Killed By My Stalker | S1E03,” YouTube video, 44:18, Feb. 13, 2022, https://youtu.be/xLTrOZLs9gI.