December 16, 2024 • 49 mins
Domestic violence isn't just a statistic—it’s a harsh reality that often escalates during the holiday season, affecting countless individuals and families. We explore this troubling phenomenon through the lens of Heather's extensive experience in domestic violence units. With her insights, we break down societal misconceptions, highlighting the frustration of victim-blaming and challenging stereotypes about who can fall victim to abuse. Our discussion calls for empathy and awareness, urging listeners to understand that domestic violence can affect anyone, regardless of background.
Through stories like that of William Wallace and Za'Zell Preston, we shine a light on the complexities victims face in abusive relationships, even with awareness and support systems in place. The tragic case of Za'Zell, who was training to be a domestic violence counselor, underscores the insidious nature of control and isolation that can trap victims. We share practical communication tools, such as the "asking for a friend" strategy, to help victims and supporters recognize abusive situations and provide support without direct confrontation, all while navigating the cycle of violence.
As we examine the patterns of power and control, including economic abuse and male privilege, the conversation turns to the broader implications of these dynamics. We stress the critical importance of community support and resources, noting the elevated risks victims face during pregnancy or when planning to leave. Our aim is to arm listeners with knowledge and resources, such as www.thehotline.org, to support those in need. Join us in shedding light on this leading cause of harm to women and children in the U.S., and help us spread awareness to break the cycle of violence.
Resources for domestic violence found on our website.
www.deviantcriminology.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
All right.
So this is going to be ourfirst, I guess kind of like mini
episode or mini sode, but thiskind of came up from multiple
angles.
So one recently I was at a gunviolence conference in Minnesota
and one of the topics that cameup was violence in the home.
A lot of that was talking aboutdomestic violence specifically,
(01:01):
and then Heather, you broughtup this case and then just kind
of the background of domesticviolence specifically, and then,
heather, you brought up thiscase and then just kind of the
background of domestic violence.
So I'll say this twice, butfirst this is a trigger warning
that we are going to be talkingabout domestic violence and
presenting a case thatunfortunately leads to homicide
because of domestic violence.
So but this is an episode thatwe believe just needs to be done
.
It's an important topic and, asstatistics will show here
(01:24):
shortly believe just needs to bedone.
It's an important topic and, asstatistics will show here
shortly coming to the holidayseason, this is kind of a more
vulnerable time for people.
So I'm Richard Weaver, I'mHeather Kenney and we are
Deviant Criminology, so we willbe discussing domestic violence,
presenting a unique andtroubling case involving
domestic violence and murder.
So again, please take this as atrigger warning.
(01:44):
If this is a topic that you aresensitive to, please go ahead
and turn off now and go on toour next episode.
But research has shown thataround the holiday season,
reports of domestic violencerise on average of 20%, which
there's multiple things thatcould lead to this.
Again, causation does not leadto corralization, but some of
(02:09):
this could be related to some ofthe same things we saw during
COVID, where individuals arelocked up more together I think
locked up may be the wrong wordthere where individuals are
inside more together because ofeither time off, of work, being
cold outside there's less chanceto get away.
So and we saw that there was aspike during COVID of
(02:32):
interpartner violence, and itwas often found in combination
with other things such asfinancial problems, mental
health disorders, substance usedisorders and stressors.
So though we often think ofdomestic violence as being
focused on violence just againstwomen, the sad fact is that
roughly 40% of cases ofinterpersonal violence are with
male victims.
(02:52):
Data also shows that roughly 1in 15 children have some type of
experience or exposure todomestic violence, and over 85%
of those kids witness actualphysical violence.
So this is kind of again a topicthat you and I have experience
with me from the social workside and also just law
(03:13):
enforcement responding to thesecases and from the law
enforcement perspective, theseare some of the most volatile
cases to go to and probably themost dangerous.
So even though you're called tothose situations, once you go
to make an arrest, if you haveto make arrests, sometimes the
victims can change personality.
So you know if their loved oneis going to jail they may be
(03:33):
afraid of retaliation.
When they get out they mayrealize there could be financial
repercussions.
So they can be very volatileand a lot of officers have lost
their lives and emergencyresponders, even EMTs, have lost
their lives responding to thesecases.
And then you yourself have along history with this as well.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
So real quick.
I think you reversed causationand correlation when you said it
.
I don't know if you want tojust repeat that one little bit
Correlation does not equalcausation.
And you said, causation doesnot equal correlation.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well shit.
Okay, so let me go back and fixthat.
Causation does not equalcorrelation.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Other way around Correlation.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Okay, so one more time.
Correlation does not equalcausation.
So, just like the example ofice cream sales go up in the
summer, murders.
Go up in the summer does notmean eating ice cream makes you
commit murder.
So we're going to leave all ofthis in, just to show that I
also can be a jackass.
So, but off of that, heather,you have like a lot of
(04:39):
experience in this area as well.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
So unfortunately yes, unfortunately, I do.
I worked in domestic violenceunits for both misdemeanor level
and felony level, so I've seena lot more than most people
probably should have seen orwould want to have seen me.
(05:00):
And sometimes I get likeemotionally invested as far as
frustration and anger, becausesometimes I don't understand how
other people can't understandthis, but at the same time I
have to try to take a step backand recognize that not everybody
has had the education andexposure and training and all of
the things that I've had.
You know, when you see victimsevery single day for two years,
(05:23):
it becomes really easy to seethe problems, and when you talk
to somebody else who doesn't seethose problems, it gets
frustrating.
And you also have to keep allof those things in mind when you
are talking to potential jurors.
In your jury said that there wasno such thing as domestic
(05:47):
violence because a husband wouldnever hurt or hit his wife
unless she had done somethingwrong.
As such, it was his job to havesome type of family structure
and enforce that familystructure.
And I tried to give her theexample of what happens if he
only gives her $50 to buygroceries and she knows it's
going to cost $75 to buy thegroceries for the week, and her
(06:09):
answer was basically like, well,he wouldn't do that because no
husband would do that and ifsomething came up it basically
had to be her fault.
So there's a lot of things thatgo into DV and we'll talk about
that at the end, things likevictim blaming and you know why
didn't they leave and how didthey get themselves into this.
(06:29):
But for right now let's go aheadand talk about this case.
It caught my attention and itkept bothering me and I kept
thinking about it and I thinklast night I kind of finally
like wrapped my mind around whyit had been bothering me so much
, the fact that this victim itseems like she hits some of the
major areas that you would thinkshe would not have been a
(06:53):
victim of domestic violence, andsometimes I think that also
makes it difficult for people inthe public to understand that
this could happen to anybody.
This isn't just as the moviesportray, just certain groups of
people or, you know, onlyeconomically depressed people or
only women who have lowself-esteem, or only uneducated
(07:14):
people, like it goes across allof the demographics.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And I think, like even in my experience, like I've
known social workers, I've hadstudents that came into social
work or criminal justicespecifically because they were
either had been prior victimizedor were currently being
victimized, and then even policeofficers and lawyers that were
victims actively of domesticviolence.
(07:39):
So it's, I think a lot ofpeople think it's the most
vulnerable, but it can be whatwe perceive as the strongest.
I see it a lot also in athletesand across all those groups
when the biggest thing isreporting and a lot of it is
because they don't want to getsomebody in trouble but also
they don't see how theythemselves are a victim.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, I definitely agree with that see how they
themselves are a victim.
Yeah, I definitely agree withthat.
And I think there's also anelement when you're talking
about it the whole blame, thevictim thing, because it cuts
across all demographics.
I think we naturally have thisinclination to try to figure out
how can I be safe, what makesme safe?
And if you look at something,whether it be a sex assault or a
(08:24):
domestic violence case oranything else, if you think, gee
, that could happen to me, it'sscary.
So the easiest thing to do toself-protect is to find reasons
why that's not going to happento you.
And just saying I'm lucky and Irolled the dice and it didn't
happen to me isn't very settling.
So it's easier to say, well, itwon't happen to me because I'm
(08:47):
different than.
Why will this not happen to meBecause I'm different than that
victim?
How Well, because I won't dothis, or I am not this, or I
won't be that.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I think another thing is victim blaming goes both
ways and a lot of times victimsblame themselves and we have to
also work on that mentality wetalked about, like making mental
health more, like getting thestigma off of that.
There does need to be a pushalso for helping victims of
(09:17):
domestic violence not blamethemselves and not see that
self-shame and self-blame.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
I think that's a huge issue, and when I say victim
blaming, I mean everybody likevictims included, and I found
that one of the most effectiveway when you're trying to talk
to victims and hopefully thismight be helpful for somebody
listening if they have a friendor family member who they're
worried about is to not talk tothat person about their specific
(09:45):
circumstances, which mightsound odd, but instead of saying
something like he shouldn'ttalk to you that way, which then
they'll get defensive and saysomething like, yeah, but I
burned dinner.
Or yeah, but that's my faultbecause of this, or I really
made him mad because of that,instead turn it into no one
deserves to be talked that way,because they're going to have a
(10:08):
hard time answering that back,because then they're going to
think about well, if this waswhat, if this was my, you know,
my sister, my friend, my cousin,if somebody talked to them that
way, would it be okay?
And so I think it's a loteasier to extrapolate that out
to the third person and say noone should be treated this way,
to extrapolate that out to thethird person and say no one
should be treated this way.
No one should be talked to thisway.
(10:31):
People who love other people.
Don't treat the people theylove this way, and I think when
you get those themes going, it'seasier for victims to recognize
.
This is not okay.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yes, and I think there's also that other kind of
the joke we've always said, butit actually fits in here.
So asking for a friend and thenkind of giving a scenario that
very much kind of mirrors theirs, because it takes them out of
it but makes them look at it andbe like, oh, wow.
So I think that it might be athrow off that we say all the
time jokingly, is that askingfor a friend?
(11:02):
That can be a very goodcommunication tool.
We also use in substance usedisorders, but in this as well,
where you really want them tosee.
But even if they see, sometimes, as I know you're going to get
into, even if you have the will,you may not have the ability
exactly, exactly, and there'swe'll also talk more about all
the reasons why not to leave.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
But I think, as you said, that that asking for a
friend if you can make it anobjective evaluation instead of
a subjective evaluation that ithelps think through that process
and decide this is not okay andI'm going to do something about
it.
I'm not going to just let thiskeep happening.
But it also means that you haveto have somebody who's able to
(11:44):
talk to you and tell you that,and one of the things we'll talk
about is one of the firstthings that an abuser will do is
cordon that person off, isolatethem, get all of those support
people out of their life beforethings get bad.
So then that way nobody seesthose things, so nobody can say,
hey, that's not okay, why areyou putting up with this?
Because if everybody's at arm'slength and nobody sees it,
(12:06):
nobody can call them out.
So let's talk about this caseand then we'll come back around
to some more of the generalthings and we can apply it kind
of in light of this case.
This case tragically happenedaround Christmas.
It's between two individual,william Wallace and Zazelle
Preston, also known as ZZ.
It's a case from California,orange County and at the time
(12:30):
Wallace was 39 years old and hehad served jail time for
domestic violence.
Prior to this incident, zz was26 and had recently enrolled as
a full-time student at CypressCollege and she was studying to
be a domestic violence counselor.
Ironically enough, and justlike you said Richie maybe it
was because of this hard to sayand she had been noted to be a
(12:54):
talented dancer.
According to family and friends, she also told her family that
he was controlling and violentand had even threatened to kill
her more than once.
A relative shared an incidentwhere they found her pregnant
and curled up in the fetalposition in the street after he
had beat her up.
So again, that goes back toshe's educated or becoming
(13:16):
educated in domestic violence.
So you wouldn't think that thatwould make her be a victim.
She has family members around,so she has support, so you would
think that that would be anindication that she wouldn't be
a victim.
This relative shared thisincident where they found her
beaten up when she was pregnant.
So again, you'd think, well,she's not going to be a victim
because this family member knowswhat's going on.
(13:36):
They'll intervene.
And yet this still happened.
At the time of the offense shehad a seven-week-old son with
the defendant and then she alsohad two daughters from a
previous relationship, athree-year-old and an
eight-year-old.
So the date of offense for thisincident is December 24, 2011,.
(13:59):
And it continues into ChristmasDay, december 25, 2011.
And it continues into ChristmasDay, december 25th 2011.
And the couple had gone to aneighbor's holiday party, came
home, argued loud enough thatsome neighbors had heard the
argument.
At some point, he drags herfrom the bedroom to the living
room, puts her on the sofa, putssome sunglasses on her face and
(14:22):
props her on the couch forChristmas morning.
And she is in the room whileher children are opening their
gifts.
And as her body is there on thecouch, the defendant turns and
tells the children mommy ruinedChristmas, she got drunk and
(14:43):
ruined Christmas.
Mommy ruined Christmas, she gotdrunk and ruined Christmas.
So, on top of all of thehorrendous stuff that happens
with this case, he brings thechildren into this and then also
tells them that it's mom'sfault that he killed her.
At some point the paramedicsarrive and when they get there,
her body is slumped over on thecouch.
Police get called in.
(15:05):
They find blood in multipleareas of the apartment.
Holes are punched in walls,there's a door off the hinges,
he says at some point we weredrinking and during the argument
I tossed her around a bit andhe had said that to one of her
family members.
Another witness also said thatthey saw him with a body near an
entry gate.
(15:26):
Now the defense in this case wasthat she had died after falling
into a glass table while shewas drunk.
They alleged that the oldestdaughter which again, if you
remember, she was eight yearsold saw mom trip and fall into
the table, then helped pull theglass out of her mom's wounds
and helped clean her up, andthat at some point he was moving
(15:48):
her body to the tub and hit herhead somewhere along the way.
And he told multiple peoplethat she had fallen and had a
concussion.
And one of his defense team,heather Moorhead, said that Mr
Wallace is being accused ofsomething that is not his fault.
You will hear about arelationship that was full of
(16:10):
arguing and yelling, but also alot of love.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Looking at all this.
They go out drinking.
He comes back and says she justhappens to fall through a table
, hit her head a couple timesand then props her up on a couch
for Christmas presents becausehe just didn't want them to go
to Christmas without mom, whileand this was all accident, but
yet history of multiple issueswith domestic violence OK, just
(16:39):
wanting to make sure.
I'm very aware that this man isa liar.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yes, absolutely Right .
You know there's a.
There's a whole lot of love inthat.
Yeah, no, there was a whole lotof love, like there would have
been some efforts to stop whatwas happening on his part.
Hopefully some responsibilityand some self-awareness, but
obviously not.
So that was the statement thatHeather Moore had told to the
(17:05):
jurors.
She was part of the defenseteam.
Um, as you all know, my name isHeather and there was also a
DDA, heather Brown.
In this case there's Heather'sall the way around and, um,
heather Brown said that thedefendant did what he always did
, expecting ZZ to survive, likeshe always did.
This Christmas story does nothave a happy ending and
(17:27):
unfortunately this is not just astory.
It is real life, which you know.
Again.
We see depictions of domesticviolence on television and in
movies and in stories, and Ithink a lot of times we don't
recognize how common it is andthat it's not nearly as dramatic
as what you see on TV.
Sometimes it's a lot of littlethings that in and of themselves
(17:49):
, if you look at this one littleincident, it doesn't mean
anything, but it's when you lookat the totality of the story
and all of these littleincidents along the way that it
makes sense.
So, like as an example, youmight have a restraining order
case where the person hasviolated a restraining order and
he sent her flowers on herbirthday.
(18:09):
And you look at that case onthe face and you're like gee, he
sent her flowers on herbirthday, yes, there was a
restraining order, and now allof a sudden he's going to jail
for that.
How ridiculous is that?
But if you hear the backstoryto it where he told her things
like you'll never get away fromme.
If you ever leave me, you knowI'm going to kill you.
I can't stand for you to bewith anybody else.
(18:30):
Sometimes you'll hear statementslike I can't go on living if I
don't have you in my life, whichis another huge red flag.
You go through all of that andthen all of a sudden, she's
hiding, she's moved to a newapartment, she's got a new job.
She thinks that she's passedhim and he's forgotten all about
her and she thinks she's on thenext chapter and on her way and
all of a sudden these flowerspop up.
(18:51):
You know, happy birthday fromJohn.
You know John Smith.
And you know that all thatterror, all that emotion, all of
that comes crashing back of theoh my God, he knows where I'm
at, yeah, and I'm right backinto the middle of it.
So I think you need, when you'rehearing about stories or you
(19:12):
see incidents or you seesomething, you need to remember
that context, even when you'retalking about friends or family,
like if you see something youmight be like, oh, that one
thing is not a big deal.
But if you think about it incontext, over time sometimes
you'll see a picture that youmight not ordinarily would have
seen or made observations about.
(19:33):
Another one of the quotes wasfrom District Attorney Todd
Spitzer and he said a youngmother finally losing her life
after years of violence at thehands of her husband is a
heart-wrenching tragedy.
The heartbreak is onlyexacerbated by the fact that her
children witnessed much of theviolence and were forced to
celebrate Christmas in thepresence of their dead mother.
(19:54):
That is not a Christmas memoryany child should be forced to
have, and I think it's importantto note how many children are
impacted by domestic violence.
When you say domestic violence,most people think of the
individuals involved in therelationship, whether it be male
or female.
A lot of times people don'tthink about the children that
(20:14):
are involved, the impact onthose children, other family
members, because of theisolation Sometimes people will
lose their brother or theirsister or their parents, and so
when these things happen, itdoesn't just impact we'll say
her as the generic genderpronoun.
It also happens to impact hermother or her father or her
cousin or her best friend whoshe's no longer emotionally
(20:39):
available to because he hastaken her away, and sometimes
that will have been taking heraway emotionally or time-wise,
where they're no longer part ofher life.
When it comes to childrenspecifically, in my experience
they know far more than mostpeople think that they know.
They hear far more than peoplethink that they hear.
(21:02):
A lot of times when I'm talkingto victims, one of the things
that push them forward tofinally do something about it is
their children will saysomething or see something, or
somehow they know that theirchildren are being impacted by
it, and that's one of the thingsthat I have seen motivate
victims to get out of thosesituations.
A lot of times they don'trealize their children are
(21:22):
hearing these things until theysay something, or their kids
will say something at school andthe teacher will call home.
There have been some studiesthat have shown that children
who are exposed to domesticviolence have the same types of
learning and cognitive delaysthat children who are exposed to
lead contamination do.
So it's not just a minor thing.
It's not something you can justbrush off.
(21:44):
It's something that's actuallyreally causing problems for
these children.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Well, and I think another thing that we need to
talk about that's not isbelieved children.
I think there's situations,especially and we saw it during
COVID, like before COVID andeven after COVID once families
got out that domestic violence,especially if there's
stepchildren in the house, canbe the targets of the initial
domestic violence and theemotional abuse, and when they
(22:12):
try to report it to the otherparent, the other parent doesn't
believe it Once that child'sgone or once the other parent is
home in the house more that theabuser can't hide it anymore.
And then finally you see it, butit's either too late or you've
become so desensitized to itthat you just continue to go on
(22:35):
and you become a victim as well.
And I think that there's reallysigns that you need to listen
to children and take themseriously, because you always go
for the most vulnerable first.
That's what I'm going to justsay.
That's what cowards do.
They go after the weakest onefirst and they force people into
abuse.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
And I would agree with that.
That's often how it works.
Sometimes you have the opposite, where they have connected with
the victim before the kids areborn and then, as the children
are born and they are livingthrough these experiences and
that's all they know, theirmothers kind of teach them
survival skills.
So we'll talk more about thecycle later.
But in general, the faster youget to the point where he gets
(23:18):
mad and gets over being mad, thesafer you are, because the
longer it takes for him to getto that point, the angrier he
gets and the more violent theoutburst will become.
So a lot of times these kidswill learn things in little cues
like oh, dad's drinking, I needto go to my room and go to
(23:39):
sleep tonight.
Or he's yelling that dinner'sburnt, now would be a good time
for me to go hide someplace else.
Or it's Friday night and everyFriday night he goes out with
his work friends and then whenhe comes home there's a problem.
I need to ask to spend thenight at my friend's house
tonight.
So they learn those avoidancetechniques, sometimes from their
mothers and watching how theyare surviving, and then they in
turn internalize those survivalmechanisms.
(24:00):
So, speaking of these casesimpacting other family members.
In this specific case, zizi'smother said he beat and tortured
my daughter and at the sametime mentally assassinated her
children.
He showed her no mercy, let'sshow him no mercy.
So that's how you know.
(24:20):
It impacted her motherspecifically in this case and
obviously her mother also wasaware of the impact it had on
the children in this case.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, because her mother became the caregiver for
her children afterwards.
I believe so, and I think to me, as you're getting to the end
of this case, the biggest thingto remember always is that there
are three innocent childrenthat are now without a mother.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
And without a father.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
And without a father, and there were multiple
intervention points.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
So, procedurally on this case, the defendant was
arrested, he was held on a $1million bail and at the time he
was facing 25 years to life.
The trial finally began in 2021.
So approximately 10 years later.
The trial finally began in 2021, so approximately 10 years
later.
He eventually was convicted ofsecond-degree murder and was
(25:24):
sentenced to 15 years to life,sent up to North Kern State
Prison in California.
Wallace was given credit forhis time served, which was over
nine years at the time of hissentencing, and I wasn't able to
find any information as to whyit was delayed so long.
My suspicion and again this isjust speculation on my part is
that it had something to do withthe oldest daughter, because at
(25:44):
the time of the offense, theoldest daughter would have been
eight years old.
Ten years later she would havebeen 18 years old and given the
fact that they were testifyingabout the death of her mother,
like that was the subject of it,I'm sure at the age of eight,
when all of this was new, tryingto have her testify would have
just destroyed her.
(26:04):
For Wallace, he got his 10years approximately of credit
for time served.
Again, at that point in time,the oldest starter would have
been 18.
And because his defense wassaying that she had seen her
mother fall through the table,I'm sure that she probably was
called to testify.
I can't imagine her not beingcalled to testify, and maybe
(26:26):
they had to wait for her to be18 before the judge would allow
it.
It's hard to say.
In November of 2023, he didcome up for parole and he was
not released, thankfully, andhis next parole hearing is going
to be in November of 2028.
So, dv in general.
I'm going to turn it back overto Richie.
(26:49):
As an officer, what types ofthings have you seen?
And as a social worker?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I think one like the first try to intervene sooner
with the children that arevictims of domestic violence, to
try and provide them theservices, not to continue that
cycle.
But there are um as this iskind of like one of those I
don't want to say like afterschool specials about domestic
violence that we're doing, butbut I think there are things
(27:30):
that we need to, we want topoint out that are warning signs
that if you're listening youyourself or as a family member
for somebody, or friends, oreven just as a community members
are out and about, especiallyaround the holidays when you're
seeing a lot more people issigns you can look for.
Is one if somebody is beinghypersensitive, if they're over
alert to sounds, they're veryjumpy, they're skittish and you
(27:53):
start to see them disconnectingfrom family, friends, co-workers
.
Another one is if you hearthrough cell phones, if you're
hearing somebody talking tosomebody else and you hear
verbal abuse, if you're hearingcontrolling language from a
partner.
One sign can be if somebodycalls you and you can tell they
(28:15):
want to talk about somethinglike, well, I can't talk about
it right now.
Or somebody's home I can't talkabout it right now, let me call
you when they're not home andthey're very elusive about what
they'll talk about.
When that person's there, theirtone changes, their whole
behavior changes.
So listening for those specialverbal cues changes their whole
behavior changes.
So listening for those specialverbal cues Controlling
behaviors or actions to restrictsomebody's contact with family
(28:36):
or friends, so if somebody willonly come out but their partner
has to be with them, oh, I can'tgo to my family's holiday
festivities because I have to goto all the hits, I'm not
allowed to go to mine.
Or you know, that's not whatwe're doing this year, just
little things like that wherethey're isolating themselves
more and more, canceling planssuddenly out of nowhere, and
(29:00):
that goes to the isolation.
If they're isolating themselves, if they're being isolated, if
they blame their partner, ifthey're being blamed, so if they
say, you know, it's my fault,we're having financial issues,
if there's hardship in thefamily.
That's one thing you see with alot of abusers in domestic
violence and interpartnerviolence issues is so they're
always displacing their problemson somebody else and making
(29:23):
them the focus of why it'shappening.
Again, the physical abuse ifyou're actually seeing physical
signs grapping, holding,restricting movement, physically
bruises, broken bones, thingslike that, or you know, if it's
a coworker, you're starting tosee excessive days off.
They're taking a lot of daysoff either kind of in a
(29:45):
scattered pattern, especiallythe sounds kind of goes back to
what you're talking about aftergames and stuff.
If Mondays, if they constantlyhave the same by calling off on
Mondays or Tuesdays, or afterholiday events or things like
that.
It's just really important tokeep your eyes open, be aware
and kind of like we say with alot of things right now, you
know, if you see something, saysomething.
(30:05):
And, as we talked about at thebeginning, it doesn't have to be
direct hey, that guy's anasshole.
Or hey, your partner is ashitbag that's beating you or
screaming at you.
You have to be a lot moretactful and use those kind of
passive questionings and thoseexample situations.
But most of all, what we wantto do is kind of provide
(30:28):
resources.
So did you want to talk about,before I go through that kind of
like, the power and control,balance and things like that?
You had talked about that and Idon't want to excuse that by
any means.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yes, absolutely.
Typically there's a cycle ofviolence.
And when I say cycle ofviolence it doesn't always
necessarily mean violence in thethings that you were talking
about, like the hitting, thepushing, broken bones, black
eyes, stuff like that that youthink about.
It can be other things too,like the emotional abuse and
(31:01):
things of that nature, theposturing, the intimidation,
little things like that, thingsthat you don't even see on the
outside.
But if you're paying attentionyou'll see the way somebody is
reacting, Like you were talkingabout being more jumpy or more
timid or canceling plans at thelast minute because they have to
go do something with him.
And when you're looking at thatcycle, there's four different
(31:27):
aspects to it.
The first one is the buildingof tension, and I mentioned that
earlier that as that tensionincreases, it's almost like the
energy you have with athunderstorm, that the more
energy that increases, the morethat tension comes.
When the explosion happens,it's worse.
And that's the next phase isthe incident of abuse.
(31:49):
When something actually happens, then there's a reconciliation,
which we also call thehoneymoon phase, and then you go
into a calm phase.
So a lot of times these things,when it's the tension building,
you'll hear that walking oneggshells.
I can't make him mad.
He's been really stressed out,language like that.
That's usually in that tensionbuilding phase.
(32:12):
And then something will happen,Like they'll have an argument,
he'll throw stuff at her, he'llsay he's going to kill her.
You know things like that.
Or sometimes it's almost likethe reverse thing of I'm going
to kill myself and it'll be yourfault which those are always
difficult, because threateningto kill yourself isn't exactly
(32:34):
menacing.
So then you know what do you dowith that case where every time
there's some type of a problem,he says, well, I'm going to
kill myself.
Well, it's still power andcontrol, it's still part of this
cycle.
But it's not the same as if hepushed her and you can say, okay
, now you're under arrest forpushing her.
So that always and it also ismore difficult to get through to
the victim when they're sayingyou know, I love you so much, if
(32:56):
you leave, I'm going to killmyself to say this is abuse, you
need to stop paying attentionto this.
And then, after you have thatincident, you have the honeymoon
phase, or the reconciliationphase.
One of my coworkers, many, manymoons ago, um, was talking
(33:16):
about a case that he went onwhen he first started and when
he was talking to the victim shewas in that honeymoon phase and
she came out and she showed himthis new vacuum that the
defendant had bought for her.
And she was like, look, it evenhas a setting for shag carpet.
So that tells you how old thishappened.
And he said he looked aroundand he's like, all you have is
(33:39):
linoleum.
You don't even have shag carpet.
And she said, well, that's whathe said He'd get me next time.
So she was already so used tothis cycle that she already knew
it was going to come backaround and next time he was
going to get her carpet.
And then, after thatreconciliation, then you have
that calm phase and so one ofthe difficulties when you're
(34:00):
trying to get through to victimstoo is where they're at in that
cycle and you talk about likegoing to trial and victims
recanting and things like that.
If you have that incidenthappen and by the time the case
goes to trial you're into thatreconciliation, honeymoon or
calm phase they're going to bemore inclined to not cooperate.
(34:21):
He's better.
He said he's sorry.
He said I'll never do it again.
We're okay now.
We don't need to go forward.
You know, everything's great.
Just stop what you're doing andwe just want to go on with our
lives.
We don't want you bothering usanymore.
On the flip side, if the trialcomes up during that tension
building phase, then it's you'vegot to dismiss this.
(34:41):
This is going to piss him off.
We like just leave us alone,we'll figure it out, like it'll
be okay.
I just need you to go away,it'll, it'll be all right Like
you're.
You're just going to make themmore stressed out.
You're just going to make itworse.
And then, if you happen to begoing to trial right when that
next incident of abuse happens,sometimes, if you're in the
right timeframe, they'll be inthat.
(35:03):
I'm tired of this.
This needs to end.
I'm going to tell you whathappened, part Some.
I'm tired of this.
This needs to end.
I'm going to tell you whathappened.
Part Some of the things like wewere talking about power and
control and the power andcontrol wheel.
You'll see things like usingintimidation, so looks, actions,
gestures, smashing things.
Like we were talking about thecase where there were the holes
in the wall, like punching holesin the wall, things like that.
(35:23):
Abusing pets I had severalcases like that where the
defendant would do things to thefamily pets and again either
say I did this because you mademe mad or this is your
punishment for doing what youdid Using emotional abuse,
putting her down, making herfeel bad about herself, calling
her names, trying to make herthink that she's crazy.
(35:45):
That didn't happen that way.
I don't know what you'retalking about.
That didn't happen.
That never happened.
That gaslighting, playing mindgames, humiliating her,
especially like in front of herfriends, because then that aids
in the isolation aspect of it,making her feel guilty about it.
This is your fault.
Look what you made me do Againthe using isolation.
And when you're using isolation, that can be controlling what
(36:14):
she does or who she sees, whoshe talks to.
I've seen defendants whowouldn't let their wives or
girlfriends work, minimizing,denying and blaming.
Those are things that you'llsee Making light of it I was
just joking, that didn't reallyhappen Saying that she caused it
, using their children in themix, making her feel guilty
about the children, sayingthings like oh, you're going to
break up our family, our kidsare going to grow up without a
(36:36):
dad or they'll threaten to takethe children away.
I've seen that many times wherethey'll say I have more money
than you.
Everybody thinks you're crazy,you're a bad mother, we're going
to get divorced and I'm goingto just take the kids with me.
Using the whole male privilegething, you were making her feel
like she's a servant, making allthe decisions and cutting her
(36:56):
out of those big decisions.
Acting like, you know, themaster of the castle, he also
would potentially define whathis role is versus hers.
Again, I'm using those his herterms generically, not
specifically.
Sometimes you'll see things onthe economic side of it and
economic abuse and maleprivilege to me kind of go hand
(37:18):
in hand, because most of thetime men in this country get
paid more than women in thiscountry do when they both do the
same jobs.
So, you know, I've heard thingslike I make more money than you
, so for you to make up for thefact that you don't make as much
money as I do, you need to dothe laundry and the dishes,
because that's contributing yourfair share to this relationship
.
If you made more money, then wewould redistribute these tasks.
(37:41):
Or when you start making moremoney than I do, then I'll do
the laundry, or then I'll do thedishes.
And then, of course, with theeconomic abuse, she, you know,
would prevent her from getting ajob or keeping a job, because
then that would give herindependence if she had her own
money.
Making her ask for money orputting her on an allowance,
taking money I've seen thatbefore where she'll go out and
(38:02):
work and he'll literally takeall the money and stick it in
the bank account and it's hisand she only gets like a certain
allowance back.
I've seen that work theopposite too, where you know a
woman has demanded that theentire paycheck be put under her
domain and she would give him acertain amount of cash and that
was his cash for the week, umthings like that.
And then there's also like usingcoercion and threats.
(38:23):
So you know, making threats,carrying out threats, saying
that they're going to hurt heror threaten to leave her or
commit suicide, sometimescalling children's services
that's another one that's comeup Forcing her to dismiss
charges or fail to cooperatewith prosecution, or making her
do illegal things, which thatone's always a double whammy,
because if you get her to dosomething illegal, then if she's
(38:45):
ever like I'm going to call thepolice because you hit me,
that's fine, go ahead and callthe police and I'm going to tell
them about that time that yousold drugs to that person down
the street when I told you to godo it.
Things like that.
So those are the differentaspects of power and control.
So if you see those things orsuspect those things are
happening to a friend or familymember, you can hopefully
(39:07):
recognize some of those tacticsand maybe find a counter to it.
Like we were talking aboutbefore, nobody deserves to be
hit.
Nobody should be put on anallowance.
Everybody should be allowed tohave a job if they want one.
Things like that Again it'simportant to reiterate this can
happen to anybody.
This cuts across all thedemographics.
(39:27):
It doesn't matter, you know,race, education, religion,
education.
It cuts across every singlesection that we have.
As these things go on, there'sescalation, and when I say
escalation, the incidents ofabuse typically get worse as
things go on.
So you know, today he punchesthe wall and says I'm so mad at
(39:48):
you, I could punch you in theface.
Then, you know, today hepunches the wall and says I'm so
mad at you, I could punch youin the face.
Then, you know, the next timeit's he pushed her into the wall
and said I'm so mad I can't seestraight.
And then finally he punches herin the face.
That type of thing.
Also, when it comes toescalation, that cycle to go
through starts getting shorter.
So maybe it used to be that ittook six months to go through
(40:09):
that cycle, where there'd be thetension building, then the
incident of abuse, the honeymoonphase and the calm.
So then it was well, he onlyhits me once every six months.
It's not that bad.
But then as that time shortens,then all of a sudden it's we're
getting into a fight everymonth, or now it's every week.
So as those times shorten itchanges the dynamic of the
relationship also.
(40:30):
And again, it's one of thosethings that in the beginning
it's easy to rationalize and saywell, he doesn't do that that
often, but then as it becomesmore frequent it gets harder and
harder to ignore.
So you might say why don't youleave, do you?
If you had to try to help anyvictims leave, like in your line
of work, I don't know how muchyou've had to deal with that.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
No, I mean our job was never to help them leave.
I mean you try to give themresources and even in social
work you try to get them accessto resources.
Let them know, like, where Iwork, the Center for Women and
Families like is a big one, butyou can't.
I mean obviously you can'tforce somebody to do something.
But you can't.
I mean obviously you can'tforce somebody to do something.
All you can do is educate themand hope for the best.
(41:11):
I mean that's unfortunately thereality.
I mean I've seen evacuationvehicles where you know you call
them, they will come at twoo'clock in the morning, pick you
, your family, and get you outof there and take you to a safe
house.
And they really are safe houseslike there's.
I was talking to a coupleindividuals a couple months ago
that they were working withGoogle to basically remove safe
(41:33):
houses from Google Maps andthey're doing things to try and
protect domestic violencevictims and stuff by hiding
facilities and things like that.
So you can't even Google them.
You can try things like that,but in the end it really comes
down to just trying to give asmuch support and resources and
sadly pray.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Yeah, yeah.
The bigger thing for us as tothe why they don't leave is
trying to explain it to jurorsand that's why, for us, we
really needed to try tounderstand why they don't leave,
not necessarily to try toconvince them that they need to
leave, but always making surethat they know if they want help
we could help them with that.
But more of trying to explainwhy they didn't, because a lot
(42:15):
of times juries would come backand say, well, it wasn't that
bad, because if it was, shewould have left, called the
police sooner, gone to hermother's house, fill in whatever
blank you want, and so you knowwhy don't they leave.
Sometimes it's denial.
As far as it's not that bad.
He's a really good guy.
He's a good father.
Victim blaming it's my fault.
(42:37):
He did this.
I made him upset.
I know he has a temper.
I pushed him too much.
Economics they don't have themoney to leave.
You know we're living togetherin this house.
I tried to find an apartment.
I don't have a job.
I can't get an apartment on myown.
I have no place else to go, sothey just stay with him.
Sometimes it's a history.
You've been together for solong, you're just kind of
(42:58):
together.
All of your friends are yourfriends as a group, as a couple,
not your friends as anindividual.
And you get that history andafter a while you don't want to
give up that ability to talkabout.
Oh, this one time this thinghappened, wasn't that funny?
Or do you remember thatChristmas when such and such
happened?
So sometimes it's just thingslike that having somebody to
(43:22):
connect with, or it can also belack of connections.
If he's cut off all of herfamily and friends and she no
longer has anybody to talk to,nowhere to go.
If they have kids together,nobody wants to be the one to
break up the family.
Nobody wants to make it so thatthe kids don't have dad coming
home every night after work.
Or the kids will cry like Iwant dad to come home.
(43:43):
That's really hard on mom tosay you can't come home because
last time you were here you gotdrunk and you hit me when your
kids are crying, saying I wantdad, I want dad.
Also, another thing to consideris the increased danger of
leaving, and the two mostdangerous times for women are
when they're pregnant and whenthey try to leave, because when
(44:05):
they're pregnant there's aimminent threat that's going to
disrupt their lives.
And a lot of times when a womanwill have a child, all of a
sudden her focus shifts from herpartner to her child, which is
naturally what should occur.
This child needs you.
You need to take care of yourbaby.
But a lot of times, when itcomes to these controlling men,
(44:25):
they don't like to see thatshift, because now they're not
the center of the universeanymore.
Somebody else is infringing ontheir territory and their time.
So a lot of times when you knowsomebody's pregnant, you know
that whole they fell down thestairs thing you'll see things
like that, uh.
Or when they're trying to leave, because if she's actually
going to leave, then that's theultimate of losing control.
(44:47):
And for some men that's notsomething that they can tolerate
.
And if they just can't get pastthat, unfortunately that's
sometimes when you havesituations like this where you
end up with a fatality becauseyou can't just let her walk away
and back away from thesituation.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
And the sad thing is, with some of the cases and it's
rare I mean I don't want toscare people from trying to
leave by any means or trying togive people help, but sometimes
time does not heal all woundsand sometimes you can see
instances 10, 20 years laterwhere they've been split up for
10, 20 years and an incidenthappens in one of their lives
and they go back to that otherpartner and commit violence or,
unfortunately, homicide.
(45:32):
Like love does strange thingsand I don't consider this love
by any means, but I do thinkthat one thing we need to give
out is there are resources.
One thing we need to give outis there are resources.
One for if you're the victim orknow somebody that is the
(45:56):
victim, you havewwwthehotlineorg, which is a
domestic violence resourcewebsite for individuals who are
experiencing domestic violence.
One thing to remember is thatyour Google and your Internet
search histories are not private.
Either your phone calls.
So if you are worried thatsomebody is tracking your phone
(46:19):
or is observing your stuff,trying to use a friend's phone,
a work computer or somethinglike that, you can also call
800-799-SAFE or 800-799-7233.
Or you can text START, that'sS-T-A-R-T to 88788.
(46:39):
Those are all resources forvictims of domestic violence,
domestic violence.
There's also the option if youare listening to this or if
somebody's brought you to thisand you are somebody who has a
background of abuse, it comesfrom a family that you witnessed
abuse or you yourself areactively abusing somebody else
(47:02):
look for the Center forPrevention of Abuse.
They have resources forindividuals.
They are there to try and helpabusers get therapy and help
themselves and to try andovercome the problems that are
leading to them victimizingother people.
So again, this is a reallyheavy topic.
We were hoping for it to be 20minutes, but obviously you can
(47:27):
tell from both of us our passion, the seriousness of this topic.
I would rather take 20 hours totry and get all the resources
and facts out there.
Because of all the things inthe United States we see, this
is probably one of the leadingcauses of violence amongst
individuals, and women andchildren specifically.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
So thank you so much for listening and hopefully we
have given you some goodinformation.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
I want to thank you all so much for listening to our
little podcast.
This is created with love andpassion for criminal justice and
true crime.
So if you're enjoying thepodcast, please follow us, like
or rate us on whatever systemyou're listening to us on,
subscribe to our podcast anddownload episodes.
Downloads are important for ourgrowth, as is growing our
(48:17):
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If you're interested in learningmore, you could visit our
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(48:39):
There you'll find some stuffabout our backgrounds,
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You can also follow us on ourFacebook page at Deviant
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We also have an Instagram page,which is Deviant underscore
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(49:00):
as we grow, we hope to developa community that will grow with
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So again, thank you for takingthe time to listen and have a
good week.
All right.
So this is going to be ourfirst, I guess kind of like mini
episode or mini sode, but thiskind of came up from multiple
angles.
So one recently I was at a gunviolence conference in Minnesota
and one of the topics that cameup was violence in the home.
A lot of that was talking aboutdomestic violence specifically,
(01:01):
and then Heather, you broughtup this case and then just kind
of the background of domesticviolence specifically, and then,
heather, you brought up thiscase and then just kind of the
background of domestic violence.
So I'll say this twice, butfirst this is a trigger warning
that we are going to be talkingabout domestic violence and
presenting a case thatunfortunately leads to homicide
because of domestic violence.
So but this is an episode thatwe believe just needs to be done
.
It's an important topic and, asstatistics will show here
(01:24):
shortly believe just needs to bedone.
It's an important topic and, asstatistics will show here
shortly coming to the holidayseason, this is kind of a more
vulnerable time for people.
So I'm Richard Weaver, I'mHeather Kenney and we are
Deviant Criminology, so we willbe discussing domestic violence,
presenting a unique andtroubling case involving
domestic violence and murder.
So again, please take this as atrigger warning.
(01:44):
If this is a topic that you aresensitive to, please go ahead
and turn off now and go on toour next episode.
But research has shown thataround the holiday season,
reports of domestic violencerise on average of 20%, which
there's multiple things thatcould lead to this.
Again, causation does not leadto corralization, but some of
(02:09):
this could be related to some ofthe same things we saw during
COVID, where individuals arelocked up more together I think
locked up may be the wrong wordthere where individuals are
inside more together because ofeither time off, of work, being
cold outside there's less chanceto get away.
So and we saw that there was aspike during COVID of
(02:32):
interpartner violence, and itwas often found in combination
with other things such asfinancial problems, mental
health disorders, substance usedisorders and stressors.
So though we often think ofdomestic violence as being
focused on violence just againstwomen, the sad fact is that
roughly 40% of cases ofinterpersonal violence are with
male victims.
(02:52):
Data also shows that roughly 1in 15 children have some type of
experience or exposure todomestic violence, and over 85%
of those kids witness actualphysical violence.
So this is kind of again a topicthat you and I have experience
with me from the social workside and also just law
(03:13):
enforcement responding to thesecases and from the law
enforcement perspective, theseare some of the most volatile
cases to go to and probably themost dangerous.
So even though you're called tothose situations, once you go
to make an arrest, if you haveto make arrests, sometimes the
victims can change personality.
So you know if their loved oneis going to jail they may be
(03:33):
afraid of retaliation.
When they get out they mayrealize there could be financial
repercussions.
So they can be very volatileand a lot of officers have lost
their lives and emergencyresponders, even EMTs, have lost
their lives responding to thesecases.
And then you yourself have along history with this as well.
Speaker 3 (03:55):
So real quick.
I think you reversed causationand correlation when you said it
.
I don't know if you want tojust repeat that one little bit
Correlation does not equalcausation.
And you said, causation doesnot equal correlation.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Well shit.
Okay, so let me go back and fixthat.
Causation does not equalcorrelation.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Other way around Correlation.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
Okay, so one more time.
Correlation does not equalcausation.
So, just like the example ofice cream sales go up in the
summer, murders.
Go up in the summer does notmean eating ice cream makes you
commit murder.
So we're going to leave all ofthis in, just to show that I
also can be a jackass.
So, but off of that, heather,you have like a lot of
(04:39):
experience in this area as well.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
So unfortunately yes, unfortunately, I do.
I worked in domestic violenceunits for both misdemeanor level
and felony level, so I've seena lot more than most people
probably should have seen orwould want to have seen me.
(05:00):
And sometimes I get likeemotionally invested as far as
frustration and anger, becausesometimes I don't understand how
other people can't understandthis, but at the same time I
have to try to take a step backand recognize that not everybody
has had the education andexposure and training and all of
the things that I've had.
You know, when you see victimsevery single day for two years,
(05:23):
it becomes really easy to seethe problems, and when you talk
to somebody else who doesn't seethose problems, it gets
frustrating.
And you also have to keep allof those things in mind when you
are talking to potential jurors.
In your jury said that there wasno such thing as domestic
(05:47):
violence because a husband wouldnever hurt or hit his wife
unless she had done somethingwrong.
As such, it was his job to havesome type of family structure
and enforce that familystructure.
And I tried to give her theexample of what happens if he
only gives her $50 to buygroceries and she knows it's
going to cost $75 to buy thegroceries for the week, and her
(06:09):
answer was basically like, well,he wouldn't do that because no
husband would do that and ifsomething came up it basically
had to be her fault.
So there's a lot of things thatgo into DV and we'll talk about
that at the end, things likevictim blaming and you know why
didn't they leave and how didthey get themselves into this.
(06:29):
But for right now let's go aheadand talk about this case.
It caught my attention and itkept bothering me and I kept
thinking about it and I thinklast night I kind of finally
like wrapped my mind around whyit had been bothering me so much
, the fact that this victim itseems like she hits some of the
major areas that you would thinkshe would not have been a
(06:53):
victim of domestic violence, andsometimes I think that also
makes it difficult for people inthe public to understand that
this could happen to anybody.
This isn't just as the moviesportray, just certain groups of
people or, you know, onlyeconomically depressed people or
only women who have lowself-esteem, or only uneducated
(07:14):
people, like it goes across allof the demographics.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And I think, like even in my experience, like I've
known social workers, I've hadstudents that came into social
work or criminal justicespecifically because they were
either had been prior victimizedor were currently being
victimized, and then even policeofficers and lawyers that were
victims actively of domesticviolence.
(07:39):
So it's, I think a lot ofpeople think it's the most
vulnerable, but it can be whatwe perceive as the strongest.
I see it a lot also in athletesand across all those groups
when the biggest thing isreporting and a lot of it is
because they don't want to getsomebody in trouble but also
they don't see how theythemselves are a victim.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Yeah, I definitely agree with that see how they
themselves are a victim.
Yeah, I definitely agree withthat.
And I think there's also anelement when you're talking
about it the whole blame, thevictim thing, because it cuts
across all demographics.
I think we naturally have thisinclination to try to figure out
how can I be safe, what makesme safe?
And if you look at something,whether it be a sex assault or a
(08:24):
domestic violence case oranything else, if you think, gee
, that could happen to me, it'sscary.
So the easiest thing to do toself-protect is to find reasons
why that's not going to happento you.
And just saying I'm lucky and Irolled the dice and it didn't
happen to me isn't very settling.
So it's easier to say, well, itwon't happen to me because I'm
(08:47):
different than.
Why will this not happen to meBecause I'm different than that
victim?
How Well, because I won't dothis, or I am not this, or I
won't be that.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I think another thing is victim blaming goes both
ways and a lot of times victimsblame themselves and we have to
also work on that mentality wetalked about, like making mental
health more, like getting thestigma off of that.
There does need to be a pushalso for helping victims of
(09:17):
domestic violence not blamethemselves and not see that
self-shame and self-blame.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
I think that's a huge issue, and when I say victim
blaming, I mean everybody likevictims included, and I found
that one of the most effectiveway when you're trying to talk
to victims and hopefully thismight be helpful for somebody
listening if they have a friendor family member who they're
worried about is to not talk tothat person about their specific
(09:45):
circumstances, which mightsound odd, but instead of saying
something like he shouldn'ttalk to you that way, which then
they'll get defensive and saysomething like, yeah, but I
burned dinner.
Or yeah, but that's my faultbecause of this, or I really
made him mad because of that,instead turn it into no one
deserves to be talked that way,because they're going to have a
(10:08):
hard time answering that back,because then they're going to
think about well, if this waswhat, if this was my, you know,
my sister, my friend, my cousin,if somebody talked to them that
way, would it be okay?
And so I think it's a loteasier to extrapolate that out
to the third person and say noone should be treated this way,
to extrapolate that out to thethird person and say no one
should be treated this way.
No one should be talked to thisway.
(10:31):
People who love other people.
Don't treat the people theylove this way, and I think when
you get those themes going, it'seasier for victims to recognize
.
This is not okay.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Yes, and I think there's also that other kind of
the joke we've always said, butit actually fits in here.
So asking for a friend and thenkind of giving a scenario that
very much kind of mirrors theirs, because it takes them out of
it but makes them look at it andbe like, oh, wow.
So I think that it might be athrow off that we say all the
time jokingly, is that askingfor a friend?
(11:02):
That can be a very goodcommunication tool.
We also use in substance usedisorders, but in this as well,
where you really want them tosee.
But even if they see, sometimes, as I know you're going to get
into, even if you have the will,you may not have the ability
exactly, exactly, and there'swe'll also talk more about all
the reasons why not to leave.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
But I think, as you said, that that asking for a
friend if you can make it anobjective evaluation instead of
a subjective evaluation that ithelps think through that process
and decide this is not okay andI'm going to do something about
it.
I'm not going to just let thiskeep happening.
But it also means that you haveto have somebody who's able to
(11:44):
talk to you and tell you that,and one of the things we'll talk
about is one of the firstthings that an abuser will do is
cordon that person off, isolatethem, get all of those support
people out of their life beforethings get bad.
So then that way nobody seesthose things, so nobody can say,
hey, that's not okay, why areyou putting up with this?
Because if everybody's at arm'slength and nobody sees it,
(12:06):
nobody can call them out.
So let's talk about this caseand then we'll come back around
to some more of the generalthings and we can apply it kind
of in light of this case.
This case tragically happenedaround Christmas.
It's between two individual,william Wallace and Zazelle
Preston, also known as ZZ.
It's a case from California,orange County and at the time
(12:30):
Wallace was 39 years old and hehad served jail time for
domestic violence.
Prior to this incident, zz was26 and had recently enrolled as
a full-time student at CypressCollege and she was studying to
be a domestic violence counselor.
Ironically enough, and justlike you said Richie maybe it
was because of this hard to sayand she had been noted to be a
(12:54):
talented dancer.
According to family and friends, she also told her family that
he was controlling and violentand had even threatened to kill
her more than once.
A relative shared an incidentwhere they found her pregnant
and curled up in the fetalposition in the street after he
had beat her up.
So again, that goes back toshe's educated or becoming
(13:16):
educated in domestic violence.
So you wouldn't think that thatwould make her be a victim.
She has family members around,so she has support, so you would
think that that would be anindication that she wouldn't be
a victim.
This relative shared thisincident where they found her
beaten up when she was pregnant.
So again, you'd think, well,she's not going to be a victim
because this family member knowswhat's going on.
(13:36):
They'll intervene.
And yet this still happened.
At the time of the offense shehad a seven-week-old son with
the defendant and then she alsohad two daughters from a
previous relationship, athree-year-old and an
eight-year-old.
So the date of offense for thisincident is December 24, 2011,.
(13:59):
And it continues into ChristmasDay, december 25, 2011.
And it continues into ChristmasDay, december 25th 2011.
And the couple had gone to aneighbor's holiday party, came
home, argued loud enough thatsome neighbors had heard the
argument.
At some point, he drags herfrom the bedroom to the living
room, puts her on the sofa, putssome sunglasses on her face and
(14:22):
props her on the couch forChristmas morning.
And she is in the room whileher children are opening their
gifts.
And as her body is there on thecouch, the defendant turns and
tells the children mommy ruinedChristmas, she got drunk and
(14:43):
ruined Christmas.
Mommy ruined Christmas, she gotdrunk and ruined Christmas.
So, on top of all of thehorrendous stuff that happens
with this case, he brings thechildren into this and then also
tells them that it's mom'sfault that he killed her.
At some point the paramedicsarrive and when they get there,
her body is slumped over on thecouch.
Police get called in.
(15:05):
They find blood in multipleareas of the apartment.
Holes are punched in walls,there's a door off the hinges,
he says at some point we weredrinking and during the argument
I tossed her around a bit andhe had said that to one of her
family members.
Another witness also said thatthey saw him with a body near an
entry gate.
(15:26):
Now the defense in this case wasthat she had died after falling
into a glass table while shewas drunk.
They alleged that the oldestdaughter which again, if you
remember, she was eight yearsold saw mom trip and fall into
the table, then helped pull theglass out of her mom's wounds
and helped clean her up, andthat at some point he was moving
(15:48):
her body to the tub and hit herhead somewhere along the way.
And he told multiple peoplethat she had fallen and had a
concussion.
And one of his defense team,heather Moorhead, said that Mr
Wallace is being accused ofsomething that is not his fault.
You will hear about arelationship that was full of
(16:10):
arguing and yelling, but also alot of love.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Looking at all this.
They go out drinking.
He comes back and says she justhappens to fall through a table
, hit her head a couple timesand then props her up on a couch
for Christmas presents becausehe just didn't want them to go
to Christmas without mom, whileand this was all accident, but
yet history of multiple issueswith domestic violence OK, just
(16:39):
wanting to make sure.
I'm very aware that this man isa liar.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Yes, absolutely Right .
You know there's a.
There's a whole lot of love inthat.
Yeah, no, there was a whole lotof love, like there would have
been some efforts to stop whatwas happening on his part.
Hopefully some responsibilityand some self-awareness, but
obviously not.
So that was the statement thatHeather Moore had told to the
(17:05):
jurors.
She was part of the defenseteam.
Um, as you all know, my name isHeather and there was also a
DDA, heather Brown.
In this case there's Heather'sall the way around and, um,
heather Brown said that thedefendant did what he always did
, expecting ZZ to survive, likeshe always did.
This Christmas story does nothave a happy ending and
(17:27):
unfortunately this is not just astory.
It is real life, which you know.
Again.
We see depictions of domesticviolence on television and in
movies and in stories, and Ithink a lot of times we don't
recognize how common it is andthat it's not nearly as dramatic
as what you see on TV.
Sometimes it's a lot of littlethings that in and of themselves
(17:49):
, if you look at this one littleincident, it doesn't mean
anything, but it's when you lookat the totality of the story
and all of these littleincidents along the way that it
makes sense.
So, like as an example, youmight have a restraining order
case where the person hasviolated a restraining order and
he sent her flowers on herbirthday.
(18:09):
And you look at that case onthe face and you're like gee, he
sent her flowers on herbirthday, yes, there was a
restraining order, and now allof a sudden he's going to jail
for that.
How ridiculous is that?
But if you hear the backstoryto it where he told her things
like you'll never get away fromme.
If you ever leave me, you knowI'm going to kill you.
I can't stand for you to bewith anybody else.
(18:30):
Sometimes you'll hear statementslike I can't go on living if I
don't have you in my life, whichis another huge red flag.
You go through all of that andthen all of a sudden, she's
hiding, she's moved to a newapartment, she's got a new job.
She thinks that she's passedhim and he's forgotten all about
her and she thinks she's on thenext chapter and on her way and
all of a sudden these flowerspop up.
(18:51):
You know, happy birthday fromJohn.
You know John Smith.
And you know that all thatterror, all that emotion, all of
that comes crashing back of theoh my God, he knows where I'm
at, yeah, and I'm right backinto the middle of it.
So I think you need, when you'rehearing about stories or you
(19:12):
see incidents or you seesomething, you need to remember
that context, even when you'retalking about friends or family,
like if you see something youmight be like, oh, that one
thing is not a big deal.
But if you think about it incontext, over time sometimes
you'll see a picture that youmight not ordinarily would have
seen or made observations about.
(19:33):
Another one of the quotes wasfrom District Attorney Todd
Spitzer and he said a youngmother finally losing her life
after years of violence at thehands of her husband is a
heart-wrenching tragedy.
The heartbreak is onlyexacerbated by the fact that her
children witnessed much of theviolence and were forced to
celebrate Christmas in thepresence of their dead mother.
(19:54):
That is not a Christmas memoryany child should be forced to
have, and I think it's importantto note how many children are
impacted by domestic violence.
When you say domestic violence,most people think of the
individuals involved in therelationship, whether it be male
or female.
A lot of times people don'tthink about the children that
(20:14):
are involved, the impact onthose children, other family
members, because of theisolation Sometimes people will
lose their brother or theirsister or their parents, and so
when these things happen, itdoesn't just impact we'll say
her as the generic genderpronoun.
It also happens to impact hermother or her father or her
cousin or her best friend whoshe's no longer emotionally
(20:39):
available to because he hastaken her away, and sometimes
that will have been taking heraway emotionally or time-wise,
where they're no longer part ofher life.
When it comes to childrenspecifically, in my experience
they know far more than mostpeople think that they know.
They hear far more than peoplethink that they hear.
(21:02):
A lot of times when I'm talkingto victims, one of the things
that push them forward tofinally do something about it is
their children will saysomething or see something, or
somehow they know that theirchildren are being impacted by
it, and that's one of the thingsthat I have seen motivate
victims to get out of thosesituations.
A lot of times they don'trealize their children are
(21:22):
hearing these things until theysay something, or their kids
will say something at school andthe teacher will call home.
There have been some studiesthat have shown that children
who are exposed to domesticviolence have the same types of
learning and cognitive delaysthat children who are exposed to
lead contamination do.
So it's not just a minor thing.
It's not something you can justbrush off.
(21:44):
It's something that's actuallyreally causing problems for
these children.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Well, and I think another thing that we need to
talk about that's not isbelieved children.
I think there's situations,especially and we saw it during
COVID, like before COVID andeven after COVID once families
got out that domestic violence,especially if there's
stepchildren in the house, canbe the targets of the initial
domestic violence and theemotional abuse, and when they
(22:12):
try to report it to the otherparent, the other parent doesn't
believe it Once that child'sgone or once the other parent is
home in the house more that theabuser can't hide it anymore.
And then finally you see it, butit's either too late or you've
become so desensitized to itthat you just continue to go on
(22:35):
and you become a victim as well.
And I think that there's reallysigns that you need to listen
to children and take themseriously, because you always go
for the most vulnerable first.
That's what I'm going to justsay.
That's what cowards do.
They go after the weakest onefirst and they force people into
abuse.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
And I would agree with that.
That's often how it works.
Sometimes you have the opposite, where they have connected with
the victim before the kids areborn and then, as the children
are born and they are livingthrough these experiences and
that's all they know, theirmothers kind of teach them
survival skills.
So we'll talk more about thecycle later.
But in general, the faster youget to the point where he gets
(23:18):
mad and gets over being mad, thesafer you are, because the
longer it takes for him to getto that point, the angrier he
gets and the more violent theoutburst will become.
So a lot of times these kidswill learn things in little cues
like oh, dad's drinking, I needto go to my room and go to
(23:39):
sleep tonight.
Or he's yelling that dinner'sburnt, now would be a good time
for me to go hide someplace else.
Or it's Friday night and everyFriday night he goes out with
his work friends and then whenhe comes home there's a problem.
I need to ask to spend thenight at my friend's house
tonight.
So they learn those avoidancetechniques, sometimes from their
mothers and watching how theyare surviving, and then they in
turn internalize those survivalmechanisms.
(24:00):
So, speaking of these casesimpacting other family members.
In this specific case, zizi'smother said he beat and tortured
my daughter and at the sametime mentally assassinated her
children.
He showed her no mercy, let'sshow him no mercy.
So that's how you know.
(24:20):
It impacted her motherspecifically in this case and
obviously her mother also wasaware of the impact it had on
the children in this case.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
Yeah, because her mother became the caregiver for
her children afterwards.
I believe so, and I think to me, as you're getting to the end
of this case, the biggest thingto remember always is that there
are three innocent childrenthat are now without a mother.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
And without a father.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
And without a father, and there were multiple
intervention points.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
So, procedurally on this case, the defendant was
arrested, he was held on a $1million bail and at the time he
was facing 25 years to life.
The trial finally began in 2021.
So approximately 10 years later.
The trial finally began in 2021, so approximately 10 years
later.
He eventually was convicted ofsecond-degree murder and was
(25:24):
sentenced to 15 years to life,sent up to North Kern State
Prison in California.
Wallace was given credit forhis time served, which was over
nine years at the time of hissentencing, and I wasn't able to
find any information as to whyit was delayed so long.
My suspicion and again this isjust speculation on my part is
that it had something to do withthe oldest daughter, because at
(25:44):
the time of the offense, theoldest daughter would have been
eight years old.
Ten years later she would havebeen 18 years old and given the
fact that they were testifyingabout the death of her mother,
like that was the subject of it,I'm sure at the age of eight,
when all of this was new, tryingto have her testify would have
just destroyed her.
(26:04):
For Wallace, he got his 10years approximately of credit
for time served.
Again, at that point in time,the oldest starter would have
been 18.
And because his defense wassaying that she had seen her
mother fall through the table,I'm sure that she probably was
called to testify.
I can't imagine her not beingcalled to testify, and maybe
(26:26):
they had to wait for her to be18 before the judge would allow
it.
It's hard to say.
In November of 2023, he didcome up for parole and he was
not released, thankfully, andhis next parole hearing is going
to be in November of 2028.
So, dv in general.
I'm going to turn it back overto Richie.
(26:49):
As an officer, what types ofthings have you seen?
And as a social worker?
Speaker 2 (27:09):
I think one like the first try to intervene sooner
with the children that arevictims of domestic violence, to
try and provide them theservices, not to continue that
cycle.
But there are um as this iskind of like one of those I
don't want to say like afterschool specials about domestic
violence that we're doing, butbut I think there are things
(27:30):
that we need to, we want topoint out that are warning signs
that if you're listening youyourself or as a family member
for somebody, or friends, oreven just as a community members
are out and about, especiallyaround the holidays when you're
seeing a lot more people issigns you can look for.
Is one if somebody is beinghypersensitive, if they're over
alert to sounds, they're veryjumpy, they're skittish and you
(27:53):
start to see them disconnectingfrom family, friends, co-workers
.
Another one is if you hearthrough cell phones, if you're
hearing somebody talking tosomebody else and you hear
verbal abuse, if you're hearingcontrolling language from a
partner.
One sign can be if somebodycalls you and you can tell they
(28:15):
want to talk about somethinglike, well, I can't talk about
it right now.
Or somebody's home I can't talkabout it right now, let me call
you when they're not home andthey're very elusive about what
they'll talk about.
When that person's there, theirtone changes, their whole
behavior changes.
So listening for those specialverbal cues changes their whole
behavior changes.
So listening for those specialverbal cues Controlling
behaviors or actions to restrictsomebody's contact with family
(28:36):
or friends, so if somebody willonly come out but their partner
has to be with them, oh, I can'tgo to my family's holiday
festivities because I have to goto all the hits, I'm not
allowed to go to mine.
Or you know, that's not whatwe're doing this year, just
little things like that wherethey're isolating themselves
more and more, canceling planssuddenly out of nowhere, and
(29:00):
that goes to the isolation.
If they're isolating themselves, if they're being isolated, if
they blame their partner, ifthey're being blamed, so if they
say, you know, it's my fault,we're having financial issues,
if there's hardship in thefamily.
That's one thing you see with alot of abusers in domestic
violence and interpartnerviolence issues is so they're
always displacing their problemson somebody else and making
(29:23):
them the focus of why it'shappening.
Again, the physical abuse ifyou're actually seeing physical
signs grapping, holding,restricting movement, physically
bruises, broken bones, thingslike that, or you know, if it's
a coworker, you're starting tosee excessive days off.
They're taking a lot of daysoff either kind of in a
(29:45):
scattered pattern, especiallythe sounds kind of goes back to
what you're talking about aftergames and stuff.
If Mondays, if they constantlyhave the same by calling off on
Mondays or Tuesdays, or afterholiday events or things like
that.
It's just really important tokeep your eyes open, be aware
and kind of like we say with alot of things right now, you
know, if you see something, saysomething.
(30:05):
And, as we talked about at thebeginning, it doesn't have to be
direct hey, that guy's anasshole.
Or hey, your partner is ashitbag that's beating you or
screaming at you.
You have to be a lot moretactful and use those kind of
passive questionings and thoseexample situations.
But most of all, what we wantto do is kind of provide
(30:28):
resources.
So did you want to talk about,before I go through that kind of
like, the power and control,balance and things like that?
You had talked about that and Idon't want to excuse that by
any means.
Speaker 3 (30:40):
Yes, absolutely.
Typically there's a cycle ofviolence.
And when I say cycle ofviolence it doesn't always
necessarily mean violence in thethings that you were talking
about, like the hitting, thepushing, broken bones, black
eyes, stuff like that that youthink about.
It can be other things too,like the emotional abuse and
(31:01):
things of that nature, theposturing, the intimidation,
little things like that, thingsthat you don't even see on the
outside.
But if you're paying attentionyou'll see the way somebody is
reacting, Like you were talkingabout being more jumpy or more
timid or canceling plans at thelast minute because they have to
go do something with him.
And when you're looking at thatcycle, there's four different
(31:27):
aspects to it.
The first one is the buildingof tension, and I mentioned that
earlier that as that tensionincreases, it's almost like the
energy you have with athunderstorm, that the more
energy that increases, the morethat tension comes.
When the explosion happens,it's worse.
And that's the next phase isthe incident of abuse.
(31:49):
When something actually happens, then there's a reconciliation,
which we also call thehoneymoon phase, and then you go
into a calm phase.
So a lot of times these things,when it's the tension building,
you'll hear that walking oneggshells.
I can't make him mad.
He's been really stressed out,language like that.
That's usually in that tensionbuilding phase.
(32:12):
And then something will happen,Like they'll have an argument,
he'll throw stuff at her, he'llsay he's going to kill her.
You know things like that.
Or sometimes it's almost likethe reverse thing of I'm going
to kill myself and it'll be yourfault which those are always
difficult, because threateningto kill yourself isn't exactly
(32:34):
menacing.
So then you know what do you dowith that case where every time
there's some type of a problem,he says, well, I'm going to
kill myself.
Well, it's still power andcontrol, it's still part of this
cycle.
But it's not the same as if hepushed her and you can say, okay
, now you're under arrest forpushing her.
So that always and it also ismore difficult to get through to
the victim when they're sayingyou know, I love you so much, if
(32:56):
you leave, I'm going to killmyself to say this is abuse, you
need to stop paying attentionto this.
And then, after you have thatincident, you have the honeymoon
phase, or the reconciliationphase.
One of my coworkers, many, manymoons ago, um, was talking
(33:16):
about a case that he went onwhen he first started and when
he was talking to the victim shewas in that honeymoon phase and
she came out and she showed himthis new vacuum that the
defendant had bought for her.
And she was like, look, it evenhas a setting for shag carpet.
So that tells you how old thishappened.
And he said he looked aroundand he's like, all you have is
(33:39):
linoleum.
You don't even have shag carpet.
And she said, well, that's whathe said He'd get me next time.
So she was already so used tothis cycle that she already knew
it was going to come backaround and next time he was
going to get her carpet.
And then, after thatreconciliation, then you have
that calm phase and so one ofthe difficulties when you're
(34:00):
trying to get through to victimstoo is where they're at in that
cycle and you talk about likegoing to trial and victims
recanting and things like that.
If you have that incidenthappen and by the time the case
goes to trial you're into thatreconciliation, honeymoon or
calm phase they're going to bemore inclined to not cooperate.
(34:21):
He's better.
He said he's sorry.
He said I'll never do it again.
We're okay now.
We don't need to go forward.
You know, everything's great.
Just stop what you're doing andwe just want to go on with our
lives.
We don't want you bothering usanymore.
On the flip side, if the trialcomes up during that tension
building phase, then it's you'vegot to dismiss this.
(34:41):
This is going to piss him off.
We like just leave us alone,we'll figure it out, like it'll
be okay.
I just need you to go away,it'll, it'll be all right Like
you're.
You're just going to make themmore stressed out.
You're just going to make itworse.
And then, if you happen to begoing to trial right when that
next incident of abuse happens,sometimes, if you're in the
right timeframe, they'll be inthat.
(35:03):
I'm tired of this.
This needs to end.
I'm going to tell you whathappened, part Some.
I'm tired of this.
This needs to end.
I'm going to tell you whathappened.
Part Some of the things like wewere talking about power and
control and the power andcontrol wheel.
You'll see things like usingintimidation, so looks, actions,
gestures, smashing things.
Like we were talking about thecase where there were the holes
in the wall, like punching holesin the wall, things like that.
(35:23):
Abusing pets I had severalcases like that where the
defendant would do things to thefamily pets and again either
say I did this because you mademe mad or this is your
punishment for doing what youdid Using emotional abuse,
putting her down, making herfeel bad about herself, calling
her names, trying to make herthink that she's crazy.
(35:45):
That didn't happen that way.
I don't know what you'retalking about.
That didn't happen.
That never happened.
That gaslighting, playing mindgames, humiliating her,
especially like in front of herfriends, because then that aids
in the isolation aspect of it,making her feel guilty about it.
This is your fault.
Look what you made me do Againthe using isolation.
And when you're using isolation, that can be controlling what
(36:14):
she does or who she sees, whoshe talks to.
I've seen defendants whowouldn't let their wives or
girlfriends work, minimizing,denying and blaming.
Those are things that you'llsee Making light of it I was
just joking, that didn't reallyhappen Saying that she caused it
, using their children in themix, making her feel guilty
about the children, sayingthings like oh, you're going to
break up our family, our kidsare going to grow up without a
(36:36):
dad or they'll threaten to takethe children away.
I've seen that many times wherethey'll say I have more money
than you.
Everybody thinks you're crazy,you're a bad mother, we're going
to get divorced and I'm goingto just take the kids with me.
Using the whole male privilegething, you were making her feel
like she's a servant, making allthe decisions and cutting her
(36:56):
out of those big decisions.
Acting like, you know, themaster of the castle, he also
would potentially define whathis role is versus hers.
Again, I'm using those his herterms generically, not
specifically.
Sometimes you'll see things onthe economic side of it and
economic abuse and maleprivilege to me kind of go hand
(37:18):
in hand, because most of thetime men in this country get
paid more than women in thiscountry do when they both do the
same jobs.
So, you know, I've heard thingslike I make more money than you
, so for you to make up for thefact that you don't make as much
money as I do, you need to dothe laundry and the dishes,
because that's contributing yourfair share to this relationship
.
If you made more money, then wewould redistribute these tasks.
(37:41):
Or when you start making moremoney than I do, then I'll do
the laundry, or then I'll do thedishes.
And then, of course, with theeconomic abuse, she, you know,
would prevent her from getting ajob or keeping a job, because
then that would give herindependence if she had her own
money.
Making her ask for money orputting her on an allowance,
taking money I've seen thatbefore where she'll go out and
(38:02):
work and he'll literally takeall the money and stick it in
the bank account and it's hisand she only gets like a certain
allowance back.
I've seen that work theopposite too, where you know a
woman has demanded that theentire paycheck be put under her
domain and she would give him acertain amount of cash and that
was his cash for the week, umthings like that.
And then there's also like usingcoercion and threats.
(38:23):
So you know, making threats,carrying out threats, saying
that they're going to hurt heror threaten to leave her or
commit suicide, sometimescalling children's services
that's another one that's comeup Forcing her to dismiss
charges or fail to cooperatewith prosecution, or making her
do illegal things, which thatone's always a double whammy,
because if you get her to dosomething illegal, then if she's
(38:45):
ever like I'm going to call thepolice because you hit me,
that's fine, go ahead and callthe police and I'm going to tell
them about that time that yousold drugs to that person down
the street when I told you to godo it.
Things like that.
So those are the differentaspects of power and control.
So if you see those things orsuspect those things are
happening to a friend or familymember, you can hopefully
(39:07):
recognize some of those tacticsand maybe find a counter to it.
Like we were talking aboutbefore, nobody deserves to be
hit.
Nobody should be put on anallowance.
Everybody should be allowed tohave a job if they want one.
Things like that Again it'simportant to reiterate this can
happen to anybody.
This cuts across all thedemographics.
(39:27):
It doesn't matter, you know,race, education, religion,
education.
It cuts across every singlesection that we have.
As these things go on, there'sescalation, and when I say
escalation, the incidents ofabuse typically get worse as
things go on.
So you know, today he punchesthe wall and says I'm so mad at
(39:48):
you, I could punch you in theface.
Then, you know, today hepunches the wall and says I'm so
mad at you, I could punch youin the face.
Then, you know, the next timeit's he pushed her into the wall
and said I'm so mad I can't seestraight.
And then finally he punches herin the face.
That type of thing.
Also, when it comes toescalation, that cycle to go
through starts getting shorter.
So maybe it used to be that ittook six months to go through
(40:09):
that cycle, where there'd be thetension building, then the
incident of abuse, the honeymoonphase and the calm.
So then it was well, he onlyhits me once every six months.
It's not that bad.
But then as that time shortens,then all of a sudden it's we're
getting into a fight everymonth, or now it's every week.
So as those times shorten itchanges the dynamic of the
relationship also.
(40:30):
And again, it's one of thosethings that in the beginning
it's easy to rationalize and saywell, he doesn't do that that
often, but then as it becomesmore frequent it gets harder and
harder to ignore.
So you might say why don't youleave, do you?
If you had to try to help anyvictims leave, like in your line
of work, I don't know how muchyou've had to deal with that.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
No, I mean our job was never to help them leave.
I mean you try to give themresources and even in social
work you try to get them accessto resources.
Let them know, like, where Iwork, the Center for Women and
Families like is a big one, butyou can't.
I mean obviously you can'tforce somebody to do something.
But you can't.
I mean obviously you can'tforce somebody to do something.
All you can do is educate themand hope for the best.
(41:11):
I mean that's unfortunately thereality.
I mean I've seen evacuationvehicles where you know you call
them, they will come at twoo'clock in the morning, pick you
, your family, and get you outof there and take you to a safe
house.
And they really are safe houseslike there's.
I was talking to a coupleindividuals a couple months ago
that they were working withGoogle to basically remove safe
(41:33):
houses from Google Maps andthey're doing things to try and
protect domestic violencevictims and stuff by hiding
facilities and things like that.
So you can't even Google them.
You can try things like that,but in the end it really comes
down to just trying to give asmuch support and resources and
sadly pray.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Yeah, yeah.
The bigger thing for us as tothe why they don't leave is
trying to explain it to jurorsand that's why, for us, we
really needed to try tounderstand why they don't leave,
not necessarily to try toconvince them that they need to
leave, but always making surethat they know if they want help
we could help them with that.
But more of trying to explainwhy they didn't, because a lot
(42:15):
of times juries would come backand say, well, it wasn't that
bad, because if it was, shewould have left, called the
police sooner, gone to hermother's house, fill in whatever
blank you want, and so you knowwhy don't they leave.
Sometimes it's denial.
As far as it's not that bad.
He's a really good guy.
He's a good father.
Victim blaming it's my fault.
(42:37):
He did this.
I made him upset.
I know he has a temper.
I pushed him too much.
Economics they don't have themoney to leave.
You know we're living togetherin this house.
I tried to find an apartment.
I don't have a job.
I can't get an apartment on myown.
I have no place else to go, sothey just stay with him.
Sometimes it's a history.
You've been together for solong, you're just kind of
(42:58):
together.
All of your friends are yourfriends as a group, as a couple,
not your friends as anindividual.
And you get that history andafter a while you don't want to
give up that ability to talkabout.
Oh, this one time this thinghappened, wasn't that funny?
Or do you remember thatChristmas when such and such
happened?
So sometimes it's just thingslike that having somebody to
(43:22):
connect with, or it can also belack of connections.
If he's cut off all of herfamily and friends and she no
longer has anybody to talk to,nowhere to go.
If they have kids together,nobody wants to be the one to
break up the family.
Nobody wants to make it so thatthe kids don't have dad coming
home every night after work.
Or the kids will cry like Iwant dad to come home.
(43:43):
That's really hard on mom tosay you can't come home because
last time you were here you gotdrunk and you hit me when your
kids are crying, saying I wantdad, I want dad.
Also, another thing to consideris the increased danger of
leaving, and the two mostdangerous times for women are
when they're pregnant and whenthey try to leave, because when
(44:05):
they're pregnant there's aimminent threat that's going to
disrupt their lives.
And a lot of times when a womanwill have a child, all of a
sudden her focus shifts from herpartner to her child, which is
naturally what should occur.
This child needs you.
You need to take care of yourbaby.
But a lot of times, when itcomes to these controlling men,
(44:25):
they don't like to see thatshift, because now they're not
the center of the universeanymore.
Somebody else is infringing ontheir territory and their time.
So a lot of times when you knowsomebody's pregnant, you know
that whole they fell down thestairs thing you'll see things
like that, uh.
Or when they're trying to leave, because if she's actually
going to leave, then that's theultimate of losing control.
(44:47):
And for some men that's notsomething that they can tolerate
.
And if they just can't get pastthat, unfortunately that's
sometimes when you havesituations like this where you
end up with a fatality becauseyou can't just let her walk away
and back away from thesituation.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
And the sad thing is, with some of the cases and it's
rare I mean I don't want toscare people from trying to
leave by any means or trying togive people help, but sometimes
time does not heal all woundsand sometimes you can see
instances 10, 20 years laterwhere they've been split up for
10, 20 years and an incidenthappens in one of their lives
and they go back to that otherpartner and commit violence or,
unfortunately, homicide.
(45:32):
Like love does strange thingsand I don't consider this love
by any means, but I do thinkthat one thing we need to give
out is there are resources.
One thing we need to give outis there are resources.
One for if you're the victim orknow somebody that is the
(45:56):
victim, you havewwwthehotlineorg, which is a
domestic violence resourcewebsite for individuals who are
experiencing domestic violence.
One thing to remember is thatyour Google and your Internet
search histories are not private.
Either your phone calls.
So if you are worried thatsomebody is tracking your phone
(46:19):
or is observing your stuff,trying to use a friend's phone,
a work computer or somethinglike that, you can also call
800-799-SAFE or 800-799-7233.
Or you can text START, that'sS-T-A-R-T to 88788.
(46:39):
Those are all resources forvictims of domestic violence,
domestic violence.
There's also the option if youare listening to this or if
somebody's brought you to thisand you are somebody who has a
background of abuse, it comesfrom a family that you witnessed
abuse or you yourself areactively abusing somebody else
(47:02):
look for the Center forPrevention of Abuse.
They have resources forindividuals.
They are there to try and helpabusers get therapy and help
themselves and to try andovercome the problems that are
leading to them victimizingother people.
So again, this is a reallyheavy topic.
We were hoping for it to be 20minutes, but obviously you can
(47:27):
tell from both of us our passion, the seriousness of this topic.
I would rather take 20 hours totry and get all the resources
and facts out there.
Because of all the things inthe United States we see, this
is probably one of the leadingcauses of violence amongst
individuals, and women andchildren specifically.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
So thank you so much for listening and hopefully we
have given you some goodinformation.
Speaker 2 (47:55):
I want to thank you all so much for listening to our
little podcast.
This is created with love andpassion for criminal justice and
true crime.
So if you're enjoying thepodcast, please follow us, like
or rate us on whatever systemyou're listening to us on,
subscribe to our podcast anddownload episodes.
Downloads are important for ourgrowth, as is growing our
(48:17):
listeners.
So if you wouldn't mind, takethe time to ask your friends,
family, co-workers, tell themabout us through word of mouth,
social media I don't care if youeven scream at strangers on the
streets to help us kind of getout there who we are.
If you're interested in learningmore, you could visit our
website atwwwdeviantcriminologycom.
(48:39):
There you'll find some stuffabout our backgrounds,
references, show notes for eachepisode.
You can also follow us on ourFacebook page at Deviant
Criminology.
We also have an Instagram page,which is Deviant underscore
Criminology, or find me at DrRichard Weaver on Instagram, and
(49:00):
as we grow, we hope to developa community that will grow with
us.
So again, thank you for takingthe time to listen and have a
good week.
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