A Painful Decision

Anne Louise-Burton
September 6, 2011
Filed under The Healing Place

By: Anne Louise-Burton

Domestic violence is all around us.

One in every four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime (Tjaden, Patricia et al., 2000), and females who are 20-24 years of age are at the greatest risk for intimate partner violence (U.S. Department of Justice, 2006).2

Domestic violence is about domination and power.

In 2005, 389,100 women and 78,180 men were victimized by an intimate partner. These crimes accounted for 9 percent of all violent crime. (Shannan M. Catalano, 2005).2

Domestic violence does not discriminate.

Victims can be of any age, sex, race, culture, religion, education, employment or marital status. Although both men and women can be abused, most victims are women.3

I am a survivor of domestic violence.

My personal struggle in staying in a highly abusive marriage rests in my belief in God and the Bible. However, after attending a service at a church in Maryland, the Pastor happened to preach a sermon on marriage. I will never forget that moment because his message enticed those who were married to make the marriage exciting and to work diligently to have a dynamic and flourishing relationship. I felt great comfort in this Pastor’s ability to cite, with deep conviction, “that no woman should be abused and if you are in an abusive marriage, by all means, leave”. I will never forget those words.

And although I stayed in the abuse for all of the wrong reasons, I finally decided to make the leap of faith and leave my abuser. One night, while my little boy lay fast asleep in our bed, thankfully oblivious to the trauma being inflicted upon his mother, I called out for help. Upon calling the police, the officer simply said that since the crime was not witnessed, he could not force my abuser to leave the house. My question to him was, “When do I leave? On a gurney when I am dead?”At that moment, I made a life or death decision.  I opted to leave while I was still alive.

And while the memories of my tragic experience will likely stay with me for the rest of my life, it will in no way confound my future, cloud my judgment, affect my self-esteem or define who I am as a woman.

If you are in danger, please call 911, your local hotline, or the U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 and TTY 1-800-787-3224.

http://www.ncvc.org/ncvc/main.aspx?dbName=DocumentViewer&DocumentID=32347 2 http://www.domesticviolence.org/who-are-the-victims/ 3