Breaking Free From Agony of Spousal Abuse

February 9, 2011
By Donn Esmonde
 
There are survivors. There are women who get away. There are women who — one day — have had enough of living a private hell. Of being a prisoner in their own homes. Of paying a price in black eyes and broken bones for the sickness of the person whom they once — and maybe still — love.

They reach out. They get help. They leave — before it’s too late.

Aasiya Hassan didn’t make it. Headlines this week trumpeted the legal retribution that was finally delivered to her husband, tormentor and murderer. If there is full justice in this case, Mo Hassan will spend the rest of his years behind bars. Aasiya’s figurative captor, in a delicious turnaround, will know how it feels to be controlled by others. The rest of us can take a measure of satisfaction in it. It would be a juicier, tastier measure if Aasiya had survived.

Many abused women survive. This column is a message to them. It’s a message delivered by Jennifer. That’s not her real name because —decades after she escaped the husband who beat and controlled her, years after she reclaimed her life, long after she last saw him— she still carries with her a sliver of fear. Healing comes hard.

Jennifer heard and read about what happened to Aasiya. She told me she wished she could turn back time. She wished she could have tapped Aasiya on the shoulder, pleaded with her not to trust her husband and told her not to go into the darkened TV studio that February night she was slaughtered.

“Until the end, she still had that smidgen of hope that he loved her and would not hurt her,” Jennifer said. “I knew that feeling.”

We met Tuesday in a downtown restaurant. Trim and soft-voiced, with long dark hair, Jennifer in middle age still carries traces — the self-questioning, the unheld eye contact — of more than 10 years of abuse by a man she met as a teenager.

She saw a lot of herself in Aasiya. In a sense, the abused are a sad sorority, each of their situations different in its details but similar at the core. As was done to Aasiya, Jennifer’s husband used everything from threats and violence, to withholding money, to cutting her off from others, to control her. As was done to Aasiya, Jennifer’s husband blamed her for his rages.

“After [the beatings], he would never say he was sorry,” she said. “But he’d turn it back on me: ‘If only you had dinner ready when I wanted it.’ ‘If only you didn’t go out with your friends.’ ‘If only you didn’t dress that way.’ ”

She left, finally, after he abused her in front of their children. By protecting herself, she knew, she would protect them.

If you are reading this and see yourself, do what Jennifer did. Call for help. The Family Justice Center — 558-7233 — in downtown Buffalo is a free, confidential oasis.

There are more places to go now than there were years ago, when Jennifer suffered. Society as a whole — from cops to judges to everyday folks — better understand the psychology of domestic violence: Why it’s hard for women to walk away. Ways the abuser tightens control. Excuses the victim makes for the abuser.

More avenues for help and a heightened consciousness has not, sadly, ended abuse. According to the Family Justice Center, 24 local women were killed since April 2008 by the man in their lives.

Jennifer survived. Her husband was convicted of abuse. He spent years in jail. He is out of her life. Her kids are grown. Her life is her own.

“We’re here on earth for such a short time,” she told me. “There is no reason to live so badly.”

That’s the message to every victim: There’s a way out.

Aasiya didn’t make it. You can. Ask Jennifer.