I Became the Voice: The Echo of Domestic Violence in Our Family
By Jasmine C.
I technically don't have a story of survivorship in the typical sense, but the scars of domestic violence run deep in my family, leaving an echo that has shaped my life and driven me into decades of work helping survivors. My story is one of a witness, a survivor of an emotionally abusive marriage, and, most profoundly, a relative who lost loved ones to this cycle of violence.
My Sister: The Fight for Freedom
The first story belongs to my oldest sister. Her first marriage was to a man who was extremely abusive. My nephew and I were often exposed to the violence in their home when we visited. We were just little kids, but we saw it over and over again. My nephew was greatly affected; he would sometimes just run off, unable to cope with what he saw.
The marks of his abuse were undeniable, though my sister often made excuses. I remember one time she opened the door, and the marks on her face were so severe we couldn't recognize her; she claimed she had fallen and hit a nail sticking up in a chair. Another incident stands out: her husband was cheating, and he actually held her down so his girlfriend could cut her, leaving a great scar across her hand.
After years of this, she got tired. She lived across the street from our grandparents, and one day the fight spilled outside. He knocked her to the ground and was dragging her by her foot. That was her breaking point. As he dragged her past a bush, she grabbed a glass bottle—a Whistle Strawberry Soda bottle, I'll never forget the sound it made—and she hit him upside the head with it. She almost tore his ear off. At that moment, that act of fighting back dangerously escalated the situation, which is often when domestic violence is at its most lethal.
Fortunately for my sister, that was it. She got out of that relationship, divorced him, and thankfully did not experience domestic violence again in her life.
My Cousin: A Life Taken Too Soon
The second story, and the most heartbreaking, is about my cousin. Her husband was a person who was abusive throughout the years, and he had a dark past, having murdered a man on his job, which should have been a red flag for her. They had five children together, all grown and out of the house.
He had been so abusive that she had separated from him at one point. In an act of rage, he set their house on fire. I was at the scene that night, and when they arrested him and he saw her, he went into a terrifying, unadulterated rage. He was put in jail, and when he got out, he rebuilt their home beautifully. And she, sadly, decided to give it another try.
One Sunday night, just as my mother, sister, her sister, her grandson, and I left her beautiful home around 11:00 PM, he got up. He had overheard her say she was planning on leaving again because he had become abusive once more. He made sure she did not leave.
My parents then got a phone call at 3:00 AM. When we got there, I saw her body lying in the lanai where we had been sitting all evening. She died a horrible death. He strangled her, threw her through the glass kitchen table, and stuffed a washcloth down her throat. After she was dead, he had sex with her body. He was a horrible, horrible man.
I've carried these stories with me throughout my life and work. They serve as a constant, stark reminder of the reality that domestic violence isn't a lapse in judgment—it's about power and control, and it is often a matter of life and death.