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Love Shouldn't Hurt
The Tragedy of Domestic Violence
By
Annette Jones
The body of 26-year-old Jessie Marie Davis was found in a field by police searchers on June
23, 2007.  Her boyfriend and the father of her 2-year-old son and unborn daughter, Bobby
Cutts, Jr., was arrested on two counts of first-degree murder shortly after the discovery of
Jessie’s body.

This is just the most recent case of domestic abuse to appear in the news.  Violence against
women occurs each and every day.  Here are some of the statistics:

·        85-95% of all domestic abuse victims are female
·        Over 500,000 women are stalked by an intimate partner every year
·        5.3 million women are abused each year
·        1,232 women are killed each year by an intimate partner, that’s nearly 4 a day!
·        Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women
·        Women are more likely to be attacked by someone they know than a stranger
·        Around the world, at least 1 in 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise
    abused in their lifetime.
·        Women of all races are equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate partner.

These are just a few of the sad statistics.  I could go on for pages and pages.  Instead, I’ll
share my own story.

I met my ex-husband in 1984.  We dated for a few months, moved in together, and for a
while, everything was great!  We married in 1987 in a small ceremony at my sister’s home.  
It was beautiful!  

About 3 months after we got married, he started to drink on a regular basis.  Not just drink,
drink to the point of passing out.  Every night.  Without fail.  There was a period of time,
though, in between the getting drunk and the passing out, where he would start to talk, and
berate me.  He spent at least a couple of hours every single night telling me how worthless I
was.  How useless I was.  How I was lucky he decided to marry me because no one else in the
world would have me.  How I was too fat, ugly, and stupid for anyone to even like me, much
less love me.  

I heard these things on a nightly basis for 7 long years.  If you hear them often enough, you
start to believe them.  It got to the point that I was actually praying for him to hit me so I’d
have a tangible reason to leave him.

I finally reached my breaking point in 1994, took our 3-year-old daughter and $50 out of his
pants pocket and moved into an apartment.  I had no job, no source of income, but I knew I
had to get out before things escalated into physical violence.  That’s the road we were headed
down, and I didn’t want to expose my daughter to that.  So I got out.

This is how domestic violence begins; with the taunting, the teasing, the insults, the
beratement, and the isolation from family and friends.  Most cases will evolve into physical
abuse much more quickly than my own did, but I was married to a coward who took his anger
out on me instead of the people he was really mad at.  He only actually hit me once, after we
were divorced, and by that time I knew I didn’t have to tolerate it and knocked him down.  
He never tried it again.  

YOU DON’T HAVE TO TOLERATE IT, EITHER!  No matter what he says, no matter how he
acts toward you, no matter how he treats you, YOU DESERVE RESPECT!

Please, if you are being abused, or know someone who is, contact one of the agencies listed
below and get some help.  Don’t become another statistic.
www.endabuse.org
 
Home office:
383 Rhode Island Street, Suite 304
San Francisco, CA  94103-5133
Phone:  415-252-8900
American Institute on Domestic Violence
P.O. Box 2225
Ruidoso, N.M. 88355
Phone:  (505) 973-2225 (voice)
http://www.aidv-usa.com/
Email:  info@aidv-usa.com
Washington office:
1522 K Street, NW, Suite 550
Washington, DC  20005-1202
Phone:  202-682-1212
Department of Justice
Violence Against Women Office
810 7th Street NW
Washington, DC  20531
Phone:  202-646-8894
Boston Office:
67 Newbury Street
Mezzanine Level
Boston, MA  02116
Phone:  617-262-5900
National Domestic Violence Hotline
P.O. Box 161810
Austin, TX  78716
800-799-SAFE / 800-799-7233 (Voice)
800-787-3224 (TDD)
www.ndvh.org
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