DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: MY STORY

Last year, students at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois invited me to speak to them about violence. I hesitated before saying yes--but not because I was unfamiliar with the subject. For the past 20 years or more that I have been in the communications industry as a news director and as a radio and TV talk show host, I have talked with and interviewed abused women and girls. I have listened as teenage girls enrolled in a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania program for pregnant teenagers told how their boyfriends physically abused them, how their uncles, fathers and neighbors sexually abused them. I have cleaned out the closet to take clothes to women's shelters, to women with blackened eyes, broken spirits and nothing but the clothes on their backs--frightened that their abuser would discover where they were hiding out. I have spoken with women in jail for stabbing or shooting their abusers.

I have held frightened children in my arms. I will never forget the 14-year-old girl who called my radio talk show from a pay phone. She lived with an aunt who was a fanatical Pentecostal and a strict disciplinarian. She volunteered to come to the station and show me the various marks, old wounds, and current cuts she had across her back and arms from the doubled extension cords her aunt used to discipline her.

I have sat in therapy groups run by a Miami psychologist, Dr. William Samek. His group consisted of men who beat, raped and molested women and children. They were Black, white Hispanic and Asian. Most of them offered excuses for their behavior: they had been abused themselves.

The statistics about domestic violence in the African-American community are frightening. 41% of the black women murdered ere murdered by a family member, friend or acquaintance. Every 15 seconds in America, a woman is physically abused. Every six minutes, a woman is raped.

Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to black women aged 15 to 44. It's safe to say that I am well educated on the issue of domestic violence. But lately, I have had to face the hidden truth that I have been so committed to my desire to help the women who are abused, that I have not dealt with the fact that I have had a front row seat in the theater of domestic violence: I was an abused wife.

I hesitated because this is a revelation I had no desire to share. But it was happening as I started preparing my speech. I began to recall my own experiences 25 years ago when I was just beginning my TV career; when my nights were filled with fear; when the husband I loved who had fathered my child had become a stranger, a man subject to fits of alcoholic rage.

Finally I realized that I must share my own story, that I must tell women and men who will listen that there is more to abuse than just the physical side; that domestic violence can be physical , emotional and psychological.

The victims are more than just the women or girls being abused. In the case of a family where the mother is beaten and the children watch, the children are also victims. Therapists also are beginning to suggest, no matter how distasteful the theory may be, that the abuser is also a victim. And I must say that this is what I discovered interviewing abusers and sitting in on therapy sessions, that almost all of the abusers had suffered some form of domestic violence as a child. I have concluded that we need to change our outlook on what domestic violence really is and how we can get a handle on it.

Let me give you an example of what psychological and emotional damage can do to those who live in the household. I want to stress that my examples are true stories. These people have given me permission to use their stories, but I have chosen not to use their names.

My hairdresser is a striking woman, naturally wavy hair cut in a fashionable style, and a to-die-for figure. When she heard that I was going to speak about domestic violence she asked me to tell her story. You see, she has never felt beautiful. When people tell her, and men always do, what a knockout she is, she just can't accept the compliments. As a child, she was told by her mother than she was ugly and unwanted. In fact, she told me her mother told her that her sisters were more attractive than she was; that her birth was a mistake; that her mother had thought about abortion. And, she said as her voice cracked, that her mother had given her away for a while to her aunt, because she didn't want her. Can you imagine being told this constantly, until your mother sent you away at age three?

Then she said that her mother never hugged her as a child; that even after she returned to her mother's home she was, and is to this day, reminded that she was not wanted. Her eyes filled with tears. She wanted me to tell you that you don't always have to be beaten to be the victim of domestic violence. Tell them, she said, that she will always live with the knowledge that no one wanted her to be born.

If we are truly to begin to address the issue of domestic violence, we must begin at the beginning with the messages mothers give to their children. We must begin to teach mothers to tell their children that they are worthy, that they are loved. We must begin to show in our leadership, in our relationships with others, that we have compassion, understanding and respect for others. If those in government would begin to express the importance of human respect and self-esteem perhaps the message of caring would become universal. We must also begin to place importance on and get government support for the family. When we place more value on weapons than we do on human life; when we circulate ads ridiculing other politicians because they have different opinions; when we cut out money for housing, education, the environment, then we are saying to America--like my friend's mother said to her--you are unwanted. And if we are to change the concept of domestic violence, if we are to change the hatred and brutality that comes out of far too many homes, we must train our men to protect and not harm, to share emotions, to channel whatever violence may hide in them genetically. We must impress upon men that their sons may mirror their behavior.

When I was a kid, my six-foot-three-inch tall friend told me his stepfather used him as a whipping board. No matter what happened, he always got blamed. His parents and stepbrother and sister slept upstairs in their house. He was placed in the drafty room at the back of the house. Simple treats like ice cream and popcorn were denied him. So my friend, who fought in Vietnam, went to college, got married, who is living what appears to be a successful life, carries the impact of domestic violence with him daily, wrapped in memories of a childhood spent largely at the end of a fist.

Finally, there is the sad story of a 28-year-old man who wondered why his parents never told him he would amount to anything; why he was told daily that he was stupid and should forget about college, and why he was laughed at for not being as athletic as his brothers. He cried as he remembered being beaten with a razor strap until he was almost unconscious. Why would his mother do that? Didn't she love him? At one point he offered a woman some money just to hug him. And then he said the words that kept me on the phone for hours: "I have never felt love. I feel that I should take this gun I'm looking at and kill myself. No one will miss me. No one will care."

If we are to consider fighting the growth of domestic violence we must consider the true cause: the demise of the family, whatever core group that family might be. If were are to truly fight domestic violence we must emphasize to parents that every child born in the world is a new thought of God, and every fresh and radiant possibility for success, happiness and joy. If we are to truly fight domestic violence we must begin to teach parents that their lives are lesson books to children. When we argue and fight, children mimic our behavior and act out the violence they see in their lives, thus continuing the circle. We must train parents not to be as quick to raise a hand as punishment. Discipline need not be violent. If we are to try and curb domestic violence, we must convince parents that what they do and say is imprinted on the child and computed as proper behavior. Children are like sponges: what they see, they sop up.

If we are to make any gains, we must stop being violent towards each other. Politicians should run on the issues, not against each other. We must begin to present more positive images in mass media. And finally, we must concentrate on morals and values. We must return to a more spiritual family life. We must teach men to respect women, women to care more for their children, children to respect parents, and Americans to respect each other.

I am living proof that you can survive domestic violence. I survived because of the messages given to me by my parents. We must invest in the family, and then the domestic violence will stop.

That is my story.