SLAMMING OPEN THE DOOR By Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, Alice James Books
Terry Gross interviews poet Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, whose collection of poems, Slamming Open the Door, documents the aftermath of the murder of her daughter Leidy Bonanno.
Leidy was found dead in her apartment in 2003, strangled with a telephone cord by an ex-boyfriend. She had recently graduated from nursing school.
Read the transcript of the interview, and excerpts of Bonanno’s poems, on npr.org.
Back in 1981 I was a stay-at-home mom (former RN), married to a prominent physician in the community.
I knew my husband was controlling, and did not manage his anger well, because he yelled a lot, and I was not perfect . He made me feel terribly small as a woman, wife and mother, and I thought I was very small and inaffective as a human being., and clung to whatever good I could. He had a few affairs along the way, I went into long-term counseling. He didn’t think he needed it. After being separated for almost 3 years, we got back together, which was a horrendous mistake on my part., as a mother of two children.
It confused our teen-age daughters, caused much instability for them, and after 2 years of being together again, he walked in one day, looked at me with a strange smile on his face, grabbed me by the hair, swung me around the room, pulled my left arm out of joint, smashed my head into the wall, & how I managed to survive all that, is beyond me.
I felt so guilty and was too terrified to tell anyone locally, but my family in Canada knew, and pleaded with me to go to the authorities. I didn’t think anyone would believe me, but my girls had witnessed the damage, and were quite shattered at the time, because after a few such instances, I realized I could die, I told my best friend, and hid at her place while a restraining order was served to him , and I filed for a divorce. the police had to take him off the street several times, because he didn’t want me in “his” home.
My girls actually wanted to stay with him for awhile, because I was almost a basket case by that time, and I let them go. However, they ultimately came home, to me because to punish me, he stopped paying alimoney, money for their dance lessons and school tuition, and left them alone in his place frequently to be with his girlfriends.
They came to their own realizations along the way. I retained my sanity, and eventually he became quite ill and is now in a retirement home. I don’t think his third wife even visits him which is quite sad.
My girls are now grown up and I would say are doing relatively well, he has since sent me a formal letter of apology, and I have come to forgive him , but have not befriended him since. I was left with some permanent damage to the brachial plexus nerves in my left arm and damage to one of my ankles that periodically causes problems for me.
Even though some couples develop later friendships because of the children, I decided my civility towards him and compassion regarding the strokes he has had, has been enough. We no longer have any friendship whatsoever, but one of my daughters calls him periodically just to say hello, and more out of pity for his present state than anything else. My oldest daughter in England is happily married with 2 young boys, but doesn’t communicate with either one of us. Once in awhile her husband and I talk to each other, long distance, and that’s about it. That part of it is a sadness in my heart that I live with.
This is what I have to say to other women.
“Do not think you can stay and change this scenario into something beautiful, by being different. You can alter your behaviour only so far, but this kind of diseased relationship will only open up the wounds and damage you and your children more and more and maybe take your life!
Get out, go forward, better yourself on your own, and don’t ever put your children in the middle of the situation! It is easy to do, when you are afraid, but very tough to undo the damage it causes.
Love yourselves, and don’t look back. Keep good friends and make some new ones that you can rely on, and be active in something creative. Get out of your own negative behaviour problems. You can be healed emotionally and spiritually, eventually.
Today House Democratic leaders unveiled their health care reform legislation, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, flanked by dozens of congressional supporters, explained that few pieces of legislation define the character of a nation- health care reform will shape future generations, “progress will be measured by the success of the American family to progress [under this bill].”
The legislation, HR. 3962 is a combination of three committee bills written by Representative Henry Waxman, Representative John Dingell, and Representative Charles Rangel. The deficit neutral bill will expand coverage to 36 million Americans, provide a public option, and outlaw widespread discriminatory practices that have prevented so many Americans from receiving quality and affordable care.
Women will be major beneficiaries of this health care reform plan, a fact understated in the health reform debate. A mother of triplets spoke of the blatant inequality women face in the current health care system. Ten years ago she paid $22,000 out of pocket for fertility treatments not covered under her insurance. Last year, after discovering that her family spent 1/3 of their income on health insurance, she applied for a new plan. She was denied coverage because her infertility was deemed a pre-existing condition and her husband was denied coverage because of spousal-infertility. HR. 3962 will ban all pre-existing conditions, so that no woman can be denied insurance for wanting to be a mother.
The legislation will also prohibit insurance companies from practicing gender rating- an insurance policy that forced 14 million women to pay 48% more than men for identical insurance plans.
Representative John Dingell, a lifetime Congressional Champion for universal health care said that this bill will bring peace of mind to Americans because it will ensure that quality and affordable care is available when they need it regardless of gender, occupation, age, and geography.
While we are stilling facing a tumultuous battle in both chambers of Congress, the sense of excitement and triumph was apparent in the faces of all members present at this historic event.
A schoolgirl murdered by her father in an ‘honour killing’ was told to kiss her brother goodbye the day she went missing, a court has heard.
Mehmet Goren, 45, told his daughter Tulay, 15, to let her brother embrace her one last time in an emotional farewell, it is alleged.
Her mother Hanim, 45, said her husband had tied up Tulay with bits cut from a shawl and left her face-down on the floor of her bedroom the night before, the Old Bailey heard.
He and his brothers Ali, 55, and Cuma Goren, 42, are charged with Tulay’s murder, and the attempted murder of her boyfriend Halil Unal, then 30, in 1999.
They were furious the pair planned to marry as he was a Sunni Muslim, while their family were Alevis, the court has heard. The day before Tulay went missing Mrs Goren and her husband visited their daughter at her boyfriend’s home and insisted she come home with them.
Mrs Goren claimed when she returned home from picking up their other young children eight-year-old Tuncay, and Hatice, 13, she found Tulay with her hands and feet bound so tightly they were ‘purple and black’.
Speaking through an interpreter, she said she and Hatice had tried to untie Tulay but she had said: ‘Mum don’t untie me, I want to die.’
She told the court: ‘In the meantime Mehmet had come from downstairs saying, “Don’t touch her… so that she doesn’t run away again, I tied her up”.
Later that night Tulay was seen by Mrs Goren trying to escape from a window. Mehmet is said to have slapped her and then drugged her with a sleeping pill.
The next morning Mehmet told his wife to take their children to his brother Cuma’s house, but leave Tulay. She wept as she told the court he said to her: ‘I am going to stay with Tulay. I am going to make her talk about what her problems are.’
She added: ‘Mehmet said “Come let Tuncay kiss you, Tulay. This will be the last time you see each other.” Mehmet phoned his wife later that day to say the teenager had run away.
The next day when they returned to their family home Mrs Goren said her husband had a ‘deep wound’ on his hand and that his hands were covered with scratches. Two kitchen knives were also missing.
She said: ‘Mehmet’s hands were exactly like as if he had been working in the garden without gloves.’
She also said soil in the back garden had been disturbed.
Mrs Goren claimed her husband told her to disown Tulay.
She said: ‘He said to me “From now on she is gone, I disown her. She is not my child any more. From now on we don’t have four children any more, we will have three children only.”
The prosecution claim Mehmet had buried Tulay’s body in the back garden.
Mehmet Goren, Cuma Goren, and Ali Goren, all of East London, deny the murder of Tulay on January 7 1999. They also deny a conspiracy to murder Mr Unal.
I was raised in a very secular home. Though my mother was Jewish by blood, the only real mention of G-d was a family member telling me that G-d punishes the wicked and that bad things happen to bad people. I tried very hard to be good.
When I was 17, I was in a relationship with a very abusive boyfriend. It started as jealousy which I viewed as a compliment. He just wanted to be with me as much as possible. He loved me so much. He soon began to control so much of my life that I was unable to discern the “me” from the “us.” The emotional and verbal abuse became sexual. He told me he was sorry. He told me he couldn’t help himself. He told me I was beautiful. No one else had ever said that. Without knowing what was healthy, I stayed. After all, I had been told that any man is better than no man at all.
Once high school graduation drew near, I began to think of a new beginning, new possibilities, and I broke free. This is when the physical abuse really began, in private at first, then in public. I tried to defend myself, and asked about getting a restraining order, but I was told it was better to let it go away. It got worse. The defense by others only made the abuse more severe. I moved hours away for college, but there were letters, phone calls, and a surprise visit. For years afterward I was stalked. What do you expect, said some, you broke his heart.
Yet, somewhere in my own heart, despite everything done and said to me, I thought that I must have some hidden goodness. For years I was an atheist, convinced that no G-d would let this happen to me. Believers all around me, I studied religion. As much as I could get my hands on, I read, I interviewed, I visited houses of worship, but nothing stuck.
One Friday night, I went to services at a reform temple. The Torah portion was the Ten Commandments. The sermon was essentially this: The rabbi said, well, what can I say about the Ten Commandments that hasn’t already been said? Of the hundreds of commandments in the bible, all of the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots,” we break many daily, some even as we meet here tonight. Look, there are really three you must follow, if you do no others: thou shalt take no other G-d before me; thou shalt not kill; and thou shalt not rape. These are the things you can never take back, for which complete forgiveness in the traditional sense may perhaps never be given. These are things which can go to the very root of destruction of the soul. Yet G-d is there for us, to help us heal and come out stronger. I had found the higher power I had sought for years. In that moment, my life was changed. In that moment, I became a believer.
Yearly during the High Holy Days, I reflect upon what it means to forgive. To let go of the pain that I allowed to define who I was, and recognize it as a part of my past that I can use to help others. To teach my children well. To advocate for those without a voice. I know he will never repent, and probably never even see himself for what he is. Yet I no longer let him have the power to define who I am by what I have endured. The Jewish people are strong and resilient believers, and this is where I belong.
This year, for DVAM, JWI is focusing on the media. Last week we issued an action alert asking our supporters to send letters to ten major newspapers across the country – calling on journalists to tell the whole story when reporting incidents of domestic violence.
Nobody has been more surprised by the response than we have: In one week, about 1,000 of these letters have been sent out through our website. A frustrated editor at the L.A. Times called our offices to complain about the 400 copies of this letter (and counting) personally forwarded to her by our supporters.
Reporting these crimes with accurate language is critical to the public’s understanding of domestic violence as a specific type of crime. Seventy-four percent of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; yet, the phrase ‘domestic violence’ is rarely found in coverage of these incidents. Reporting an assault or murder as one episode in a pattern of abuse – not an isolated act of violence – is as relevant as where, when, how and to whom it happened.
Journalists’ inaccurate accounts – reports that blame the victims, or excuse abusers – reinforce myths and misunderstandings about domestic violence. All media coverage of intimate partner violence must do the following:
• Acknowledge that domestic violence is not a private matter
• Use accurate language – words like abuse; assault; rape
• Convey that domestic violence is a pattern of behavior that often escalates when a victim is trying to leave, or has left, the relationship
• Identify the act as a domestic violence crime and place the murder in the larger context of domestic violence murders locally and nationally
Does your newspaper report about incidents of domestic violence? Is the coverage accurate?
It is clear from the overwhelming response that we need to do more to educate journalists and to challenge the media to engage in balanced reporting. If you have not sent a letter to your newspaper, please take action.
* * * * *
Restored funding saves some shelters; too late for others
On October 15th the California State Senate unanimously passed an emergency funding bill restoring $16.3 million in funds, enabling the 94 domestic violence shelters and hundreds of direct service providers to keep their doors open.
In July, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, faced with a severe budget deficit, used a line item veto to slash over $16 million in funds allocated to domestic violence organizations. Since then the Governor and California State Senators have been in a funding tug-of-war that finally reached a solution last week.
The emergency funding, while too late for six shelters, is a lifeline for many domestic violence organizations on the brink of closure. “In order to keep the remaining domestic violence shelters open, it is absolutely vital that the Governor immediately sign this bill into law,” said Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco). “Failure to do so will only result in increased health care, law enforcement and other costs to the state. But more critically, it puts victims of domestic violence and their children in grave danger.
* * * * *
Health insurers want to deny coverage to victims of abuse
“Domestic violence is a public health issue,” Congressman Ted Poe told participants at last Wednesday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on Violence Against Women. The other members of the committee nodded in agreement, but it is only recently that the relationship between domestic violence and women’s health has been included in the health care debate.
A widely supported provision of all five competing health care reform bills – banning insurance practices from charging higher premiums or denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions – has generated media attention because it will ensure that domestic violence survivors have access to health care.
Yes, domestic violence can be considered a pre-existing condition.
42 states have already passed legislation prohibiting this practice, but eight states (Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming) and the District of Colombia have no such law.
This practice, previously unknown by most states where it is still occurs, has been covered by CNN as a breaking news story and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi mentioned it during her weekly policy address as an egregious practice by insurance companies that must be stopped.
Oklahoma has decided to preempt federal legislation with state action. Three state senators – Senator Jim Wilson, Senator Eric Proctor, and Senator Randy Brogdon – are introducing legislation prohibiting insurance companies from viewing injuries by victims of domestic violence as pre-existing conditions. The bills will be voted on in the beginning of next year.
Activism at the state level is important and the remaining states should follow Oklahoma’s initiative. The greater problem, however, is the lack of oversight – women were denied access to health care because they had been a victim of a crime and everyone from health care providers to state legislators were unaware or unwillingly to close this loophole.
To find out more information about health care reform and how it will greatly improve the quality of care women receive, especially victims of violence, read JWI’s position statement Principles of Women’s Health Reform.
***Note: In May 2009, Arkansas passed legislation banning insurance practices that viewed domestic violence as a pre-existing condition***
When Heather Thompson learned her ex-husband was about to be released from prison some 15 years after he beat her to within an inch of her life — the prison from which he had written her a letter in which he vowed to finish the job when he was paroled — she faced an agonizing decision: whether to uproot her family out of fear, or stare mortal danger in the eye.
The letter Thomas H Price, Jr. mailed to Heather Thompson from prison in late 1995.
When I started my journey of healing, one of my strongest memories was the voice of my inner child screaming, “Please don’t hurt me, Daddy!” Oh, he didn’t beat me. Instead, his violence took the form of molesting me, starting at the age of two, raping me at the age of nine and continuing to do so until I was thirteen and graduating from elementary school.
It was painful physically, especially when he used foreign objects, but the scars to my psyche were far worse than the ones to my body. Like all other victims of abuse, my sense of self disappeared, or never really had a chance to form. Even after the abuse had stopped, daddy was the person I most wanted to please. I became a lawyer, just like daddy. I joined him as a partner in his law firm. I was his friend and companion. It was all about daddy.
And who was I? I was a mess. In trying to cover up the lie of my life, I became addicted to booze and Valium as a teen and young adult. I slept around, waking in strange beds after alcoholic blackouts. I was sick a lot. And then, in my mid-twenties, I got cancer.
Cancer was a wake-up call of gigantic proportions. Soon I was in AA, giving up alcohol and pills in one fell swoop—forever, one day at a time. Because I didn’t want invasive surgery, I started to seek out alternative health practitioners and healers. I did everything I could to bring all the hidden and repressed painful emotional experiences of my life into the light of a new day.
I journaled like crazy, allowing my emotions to run rampant on the page. I had a lot of therapy. And most importantly, I learned how to meditate and how to access the space of peace and clarity deep within me. Ultimately, I had a remission from the cancer and became a student and later a teacher of alternative medicine myself. Today, I’m an abuse and addiction expert, and have written a book, Truth Heals: What You Hide Can Hurt You, which tells parts of my story along with a process for connecting our emotions to what’s happening to us physically.
When Mackenzie Phillips told her incest story on Oprah, it reminded me of the time when my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given six months to live, he wanted to go to Rome. Good Catholic that he was, he wanted to see the Vatican and St. Peter’s. My mother suggested I take him there. After all, wasn’t it my job to keep daddy happy? Needless to say, that was never going to happen. Instead, the whole family went. Even though my father was quite ill, I still locked the door to my single hotel room each night during the trip.
Incest and sexual abuse are just as violent as physical battering, as demeaning as verbal abuse. It makes the victim feel shameful, guilty, and “dirty.” It takes a lot of courage to speak out, so I’m very proud of and grateful to all of the survivors of domestic violence who are now telling their stories. Someday, hopefully, no child will be screaming, “Daddy, please don’t hurt me.”
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — TV dance judge Mary Murphy said singer Chris Brown’s attack on his girlfriend, Rihanna, prompted her to talk publicly about spousal abuse that she says she suffered first as a teenage bride three decades ago.
Murphy — the vivacious judge on Fox TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance” — told CNN’s Larry King that she wants other victims to learn from how she endured, but escaped, domestic violence.
Discovering her talent with dance eventually changed her life and helped her flee the relationship after nine years, she said.
Her ex-husband strongly denied that he ever physically or mentally abused Murphy, whom he married in 1978 soon after they met as teenagers in college.
“I did just tuck it away and just buried it and went on with my life and I thought that, you know, I could leave it there and I wanted to leave it there until my father died a couple years ago,” Murphy said.
Discussions with her dying father led to him apologizing for not being “my knight in shining armor” by intervening, she said.
Mary Murphy’s October 20th interview with Ellen DeGeneres.
But Murphy said seeing a photo of singer Rihanna’s bruised face, taken soon after Brown’s admitted attack last February, convinced her to go public with the story.
“I still had no intention to talk to anybody until I saw Rihanna’s face and seeing that just brought it all up.”
“Abuse, it just survives and thrives in silence,” Murphy said.
US Weekly magazine’s current issue offers a detailed version of Murphy’s revelations in its cover story.
Murphy tells the magazine about a whirlwind romance that began in 1977 when she was a 19-year-old Ohio State University student — swept off her feet by an 18-year-old who was “extraordinarily handsome.”
She told King that the marriage began “getting out of control” after just three months when her husband’s jealously triggered fights.
“It increased until we started to have just horrible fights,” she said. “And then at the time, after a fight in which I didn’t want to have sex, it just escalated to the point that he literally had to rape me in order for me to have sex.”
When a neighbor called police to her home, Murphy said she was too frightened to press charges.
“I looked at him and with the look on his face, I said ‘absolutely not’ and went back in my room and just laid there and cried,” she said.
Murphy said she left her husband several times over the nine-year marriage, but “there weren’t the shelters that there are today.”
“I did try to leave, and I was having a hard time making it, and he would sweet talk me and I would go back” she said. “It was back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I don’t feel really proud of that.”
Murphy discovered her talent and love of dance several years into the marriage when she took a summer job at a dance studio while her husband was away for several months running the family’s business in the Middle East, she said.
“It made me feel beautiful instead of how I was probably really feeling inside, totally ashamed and dirty,” she said.
Their marriage ended only after she and her husband renewed their vows in a wedding ceremony in front of his family and friends in Amman, Jordan, in 1985.
She learned he had a girlfriend — to whom he was engaged — in the Middle East. It was his infidelity that convinced her to divorce him, she said.
Her former husband — who spoke to Larry King off the air — said he was “totally shocked” by Murphy’s account of their marriage. “I never harmed her,” he said.
“If all of these allegations are true, she could have had me deported,” he said. He is not a U.S. citizen.
He questioned if her motivation was “more fame or sympathy.”
Still, he said he is “very, very proud” of her.
Murphy told King his response is what she expected.
“I think a lot of men out there, by the way, that when they do get married they feel like this is their right to do whatever they want to do, and it’s not,” she said. “And I was a scared, frightened person.”
Murphy said she is still afraid of her former husband.
“I’m not going to lie to you that he still scares me,” she said. “I still live in fear that he will do something to me, that I will go missing.”
Fear of not being able to make it on her own still drives her today, she said.
“I put this behind me, went out and worked like I’ve never worked before,” she said. “And I still work today like I could still be homeless.”
A 24-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to 15 years in prison Monday for biting off a portion of his former girlfriend’s nose, a disturbingly intimate form of violence that prosecutors say is surprisingly prevalent in family violence cases.
Charles Bowers pleaded guilty to first- and second-degree assault last month in the 2008 incident, which followed an argument over house keys.
Judge Alfred Nance recommended that Bowers be allowed to serve his sentence at Patuxent Institution, a correctional mental health facility in Jessup, and that the young man, who said he grew up in an abusive home, be referred for psychiatric evaluation and treatment.
“I’ve been a victim of my emotions since I was 6,” Bowers told the court, issuing a seemingly sincere apology and begging for help. “My biggest fear,” he said, is it “possibly happening again.”
Assistant State’s Attorney Julie Drake, head of the city’s Felony Family Violence Division, said a fatality review team made biting a focus this year after realizing a murdered woman’s body showed signs of previous bite marks.
“That was really kind of a trigger for us to start thinking about the whole issue,” Drake said.
Last week, she recommended to a criminal justice panel that biting be included in routine medical screenings for domestic violence and on petition forms for protective orders. She also asked that medical personnel be trained to look for bite marks in the hopes of preventing further aggression and to document potential forensic evidence.
“Whenever you can intervene earlier, you stand the greatest chance of preventing either a homicide or more serious domestic violence down the road,” Drake said.
During Monday’s sentencing, the victim, who asked The Baltimore Sun to withhold her name for safety, sat near the back of the courtroom. She said she was still too afraid of Bowers to approach the trial table.
Prosecutor Eileen Murphy read the woman’s statement to the court.
She’s had three plastic surgeries already, and though she looks whole, she still needs several more, which she can’t afford. She can’t bear to have her picture taken. She’s ashamed and still in shock, looking in the mirror and still unable to believe “the mess” she sees.
“How can a person who claims to love you so much,” Murphy read, “do something so horrific?”
This 2006 Emmy nominated film about teen dating abuse and violence shows real teens telling their stories of dating abuse and violence. The film describes how dating abuse and violence starts, how it progresses, how the abuser acts, and how to recognize it.
Anne Scripps Douglas lived the typical life of a battered woman — the whispered telephone calls, the lies to friends and family, the coded messages to the few she could trust. Like a frightened animal she jumped at every loud sound, each ring of the phone, and most of all at the drunken curses of the man she had once loved but who now terrified her…
I keep looking in the mirror and crying. I can’t stand to see myself. My hair was down below my waist. I hadn’t cut it in over twenty years. Now look at me.
He didn’t speak to me during supper. He had been calling me all day, but I was working in the garden, so I wasn’t by the phone. I tried to tell him that, but he just stopped talking to me. That’s what he does when he gets mad. So I got the kids into bed and I took my bath. When I came out, he walked up to me with a pair of scissors. I didn’t know what he was going to do at first, but then he grabbed my hair and pulled it so hard that tears just popped out of my eyes. Then he just chopped it off.
I tried to fight him, but he said he’d stab me if I didn’t sit still. I cried so hard. Then he told me he was going to get the belt. When he went to the bedroom, I ran outside. I ran to our next-door neighbor’s house and hid in his workshop. Ben came out looking for me, and then he got our 15-year-old son to help him. My own son!
I used the phone in the shop and called the police. They came and got me. I had to leave in my nightgown, and both of the kids are still with their dad! When will I see my kids?
I’m so worried. I had better go back home. I need some clothes. i want to talk to my kids. What about my daughter? She’s only eleven. She’ll cry when she sees my hair.
I can’t stay here. I have to go back home. ben will be mad, but I can handle it. I appreciate your help and all. Please don’t be mad at me. I just have to go home.
BEATING HEARTS: Stories of Domestic Violence is a photographic project inspired by true stories of domestic violence, documented by Kate Sartor Hilburn and Terrie Queen Autrey of Louisiana.Visit www.beatinghearts.net to view more posters and photographs from the collection.
JWI's innovative programs, advocacy and philanthropic initiatives protect the fundamental rights of all girls and women to live in safe homes, thrive in healthy relationships, and realize the full potential of their personal strength.
