Husband Hits you ? Effect of poor husband & wife relation on their children?

This is the most important question I could ever respond to on Quora. I am going to say something that I have said in other answers I have given.

People will treat you in the manner that you allow them to. If I can make you understand one thing I hope it is this. People will absolutely treat you in the manner that you allow them to.

Violence is not a one-time event. It is a cycle, that repeats itself in horrible ways and intensifies over time. The effect of violence is devastating for families, and it is something that is passed from one generation to the next. Both the role of abuser and victim can be “taught” to children that grow up witnessing this.

I’ve read many of the answers, and yes, the statistics are correct. I am not going to tell you more of them. Instead, I’m going to tell you about one of the statistics. 

(Warning: the story is disturbing.)

My sister was a victim of domestic violence. On March 3, 1991, she killed her husband. After my sister’s case, Arizona began to allow Battered Wife Syndrome as a defense.

My sister (Judy) met her husband while she was in the Army. They were both stationed at Ft. Campbell.

He seemed to be everything you could ask for. He was soft spoken, well-mannered, and he seemed to pay attention to no other woman besides my sister.

The first time he hit her, they had been married for 3 weeks. He convinced her that he had not intended to actually hit her. He was very sincere in his apology to her.

The next time he hit her, they were sitting in the car. They had just pulled into their driveway, and he was angry. My sister made a comment, and he punched her in the nose. He calmly got out of the car and walked into the house, leaving my sister sitting in the car, her nose bleeding from the impact, blinded by the pain she felt.

She was 5 months pregnant.

When my niece was 6 weeks old, my sister brought her to visit us. They were being transferred to Germany. They were going to spend Christmas with us, and then leave for Germany after the holidays.

My brother-in-law had delayed his trip. He was finishing up some work, and was then to meet up with her at our house 3 days later. He was going to drive up after finishing what he was doing.

They had been transferred to Ft. Hood, TX. They had been living off base in a mobile home they had purchased. They sold the home a couple weeks before my sister left TX.

The night after she arrived at our house, she got a call in the middle of the night. Her husband had been shot and was in critical condition. We didn’t find out for years that he was shot while he was climbing through the window of the mobile home they had sold. His intent was to attack and rape the woman that they had sold the house to.

The physical abuse my sister endured continued. Her husband had dropped all pretense of feeling sorry for any of the times he hit her. He blamed her for it. He also told her that if she told anyone in her family that he would kill her, kill their daughter, and then kill everyone in her family.

He also continued to attack and rape other women. The army was aware of what he was doing.

After they were finally sent to Germany, the violence began to increase. Judy went to the military police for help. My sister was not a military wife, she was a member of the army. She reported the violence. The MP happened to be a friend of her husband’s. He went to him, told him of the report, and told him that he needed to control his wife.

He went home and threw her off of a 3rd floor balcony of their apartment. Luckily for her, the lower floors went out further than the floor above, and she landed on the balcony of the apartment below her. She was in the hospital for several days.

The army was getting complaints about his attacks of other women.

Three times they put my brother-in-law in psychiatric hospitals to try to change the behavior. When they failed to be able to change his behavior, they gave him a less than honorable discharge. He forced my sister to leave the army as well.

He took a job as a manager for a nation wide finance company. He began finding women to attack from their customer lists.

The violence increased.

When my niece was 5, my sister got her a puppy. The dog hated my brother-in-law.

One night, as he came home from work, the puppy ran up to him and began barking. He kicked the dog across the room. Judy quietly shut the dog in another room. Her husband simply watched her do this. He said nothing.

A few hours after Judy went to sleep that night, she woke up feeling something wet on her face. She didn’t know what it was. She saw her husband sitting on the foot of the bed, smiling.

She turned the light on, and began throwing up. He had killed the puppy, cut it up, and smeared it all over my sister’s covers and wiped it’s blood on her.

He told her that if she ever tried to hide anything from him again, he would do the same thing to their daughter.

Judy believed him.

They were transferred to Phoenix, where he was from. Around his family, the violence began to escalate drastically.

Judy had decided she needed to get her and their daughter away from him. She felt he was going to kill her if they didn’t get away. His sister came by and saw that Judy was packing. She called him and told him.

He held my sister up against the front door all night long with a loaded gun pointed at her head screaming that he was going to kill her.

A couple of weeks later, they were at a party at his family’s house. He and his brother had disappeared. Judy found out that earlier that day he had tried to attack a young woman. She knew that meant he was going to come home later and beat her again.

She went into a panic. She left and took off to get her daughter who was at a friend’s house. She went to their home to get their clothes to leave. She felt like she had no where to turn. He had done a good job of making her believe that her own family did not care about her.

Judy had been a marksman in the army. She was very good with a gun. She knew that he would be home soon, and after her last attempt to leave, she was afraid he would be there before they could leave.

She waited. She thought that if he saw the gun, he would back away. He knew she was a marksman.

He came home a bit later. Judy met him on the front porch. She told him that it was enough. She said this needed to stop, that he needed to leave and let her and her daughter then leave.

Instead of backing away when he saw the gun, he went into a rage and came after her. She shot him 5 times.

The state charged her with Murder I. They said that she waited, which gave her time to plan his murder.

My family immediate flew out and picked up my niece. His family knew that we had a power of attorney from the time he was shot.

During the next couple of years, they built the defense for my sister.

Because of what had gone on while they were in the army, ads were placed in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes. They were asking for people to contact them that knew my sister and her husband.

They had hundreds of responses. Every single one of them said that when they saw the ad, they were sure that he had finally killed her.

They received a response from a man that had been in Germany at the same time they had. His wife had committed suicide because of my brother-in-law. She had been attacked and raped by him.

 He then continued to call her and send her notes saying he was going to do it again, and she would not be able to stop him. 

She couldn’t take anymore and committed suicide. Her husband found out about it from the note she left. She had not said a word to him because my brother-in-law had convinced her that he would kill the husband.

Every jailer told my sister that they had read her file and did not believe she belonged there.

As the trial approached, the DA made my sister an offer of manslaughter 15–20. My sister accepted the plea.

My family went to AZ for the sentencing.

Everyone appeared in court. My brother-in-law’s family was not present. The judge asked if they had been notified. They had not. The DA did not like them, they were all constantly in trouble as well, but he apparently did not want to deal with them so had not notified them. The judge ordered him to notify them and re-scheduled the hearing for the next morning.

The next morning, they would not let my sister go into the court room. The deputy told her that his family was there, and they were screaming for her blood. He did not feel that he and the other 2 deputies could protect her. They were waiting for 3 other deputies to join them.

As they entered the court, 6 deputies surrounded my sister.

When the judge entered, he informed the court that he had read the file overnight.

He said:

As a man, I am appalled by what I read. I am horrified at what this woman has been shown to endure. I believe that this man was truly a monster, and that he deserved to die. I believe that it is wrong for this woman to be in prison for 15–20 years. As a judge I do not intend to see that happen. I refuse to accept a plea bargain of more than manslaughter 8–10.

The Prosecuting Attorney was furious. He said he would not do that, and that they would simply plan on a trial.

The judge asked my sister why she would consider such a plea when she had such a strong case for self-defense.

My sister had an inter-racial marriage. At that time, they were not accepted very well in Phoenix. Many there did not approve of such marriages.

My sister told the judge:

I am married to a black man. This town does not accept inter-racial marriages. There will be 12 men sitting on the jury, and they may well all think that I got what I deserved for marrying him. This way I would be able to see my daughter as an adult and see any grandchildren.

2 weeks later she accepted a plea bargain of manslaughter 8–10. By law she had to serve 2/3 of the 8 years, which she did.

Violence does not stop. Once a person is allowed to get away with violence toward another, then they know that all they have to do is say “I’m sorry”. If you are a person that is hit, then you will eventually believe that it is something you did that caused this.

My sister thought she had kept her daughter from seeing all of this. She found out later that her daughter knew.

My niece found herself in an abusive relationship. Her daughter told me she saw her mother being hit. I confronted my niece and told her she could leave on her own, or I would bring every large person I knew and remove her. I told her that she was teaching her daughter to be treated the same way. She left him.. she was scared, but she came and stayed with me for a few months to get back on her feet.

We tried to get her into counseling… she has refused. When she was young, she lied to counselors, who then believed that she was fine after all she had been witness to.

I found out recently that she feels that a man needs to treat a woman badly. That is how he shows that he loves her.

My sister and I grew up in the same home. Our mother was never hit by our father, but he was and still is very verbally abusive. With us kids he was physically abusive.

We saw the same things with our parents. We saw the same fights, heard the same comments, witnessed the same relationship. We took 2 very different things from what we saw.

My sister believed that when you marry, that you have no choice but to accept how you are treated.

She killed her husband.

I took away that I would never accept being treated like that by any man.

I have been married 4 times.

I realized 10 years ago that each of my husbands seemed very different from each other. Yet, each shared personality traits with my father that were not great.

The statistics you are being quoted in other answers to you are correct. My sister was not someone that you would ever imagine would be a victim of violence. She is smart, active, outspoken, and has a great sense of humor.

Do not allow another to treat you with violence. Because that is exactly how they will treat you.

I wish you all the best.

              -Joyce Frankel