[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 87 (Friday, July 1, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: July 1, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                            A VICIOUS CIRCLE

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, recently, Elizabeth Bettendorf wrote 
an article for the State Journal-Register about spousal abuse.
  It is a well-written article that opens the eyes of any sensitive 
reader.
  Among other things, she points out that in Sangamon County, where 
Springfield, IL is located, in 1993, there were 1,161 orders of 
protection issued by the courts for domestic situations. In the State 
of Illinois, there were 42,964.
  I ask to insert into the Record her article, as well as a column I 
wrote that also mentions the statistics from her article.

            [From the State Journal-Register, June 26, 1994]

                             Love and Rage

                       (By Elizabeth Bettendorf)

       In the flash of the Polaroid camera, the bruises on Ann 
     Tavender's body turn the deep, furious purple of overripe 
     plums. On her neck, chest, upper bicep and right eye, welts 
     bulge and darken as the blood clots beneath her pale flesh.
       Strands of dark hair trickle above the swollen crescent 
     beneath her eye, and her gaze droops downward as if she is 
     embarrassed, startled by the click of the shutter.
       Around her neck, bruises have blossomed into the shape of 
     fingerprints where she says her abuser tried to choke her 
     after she refused to have sex with him and another woman. She 
     says she met him after her divorce, after she lost her job as 
     a waitress at a country club and moved into a cheap motel.
       ``You're dead, bitch,'' was his parting promise as Tavender 
     gunned her 1984 Grand Marquis out of the parking lot of an 
     apartment building.
       Nine months later, Tavender, armed with a hard-earned order 
     of protection, is a nonresidential client at the Sojourn 
     Shelter and Service, a Sangamon County-based haven for abused 
     women and their children.
       ``I had black eyes all the time,'' she says, studying the 
     four snapshots taken shortly after she was released from the 
     hospital. ``I think he thought the bruises were like an 
     owner's mark that showed he was a man.''
       In the shadow of the recent made-for-TV arrest of ex-
     football star O.J. Simpson, accused of fatally stabbing his 
     former wife and her companion, the picture of domestic 
     violence becomes even more blurred, almost baffling.
       ``The thing about O.J. is that people are suddenly aware 
     that domestic violence can exist at any level of society and 
     that it can be fatal,'' explains Alice Nathan, director of 
     Sojourn Shelter and Service. ``Though the majority of our 
     cities are lower-income, just about every profession in this 
     community--doctors, lawyers, business owners--have been here 
     as clients.''
       Founded in 1975, the shelter, now in a Victorian medical 
     clinic turned apartment house, features dormitory-style rooms 
     where clothes packed in a hurry are stacked in plastic 
     garbage bags.
       Its a serene place, with a farmhouse-style kitchen where a 
     pot of coffee seems to perpetually simmer, and where children 
     watch ``101 Dalmatians'' in the rose-colored parlor while 
     their mothers sleep on the sofa.
       The address is a well-kept secret, revealed only to clients 
     or those on official business.
       ``They helped me get housing and furniture and sent me to 
     different agencies to get help with my utilities,'' says 
     Sherri Spencer, who fled West Virginia after her relationship 
     turned violent.
       Spencer is a gregarious, soft-hearted women who smells of 
     Ciara cologne and whose fingernails are gnawed to nubs. She 
     says her father, a construction company owner, used to punch 
     her mother's face so badly that often the children didn't 
     recognize her. Once, she says, at a gas station on North 
     Grand Avenue, he banged his wife's head repeatedly against a 
     wall until she started bleeding.
       Sherri herself was kicked so hard by a man when she was 
     nine months pregnant that her water broke. She eventually 
     ended the relationship, and last year, while living in West 
     Virginia, began dating a cafeteria cook she had known as a 
     teenager. After they were engaged in March, he, too, turned 
     mean without warning, she says.
       ``At first he seemed so nice--he bought me a crock pot and 
     shower curtain for my apartment,'' she recalls. ``He didn't 
     drink, smoke or mess with drugs. One day we were shopping for 
     rafts for the children in the Big Lots store, and right 
     there, in front of everybody, he punched me in the face 
     because he didn't like something I said.''
       Sherri, who first stayed at the shelter several years ago, 
     packed her few belongings into a U-Haul trailer and headed 
     back to Springfield and Sojourn, where she is now living. She 
     plans to enroll in nursing school this fall so she can get 
     off public aid and support her three children.
       ``I want to get out of the system,'' she says. ``I want to 
     support my family, but I can't do it on $4.25 an hour.''
       Between July 1, 1992, and June 30, 1993, the shelter's 
     handful of volunteers and 15-person staff offered solace, 
     support and education to 516 women, three men and 309 
     children. About half the adult clients appeared in court with 
     Sojourn legal advocates to seek orders of protection. More 
     than 70 percent of the clients were white and between the 
     ages of 18 and 44. Forty-seven percent identified their 
     husbands as their abusers; 20 percent said they had been 
     sexually abused.
       Sojourn's 13-member board of directors, comprising police 
     officers, battered women, politicians, business owners and 
     professionals, regularly deals with domestic violence issues 
     that linger despite public education and tougher laws.
       With an operating budget last year of $443,000--made up of 
     federal grants and programs, United Way funding, 
     contributions and other sources--Sojourn seeks to derail 
     the disruptive cycle of its clients' lives.
       By helping women navigate the county's web of social 
     service agencies, offering wisdom about domestic violence, or 
     just lending a shoulder to lean on, primary advocate Marilyn 
     Hume does just that.
       At Sojourn's regular group meetings, where topics range 
     from manipulation to legal rights, Humes occasionally asks 
     women who have not yet left violent husbands or boyfriends to 
     sketch detailed pictures of their houses so they can safely 
     escape.
       ``I tell them I want to know every window and door,'' Humes 
     says. ``Can you get from one room to another without getting 
     hurt? If it's not safe--and a large majority of these women 
     don't even have phones--bide your time. Wait until he falls 
     asleep or passes out. Then pray like hell he doesn't catch 
     you.''
       Brenda Davis wasn't so lucky. She says her abuser barged 
     into her bedroom at 6 a.m., ripped her nightgown from her 
     small, wispy body and raped her repeatedly. Her injuries were 
     so severe that she says she couldn't urinate for two weeks.
       ``Over and over and over,'' she says in her soft, 
     southwestern twinged accent, a pack of Marlboros beside her 
     on the sofa. ``I kept crying for help, but no one heard me. 
     When he got up, I was bloody, but he wouldn't let me take a 
     shower. He threw me on the kitchen floor, and he raped me 
     again. When I locked myself in the bathroom, he punched in 
     the door and came after me.''
       Davis's worry-grooved face is feathered with tears and 
     mascara. She can't help crying when she talks about her 
     physical abuse because she says it's all she has ever known.
       At Sojourn she can quilt together the pieces of a life that 
     has been turbulent and repetitive. An Army veteran and 
     skilled mechanic who has worked as a waitress and supervised 
     a housekeeping crew, Davis wears a black and electric-pink T-
     shirt emblazoned with the proclamation: ``I Suffer From 
     P.M.S: Putting Up With Men's S---.''
       Davis, who has four children, says she can no longer count 
     on both hands the number of times she has been punched, 
     kicked or slapped with such fury that she wanted to die. 
     Once, locked in a bedroom and threatened with a rifle, she 
     jumped from a second-story window and broke her ribs.
       Her oldest daughter, now 20, is involved in a violent 
     relationship too, Davis says.
       At 42, she has been married three times and lived with a 
     man for eight years. All of her relationships started out the 
     same way--sweetly.
       One husband, ``a real romantic,'' served her filet mignon 
     by candlelight on their first date and regularly sent her 
     roses. He, too, turned violent, she says.
       Sherri Spencer recalls being hurled down on the bed and 
     straddled on a second date because the man was wildly jealous 
     that she had spent the evening with a girlfriend.
       ``He said: `You will not go out without me again,'' Spencer 
     recalls.``It was like a compliment, I thought: `He cares, he 
     really cares. He really, truly loves me.'''
       When Kim Daugherty, a petite, brown-eyed convenience store 
     clerk, met Jim Shaw at a Fourth of July Eagles Club dance, 
     ``he treated her like a queen,'' recalls her mother, Barbara 
     Crenshaw.
       First came the opal and ruby necklace, the gold chain and 
     watches, then the Saturday night games of Uno with Kim and 
     her three children. The couple bowled twice a week, played on 
     a dart team and even won a trip to Las Vegas.
       ``He didn't even drink in front of the kids,'' muses 
     Crenshaw. But then Shaw turned jealous and Kim tried to break 
     off the relationship.
       On May 31, Shaw shot Kim in the head outside a Southern 
     View Tavern and then turned the .25 caliber handgun on 
     himself.
       He died; she didn't.
       Today, Kim, 28, is semi-conscious at Memorial Hospital, the 
     bullet still lodged on the left side of her brain. Her left 
     arm is paralyzed, and she is fed through a tube. Her 
     beautiful long, brown hair was so matted and tangled with 
     blood that the nurses had to cut it off, Crenshaw says.
       About a week and a half before the shooting, Crenshaw says 
     Shaw showed up at the apartment that Crenshaw and Daugherty 
     share in Chatham Hills, demanding to see Kim, who wasn't at 
     home.
       ``He pushed his way through the front door, pushed my son 
     on the couch and threw the phone at him and started looking 
     through the rooms of the apartment,'' recalls Crenshaw, who 
     is caring for her grandchildren while her daughter is in the 
     hospital. ``My youngest grandaughter started screaming and 
     screaming. She was very upset. I know he scared her to 
     death.''
       Perhaps the most overlooked victims in the pattern of 
     domestic violence are the children, O.J. Simpson's young son 
     and daughter--usually mentioned only in passing--are living 
     with the maternal grandparents while their father's fate is 
     decided.
       At the east end of Sojourn's grassy back yard--littered 
     with tricycles, Hula-Hoops, a yellow and red play-house, a 
     Weber grill--there is a spacious outbuilding-turned-
     classroom, where children may play Chutes and Ladders or draw 
     on a green chalkboard easel. Julie Alberts, the shelter's 
     children's coordinator, regularly deals with the burden of 
     despair, fear and guilt lugged around by children who grow up 
     in violent homes.
       ``Kids are affected in a lot of ways,'' she says. ``Most 
     have real low self-esteem, can't make decisions or resolve 
     conflict in a nonviolent way. Their stress is so outrageous 
     that many kids can't describe how they feel because they're 
     too afraid to talk about it.''
       Alberts, who encourages the children to paint and draw 
     pictures of their fears, produces a stack of artwork created 
     over the years by kids who stayed at the shelter. The images 
     are so profoundly disturbing ``that no child should ever have 
     to endure this,'' says Alice Nathan.
       In one picture, scratched tensely on a sheet of typing 
     paper, a black Magic Marker stick figure shoots his wife in 
     the head with a gun. Blood-red droplets cluster on the page 
     like cherries.
       ``No No!'' she cries.
       In another, a farmer wearing a wide-brimmed hat and blue 
     jeans drives a sickle into the ground. Behind him, a car has 
     run over his wife in the driveway. She is frowning, and her 
     dark hair is flattened.
       ``The boy who drew this became violent toward his mother, 
     also,'' says Alberts grimly.
       Often the children have been injured when they tried to 
     intervene to protect their mothers, says Alberts, who tries 
     to give them a sense of control.
       ``We teach them to dial 911, to curl up in a ball and put 
     their heads in their stomachs,'' she says. ``Yes, they're 
     probably going to get hurt, but not as badly.''
       Why such a damning cycle of abuse continues in certain 
     families is a perplexing question, but not one without 
     answers. Not unlike an alcoholic in the final stages of liver 
     disease, ``many women know it they stay in the relationship, 
     they will die from the abuse--but if they try to leave it 
     they will die also,'' says Nathan. ``It's not a simple 
     situation at all.''
       Often, despite the perpetual violence, there is still an 
     attraction between a couple. And many women are simply 
     reluctant to venture out on their own again.
       ``There are so many reasons for staying in an abusive 
     relationship--psychological, sociological, economic, or just 
     plain survival,'' Nathan explains. ``Sometimes, a woman has 
     nowhere to go because her family says, ``You've made your 
     bed, now lie in it.' What if he's threatened to hunt her 
     down and kill her? Or what if he tries to leave and take 
     the kids? In so many households, the belief is still that 
     the husband is the boss and the wife is submissive and 
     that it's OK to hit a woman.''
       The Springfield Police Department maintains a pro-arrest 
     policy in domestic violence situations, according to Deputy 
     Chief of Investigations Jim Cimarossa.
       In 1993, the department fielded more than 1,600 reports 
     involving orders of protection, battery and domestic 
     disturbances (a category that can include ``someone shouting 
     at their neighbor over the fence, Cimarossa says).
       According to the Illinois State Police, 1,161 orders of 
     protection--all involving domestic situations--were filed in 
     Sangamon County in 1993. In all of Illinois, 42,964 orders 
     were filed in the same period, mostly by women.
       Jennifer Florence, a Sojourn client, knew all about orders 
     of protection. She is buried in the shade of a tall pine tree 
     amidst a cluster of graves called God's Garden at Oak ridge 
     Cemetery.
       More than a week after her June 14 funeral, parched 
     bouquets of yellow carnations and baby's breath tied with 
     dark red velvet ribbon are still strewn over the freshly 
     turned earth. A single wilted red rose pokes up from the head 
     of the grave, and a pink tissue is still crumpled in the same 
     place it was tossed the day of the funeral.
       Florence, a 31-year-old secretary, was 4\1/2\ months 
     pregnant at the time of her death. She left behind three 
     small children. Terrell, 10, Titus, 3, and Tiffany, 23 
     months.
       On June 9, as she lay dying from gunshot wounds in her legs 
     and chest, Tony Shoultz, her longtime boyfriend and father of 
     her children, was arrested in a stairwell at the Union 
     Baptist Church on Monroe Street.
       Their tempestuous relationship can be traced to 1984, when 
     Shoultz allegedly pushed and threatened her in front of their 
     infant son. Florence obtained her first order of protection 
     against Shoultz then. She obtained her final order of 
     protection last fall.
       Shoultz has been charged with first-degree murder and with 
     the intentional homicide of an unborn child. He pleaded not 
     guilty Thursday.
       Jennifer's death cannot be undone, says her mother, June 
     Florence.
       ``Jennifer was a beautiful person and full of love, but 
     Tony didn't allow her to function at all,'' she says. ``She 
     tried to get away from him a million times. He beat her, held 
     guns to her head and knives to her throat. But he always 
     lured her back with kisses, flowers and I'm sorry.'''
       Jennifer spent her last day on earth in the company of her 
     mother, who picked her up at a drugstore near Sojourn and 
     drove her to the family's home on 14th street. There they 
     talked and ate a breakfast of eggs, waffles, sausage and 
     coffee.
       ``I noticed that Jennifer looked like she was getting 
     sick,'' June recalls. ``She was thin and little incoherent, 
     and well, when it's your child you know something's wrong. 
     All day she kept saying, `Mom, I have to go.' Looking back. I 
     think God was already calling her. Tony had pulled her into 
     this circle and she couldn't get out.''

         Brentwood Slayings Awaken Nation to Domestic Violence

       Out of the tragedy that surrounds the O.J. Simpson charges, 
     something good may emerge.
       Just as the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings made us 
     much more sensitive to the problems of sexual harassment, so 
     the deaths of two people who may have been killed by a 
     celebrity can awaken us to the problems of domestic violence.
       The problem is much more widespread than most of us knew.
       In Sangamon County, Ill., where Springfield, the state 
     capital, is located, 1,161 orders of protection involving 
     domestic situations were issued by the courts last year, 
     according to an excellent article on the problem by Elizabeth 
     Bettendorf in the State Journal-Register of that city.
       Statewide there were 42,964 orders. And a much higher 
     number of cases of spousal abuse never reached the courts.
       Years ago a respected attorney startled me in a 
     conversation when he said, ``You have to beat up your wife 
     once in a while to keep her respect.'' When I related this to 
     a friend, he told me of an engineer who told him that he 
     occasionally batters his wife ``to maintain authority in the 
     home.'' I am sure neither of these cases reached the courts.
       The Nicole Simpson case made headlines and riveted the 
     nation to the O.J. Simpson car surveillance. But when 
     Jennifer Florence of Springfield, Ill., a 31-year-old 
     secretary and mother of three, was killed--and there have 
     been thousands like her--it did not register on the national 
     television screen.
       What can be done? Let me suggest four steps:
       1. Bring the problem out into the open. If you or a friend 
     or a relative are involved in an abuse situation (almost 
     always men attacking women or abuse of children), don't 
     hide it. Hidden problems tend to grow. Physical abuse 
     within a domestic situation is not normal behavior.
       2. Men and women brought up in homes were there has been 
     physical abuse of spouses or children are likely to abuse 
     their spouses and/or children. If that was your experience, 
     you may need professional help.
       3. Don't abuse your children. It is conduct they are likely 
     to pass on to their children.
       4. If you are in a home situation where you are either 
     abused or are the abuser, seek help. Inquire from a social 
     agency or a religious leader or your physician or the police 
     where you can go for help. You must protect yourself and 
     others.
       5. Women should find the phone number and address of a 
     center for abused spouses where they can go if violence 
     erupts. In an emergency, call that center if you do not have 
     transportation.
       6. Judges need to become more sensitive on these matters. 
     Part of the crime bill that may emerge from Congress is a 
     Violence Against Women provision that Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., 
     is the chief sponsor of and I am cosponsoring. It includes a 
     provision I inserted to offer sensitivity training for the 
     judges of the nation, who are overwhelmingly male and often 
     not as understanding of domestic abuse cases (as well as rape 
     and other problems women have) as they should be.
       Finally, there are centers for women who face these special 
     problems. They need support from government agencies, but 
     almost all of them are also dependent on charitable 
     contributions. All of us can help.

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