Domestic

By Tracey Robertson

Sandra Douglas has been to hell and back to be with her family this holiday season.

The 38-year-old mother of two secretly left the safety of a temporary shelter, in a car known only to one member of her family, to celebrate Thanksgiving at an undisclosed location on Nov. 24—three days before the rest of the country.

Douglas, who asked that her real name not be used, went to such lengths because she has no choice. Her life depends on it. She is hiding from the one member of her family who will not be celebrating Thanksgiving with them: her long-time boyfriend, abuser and now stalker.

Spending time with those she loves—any amount of time—is not a risk Douglas would normally take. She said she knows her abuser is looking for her and may be close to finding her. She knows he spends his days outside her mother’s office, hoping the bond between mother and daughter might soon yield a clue to Douglas’ whereabouts, and she knows that, despite testifying against him two months ago, she will never be safe.

Armed with the wisdom that comes from hindsight, a broken arm, a lacerated liver and damaged kidneys, Douglas now admits that her early relationship with Albert Hall (whose name has also been changed to protect the victim) bore signs of things to come.

“ My first impression of him was that he was creepy,” Douglas said. “I met him through some friends and he was very persistent.” She recalled the time she came home on Valentine’s Day, before they started dating, to find him sitting on the front step of her home, going through her mail.

“ Looking back, it’s very easy to say that incident should have been a red flag, but he was very charming too,” she said. Douglas said that Hall came to her house to play basketball with her then 12-year-old daughter and that her daughter encouraged her to be nicer to him.

“ He just became part of our life,” Douglas said. “He moved in with us and for the first two years, our relationship was pretty normal.”

Douglas now says that, until recently, she didn’t know what a normal relationship was. Throughout her childhood, she was the victim of her father’s abuse and a witness to the beatings endured by her mother. According to Douglas, Hall watched his father beat his mother too.

“ Most abusers, and often their adult victims, have been abused or witnessed abuse as children,’” said Doreen Eley, director of Naomi’s House, and victim advocate. Naomi’s House is a shelter for homeless women in downtown Fresno.

Like many abusers, Hall had a history of violent behavior and drug use starting at a young age. According to Douglas, he went to jail for 10 years when he was 19 for beating a man nearly to death. She said he is still an addict and that drugs were almost always connected to his abusive behavior.

“ It’s a simple equation,” Eley said. “Those with a propensity to abuse become more uninhibited when they are drinking or using drugs. It also becomes easy to blame drugs for such deplorable behavior.”

Before long, Hall’s unpredictable behavior and jealousy began to escalate. In 2000, Douglas came home from her job as an in-home nurse to find her family’s belongings had been moved to a home closer to his parents, 20 miles away from her family and friends.

According to Eley, isolating the victim from her support system is a classic abuser tactic. Taking economic control is another ploy. Douglas said she lost two jobs because Hall often followed her to work and harassed her on the job.

“ Abuse is about control,” Eley said. “By moving her away from her loved ones, he gains control over who she sees, when she sees them and how they interact.”

Once he thought he had control, Douglas said, the serious abuse started. In Jan. 2000, away from the watchful eye of her mother and close friends, Douglas suffered a broken arm, severe head injuries, a lacerated liver and kidney damage at the hands of the man who claimed to love her more than anyone.

“ When my children were brought to the hospital, my son looked at me and told the staff that he didn’t know the person lying there,” Douglas said. “I was so swollen that he didn’t recognize me.”

Douglas recovered only to be subject to more attacks during the next three years. Often she ran away but, like many victims of domestic violence, returned.

“ It was easier to go back,” Douglas said. “Whenever I left, he would spend every day searching hotel rooms and businesses looking for me. He threatened my family, harassed my neighbors; everyone lived in fear. Going back put me in jeopardy but protected everyone else.”

Douglas said she began using drugs with Hall on a more regular basis in the fall of 2002 as a way to ease the physical and emotional pain.

“ It was like the saying, ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’,” she said. “Every other attempt I made to escape from him had failed. At the time, it seemed like the only way to get away.”

For reasons even she cannot explain, a May 2003 beating was the last straw. A weary but resilient Douglas agreed to file charges and testify against Hall during a jury trial.

“ I was too tired to go on,” Douglas said. “I didn’t want to run anymore. I didn’t want to be scared to go outside and to live my life.”

Hall was held in Fresno County jail throughout the trial from May to Sept. 2003. During that time, and for the first time in years, Douglas lived without fear at Naomi’s House.

On Sept. 17, 2003, despite what Eley and Douglas called an overwhelming amount of evidence against him, Hall was acquitted and set free. Both women think that the jury may have struggled with the idea of sending him to jail for 25 years—the district attorney’s desired sentence under California’s Three Strikes law. Douglas also suspects her admitted drug use worked against her.

In either case, Douglas said, the event was a wakeup call to her; a chance to get control of her own life again and to put the drugs and abuse behind her.

By the time Hall stepped out of the Fresno County courthouse a free man, Douglas was already established in an anonymous recovery program, working to change her life.

“ Even though he’s out, I’m out too,” Douglas said, describing her road to sobriety and the woman she is working to become. “I am not the same woman I was for all those years. I have more clarity and enough self-worth to know that I don’t have to accept this kind of life anymore.”

Douglas, who has lived at the temporary shelter since Oct. 10, and who has been drug-free for two months, is now waiting for the state’s Victim-Witness Program to find her a new place to live. She will be given a new social security number, her mail will be routed to a general post office box, and she will be moved to a secret location somewhere in Fresno County.

In the meantime, Douglas continues to take small steps toward what she calls an enlightened future, hoping that she has broken the chain of violence for her daughter. She finds solace in something she recently read in the Bible.

“ I was wondering about my future and a little worried about whether or not I have the strength to keep running, when I read Isaiah 40 in the Bible,” Douglas said. “It says, ‘for those who have to run, you will never grow weary’. If that wasn’t a sign, I’m not sure what is.”