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<td width="343" valign="bottom"><p class="date"><!-- InstanceBeginEditable name="date" --><a href="default.html">12/08/03 • Vol.
127, No. 42</a><!-- InstanceEndEditable --></p></td>
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<h1>Domestic </h1>
<p class="byline">By Tracey Robertson</p>
<p>Sandra Douglas has been to hell and back to be with her family this
holiday season. </p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> “
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.</p>
<p> “
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.</p>
<p> “
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.”</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> “
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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p>“
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.” </p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> “
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.”</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> “
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.”</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> “
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.”</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> “
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.”</p>
<p> 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. </p>
<p> “
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.” </p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> “
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.”</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> 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.</p>
<p> “
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.”</p>
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