Friday, September 19, 2014

Abuse and Being a Victim

I have been thinking a lot about a statement in my last post where I commented that despite Spring being violent and controlling, that I never felt like a victim of her abuse. The question I have been mulling over is: why? After all, Spring was violent enough early in our relationship to cause me permanent physical damage (my septum is shifted far enough that the airflow through my left nostril is only about half what it is through the right one) and throughout the marriage and divorce she tried her best to control me. In fact, one of the marriage counselors, a minster she knew, flatly told her that her behavior was evil and passive-aggressive and the professional marriage counselor we met with asked me if I was sure I wouldn't be better off without her.

I think the key reason I did not feel like a victim was because I truly believed that I could help her and things would work out in the end. I had hope. I believed that I had helped her overcome overt violence and honestly, although perhaps egotistically, believed that I could help her overcome her other demons. And just as important, I had married her and chosen not to leave her. I wasn't quaking in fear from feeling trapped. It was just the way it was.

I wonder how others in similar situations react. I am sure many feel abused and certainly Spring's behavior would qualify as criminal domestic violence. It would be easy to say that a woman would feel abused and a man wouldn't but I don't think that is accurate. I know many men that under their wife's thumb, far more, in fact, than the other way around. Although I recognize this view may reflect my gender and experience, most evidence does not show much, if any, difference in gender for the perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse.

Ultimately, I think that it drove Spring crazy that she couldn't make me fearful. Abusive, controlling people get no satisfaction if they cannot induce fear and Spring could not achieve this with me. She couldn't induce fear through violence nor could she do it through bad behavior. In the end, she used the divorce system to hurt me. In fact, hurting me was the whole point of the divorce. Sadly, since the divorce it has become clear she desires to hurt the kids just as much.

Now that I have lost the vast majority of every material asset I accumulated both before and during the marriage and have became a de facto slave for Spring, it might come as a surprise that still don't feel like her victim. I think Spring is a person who has a very broken moral compass and major behavioral problems. I am simply sad for her and feel bad that I failed to help her.

But I assuredly do feel like a victim from the legal system. The fact that Spring and her lawyer Nelly Wince were able to use perjury, fraud and lies to take so much from the children and me is a such a nightmare that it is difficult to convey the true horror of it. The abusive party is the divorce system. It is Nelly Wince, Judge Mearly, the LawyersProfessional Responsibility Board and all the others who committed, aided and abetted the crimes and unethical acts that were committed. Certainly the laws need to be changed, but first current law must be followed and not treated like a joke by the legal system. When judges refuse to even talk to the children to determine if allegations are true or not and evidence of the highest possible caliber is simply ignored, it really doesn't matter what the law is. The divorce system treats the law much like Al Capone did. This has to change or it will destroy our society.

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