Script

NO SAFE PLACE

Violence Against Women

A PBS Documentary Film

Written by Anjana

NARRATOR:

In the early hours of a hot August morning, three men pulled a woman from her car after a minor traffic accident. The men threatened her with a crowbar, made her strip, then chased her until she jumped off a bridge to her death in the Detroit River. None of the 40 or so passers-by tried to help the 33-year-old woman. Some reports say onlookers cheered as the men taunted her.

As women, we live in fear of incidents like this. Because of our gender, we learn early that we must take extra precautions to be safe. Fear proscribes how and where we live, where we walk, where we park, where we sleep, eat and travel. As women, we know there are some things we cannot -- or, rather, should not -- do, some places we should not go. (Pause) We feel at risk because we are. We understand too well that there is no safe place.

(TITLE) NO SAFE PLACE

NARRATOR: An alarming amount of violence is targeted at women. By some estimates, three out of four women will be victims of sort of violence in their lifetime. For too many of us, the most intimate of crimes -- rape and domestic violence -- are a bitter reality. According to Senator Joseph Biden, who sponsored the Violence Against Women Act, "the single greatest danger to a woman's health is violence from men."

NARRATOR: Women may be afraid of strangers, but it's the most intimate of strangers -- a husband, a lover, a friend -- who is most likely to hurt us. According to a U.S. Justice Department study, two-thirds of violent attacks against women are committed by someone the woman knows. In the United States, the most dangerous place for a woman is in her own home, where intimacy can invoke an anger that may explode into domestic violence.

(GRAPHIC) MISTY

NARRATOR: For years, Misty Marchant was abused by her husband, Kenny. Their separation only seemed to make things worse. Misty's co-worker, Paul Sottisanti.

PAUL: She had come to work and she walked up to my desk and asked me, how do I look. And I looked at her and I says, like a million. She says no, my face. And at the time I looked at her it looked like she had smeared her mascara. But what it turned out to be was her whole side of her face, had it shut in a door. And that was the day or the day after she went and filed for divorce from Kenny.

NARRATOR: According to Paul, Misty knew she was going to die.

PAUL: She says well I just want to thank you for being my good friend and all your good advice and I don't think I'm going to see you again. And I says, well if you really think it's that serious, would you want to borrow a gun. And I personally thought she would have said no because she has a child and was afraid of guns, but her reaction was so positive she couldn't wait. I should have brought it to her that night.

NARRATOR: Misty never got the gun. Two days later she was dead. (Pause) Early on the morning of July 3, 1994, an intoxicated and heavily armed Kenny broke into Misty's house, and gunned down her and her friend Kirt Swann, a 32-year-old father of four. Misty's sister, Tammy Perea.

TAMMY: ... Her death was so violent that you can hear on the 911 tape, you can actually hear her body completely bleed out, every drop of blood in her body.

TAMMY: At that point Kenny shot Kirt several more times...then he left the house...and went to his father's where he'd been living and killed himself there.

NARRATOR: According to Tammy, the entire scene was played out in front of the Marchant's five-year-old daughter.

TAMMY: ... You can hear her on the 911 tape saying, "Mommy, where's Mommy, I want Mommy."

PAUL: Misty had tried to reach out... She went to court.... The night the dispatcher got the call, the first thing the officer said is, 'That's Misty's house.'" Everybody was aware of it, and nobody ever did anything about it.

NARRATOR: As to why a man would be enraged enough to kill his wife, family and friends can only speculate.

TAMMY: during custody hearings his parents admitted on the stand in court to 28 years of domestic violence and spouse abuse. He was raised in an abusive family. He was taught that it was okay, that this is how it was.

NARRATOR: Kenny and Misty were both victims of the cycle of abuse. It was a pattern both saw as normal, a pattern that eventually led to their deaths.

NARRATOR: Approximately 1,500 women are killed each year by husbands or boyfriends. About 2 million men a year beat their partners. Domestic violence knows no social or economic boundaries. Dr. Susan HONEY is director of the Family and Violence Institute in Alameda, California. She believes there is no one profile of men who batter women.

HONEY: Many men batter because they feel, because they are tremendously dependent on the woman... because they are threatened by her moves towards any kind of individual life of her own or individual thinking of her own. Some men batter because that's the only way they know how to be close.

NARRATOR: What pushes a violent man to kill? Often a woman leaving or threatening to leave a relationship is the trigger.

HONEY: That's often the most dangerous time in a relationship because that's when the man is most psychologically vulnerable, feeling most rejected and most threatened and his only way that he knows how to deal with those feelings is to act violently towards the woman who he perceives is causing them.

(GRAPHIC) BHOLA

BHOLA: The abuse started psychologically before he started calling me names like stupid. (to)the physical abuse started with a slap in the face. And it slowly escalated into more physical violence, ya know beatings, chokings....I'd try to be perfect (to) But it didn't matter. He would get upset if I forgot to bring milk home from the store and that would cause him to be physically violent with me. And then afterwards, he would be really sorry and I believed him.

NARRATOR: After six years of marriage, BHOLA decided she couldn't put up with the abuse anymore. She asked for a divorce.

BHOLA: he said to me you're not going to get a divorce and I said yes, I want one, ya know, I can't stay here anymore. And so he walked away from me and he walked into his office and I followed him because he didn't usually give up that easily...he had a gun in his hand and he was loading it and he walked into our daughter's bedroom and I was shocked when I walked in there and little Angela was standing in her crib and she was just bouncing up and down and he had put a gun to one of her ears and then the other hand was over the other ear and he said, no tell me that you'll leave me and I'll blow her brains out and then I'll blow your brains out and then I'll blow my brains out..., And I fell at my husband's feet and I said please don't kill my baby. And that's when I decided that I needed to reach out and to talk to someone to tell someone ya know what was happening in our lives because up until that point, it was just a secret."

BHOLA: My son I know was really affected by it (to) he didn't understand that I was actually saving his life by staying there because my husband was telling me that if I left that he would find me and he would kill me and he would kill the children too.

BHOLA: I walked around every day and I knew that might be the day that I would die. I felt like I was a walking dead woman. (to) And so I thought I have to leave and if I have to die leaving, I would rather have the courage to leave and at least get out instead of staying and dying.

NARRATOR: After reaching out, BHOLA finally was able to break out of the cycle of violence. She now works with the Utah State Attorney General's office on issues of domestic violence.

NARRATOR: Leaving a relationship, no matter how abusive, is never easy.

HONEY: Women who leave relationships often have to opt for living in poverty. That's a very difficult choice to make. There are many social, cultural factors that contribute to encouraging women to stay and try and make the situation better. So there are many, many reasons. In addition to that, women love the men who abuse them. Or at least love them initially. Men who batter are not 100 percent bad and they are not 100 percent hateful. And they can be quite loving and attentive and protective partners at times.

NARRATOR: HONEY says there's another question we should be asking. Why don't men leave these relationships that are supposedly so unsatisfactory to them?

HONEY: what we hear is how terriMICKEY inadequate these women are for the men. We also hear though how tremendously dependent they are on the woman. And their fear of rejection, their fear of emotional withdrawal and/or abandonment are major factors actually that cause them to be violent. Men who batter their women are oftentimes psychologically incapable of leaving them.

NARRATOR: We hear a lot about the cycle of abuse in some families. About how life begins to revolve around anticipating episodes of violence...actually coping with violence....or recovering from violence. Ironically, a family can become tremendously close during the recovery stage. The man who was terrifying and intimidating turns into a very needy, dependent and remorseful man. And the woman who was battered recommits to him in a fantasized hope that it will never happen again. (pause) It's not just adults who are sucked into the cycle of abuse, a cycle which can span generations.

HONEY: Children are always traumatized by witnessing violence in families. We know that from family backgrounds of men who are abusive that they often witness their mothers being abused and also they were often victims of child physical abuse themselves. We also know that of women who are battered, if they have the misfortune of having come from a family of witnessing their own mother being abused they will be susceptible to developing what we call battered women's syndrome, in which they believe that there is nothing they can do to get out of the situation.

NARRATOR: Rape, like domestic violence, is a crime that has existed as long as written history. Like domestic violence, rape is also a crime that is far too common. Women report almost half a million rapes and sexual assaults each year, but most rapes are never reported. While battered women may be willing to share their stories, rape victims are often reluctant to discuss their experiences, even years later. (pause) MANOJ is a 49-year-old woman who lives in a middle class neighborhood in Salt Lake City.

(GRAPHIC) MANOJ

MANOJ: I had let my little dog out to go to the bathroom and he was barking furiously in the driveway, so I ran outside to see what was going on and a man came up behind me and put a knife at my throat. And he took me in the house. He didn't say anything. He had grabbed hold of my arm, knife at my throat and just marched me into the house in front of him and threw me on the bed. My dog followed us in, was having a nervous breakdown and he threw my dog against the wall and then put him in another bedroom and shut the door, and he raped me. He told me if I screamed, that he would "Nicole" me. That was the term he used.

MANOJ: (back to) I know that I will never, ever be the same person again. In fact, after it happened, I asked both my daughter and my sister if I looked different. Because I felt like I was so changed, it must be on my face. (to) all women are vulnerable like I am. And if they don't realize it, they should. Because you never know what's going to happen. You never ever know when it's going to happen. And you always need to be checking your back. (to) For example, I have mace on my keychain, but you don't run outside to see what your dog's barking at with your mace in hand. And maybe you should. Maybe you should go everywhere with it in your hand.

NARRATOR: While her attacker remains at large, MANOJ struggles to get over what happened to her.

MANOJ: I know that I will never really recover from this. The impact will always be with me and I will never trust the same way and I know I can't even be tested for HIV for six months. So I have to even keep that in mind. I'll never be able to get away from this. The impact will be on me and my family forever.

NARRATOR: Even in family-oriented Utah, a state perceived as a safe place, more than 4,000 red flags representing one year's rape victims waved during a fall commemoration. Each year, the staff of the Rape Recovery Center hears stories from women of all backgrounds, races and ages. The 94-year-old woman who was raped. The three-week-old baby who was sexually abused. Half of the rape and abuse victims the staff served in emergency rooms were under 14 years of age. (pause) The majority of rapes still go unreported. The most troubling statistic is that three fourths of rapes are committed by a man the woman knows -- a fact society is not willing to accept. Executive Director Abby Maestas.

MAESTAS: We want to feel safe so we want to believe that rapists have a particular profile in terms of they're easy to identify -- they wear trench coats, they live under the viaduct or hang out in vacant buildings and have crazed looks in their eyes. And that's not true. What we have found through the clients that are served at the Rape Recovery Center, what we have found through studies, is that a rapist can be anyone -- a father, a grandfather, an uncle, a neighbor, a brother, a son.

NARRATOR: C.Y. Roby is executive director of Intermountain Specialized Abuse Treatment Center.

ROBY: ... We have a tendency I think to look on it and then say, well in order to keep safe, what I need to do then is stay out of the park at night, stay out of the dark alleys at night and I won't end up being raped. And yet, the vast majority of rapists are known to the victim.

(GRAPHIC) DIANNA

DIANNA: I met him at college. ...he gave me a silly line like hey don't I know you from somewhere. And he was handsome, he was charming, he was funny. He seemed like he had it all together.

NARRATOR: Dianna began to see another side of her boyfriend. He would become angry and then he'd become violent.

DIANNA: I told him I didn't want to go out with him anymore. Then he became obsessive. He started showing up every single day at my work and following me everywhere I went. Registered for my classes. He got a job where I was working. And this went on for 10 months.

DIANNA: (to) Nobody seemed to mind that he was following me. I guess it was more of a joke, people didn't realize how dangerous he was.

DIANNA: in the middle of writing a letter to a friend (to) I turned around and Bruce was there he had this look on his face and I screamed cause the look on his face scared me so much (to) and I noticed that he had a knife in his hand. And he cornered me, he put his arms around me, put the knife up to my neck, it was an eight-inch knife, it had serrated edges, it was a hunting knife. He put it up to my neck and said if I screamed again, he was gonna kill me.

DIANNA: During the attack I was pretty detached. I felt like if I didn't stay calm that he would kill me. That I just was better off going along with whatever he said and did and that way it would be over with. If I would have fought, I think I would have been killed.

NARRATOR: Dianna's rapist escaped through a window when he heard her roommate come home. Fearing for her life, she dropped out of college and broke her routine. She pressed charges, but her rapist was only placed on probation. He was charged with forcible sexual abuse of another woman just three months after raping Dianna. Not only did the rape make Dianna feel more vulnerable, she was also hurt by the reaction of others.

DIANNA: The reaction of my landlord was that it was I who had caused the problems. He hadn't had problems until I moved to there and that he had to fix the door and he was kind of mad at me. The um reaction of my neighbor was pretty non-chalant like maybe I deserved it.

ROBY: from the time a child is very, very small, we're teaching that they're responsible for the things that happen in their life both positive and negative. So when a rape situation occurs, usually what I see going through a victim's mind is what did I do that was wrong."

MAESTAS: Even children are questioned. The innocence of children are questioned. Often times I have sat with a police officer or a client and have heard that a four year old girl was responsible for seducing her perpetrator who was an adult. Now what are we saying? What we're saying is that we don't know how to take responsibility as a society. Therefore, we will continue to blame the victim.

NARRATOR: Rape is a devastating crime. Some women are badly injured. Some become pregnant. Some contract HIV. But the emotional trauma can be worse than any physical injury. The lives of women who are raped are forever changed. Victims say they will never be the same, that it's like dying.

MAESTAS: ...and even if for 20 minutes...The whole act of not having control is so devastating that that is what creates the crisis element for victims of rape and sexual assault and we see this in every age group.

(GRAPHIC) PATTY

NARRATOR: Patty always felt safe. Then came the night she was attacked and beaten by a stranger while working the late shift at a health club.

PATTY: And I said, take the money. I'll open the register for you, just take the money. And he hit me harder. And then he started dragging me back into where we couldn't be seen...And then I thought ooh. He didn't come for the money.. (to) I said, why are