by Ken Bradford

Created on: October 20, 2008   Last Updated: December 09, 2011

My cell phone ringing woke me up at 11:00 p.m. that Friday night and as I looked at the number, I had no idea who would be calling so late. I recognized the voice, it was Sandy, a girl I had known for the past 10 years, but hadn't seen or heard from in the past three years. She was upset and crying and she said, "Can you help me?" Being half in and half out of reality, I could only ask "What's wrong?". She said, "He's at the neighbor's house drinking and I'm afraid he will come home and beat me again.". The only words that rang out to me were "beat" and "again". Sandy asked me if I could come get her and after I learned where she was, I drove some 50 miles to meet her in a K-Mart parking lot, because I had told her that I could not come to the house.

I had heard about domestic violence, but all I knew was that it existed and not anything else about it. As I made that drive, I kept asking myself, "OK, now that you have made this decision to go get her, what do you do next?".

After circling the K-Mart parking lot several times, I finally noticed Sandy sitting in this beat up pick up truck. The windshield was cracked from one side to the other, the paint was peeling off everywhere, the front end was all bashed in and the hood was tied down with a rope. As Sandy got out of that truck, I could see that her right eye was swollen and she was still crying.

On the ride back to my apartment, stories of physical, sexual and emotional abuse and other acts of violence began to be revealed to me. Sandy would at times break down and say, "He told me that he loves me, so why does he treat me this way?". I learned that she was not married to this guy, only living with him. There have been very few times in my adult lifetime where I have been caught at a loss for words, but this was definitely one of those occasions.

We spent the rest of the night and into the early hours of Saturday morning sitting on my couch in my apartment, Sandy talking, while I just listened. When it seemed appropriate for me to speak, I asked the usual questions like, "Why do you continue to stay in that situation?" and "Why don't you call the police?". I have since learned that both of these questions were the wrong ones and I will attempt to explain why later.

Sometime in the late afternoon, Sandy made the comment, "I need to go back." My intelligent response was "What? You really want to go back to that scum?". She said, "Yes, maybe if I try not to do things to get him upset, he'll treat me better.".

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