I was born in California and had I grown up there, I'm certain my life would have turned out quite different. For one thing, I'd be a surfer. A water baby at heart, you couldn't keep me away from the Pacific Ocean if I had grown up in the Bay Area where I was born.

Of course, I didn't grow up on the West Coast. I grew up in Appalachia, spending most of my years far away from the ocean, in wild and wonderful Preston County, West Virginia. I spent another portion of those years in Berkeley County, over in the Eastern Panhandle. These three places: San Jose, Independence and Martinsburg, are as different as night and day. And yet they share some similarities, such as domestic violence, child abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction.

These deadly problems are not isolated to these areas; they are social ills that happen the world over. Which means that whatever works for one one problem in one geographical area, should work in another. The presentation of the solution might be different, but the underlying rationale stays the same.

Here's my rationale for wanting to hold workshops to empower women, to help them regain their sense of self-esteem, reclaim their self-confidence and revel in their God-given talents: If women can do this, and I believe they can, because I did, then nothing is beyond their limit. Be it landing a job, learning a foreign language, obtaining a master's degree or running for President.

But before they can do those things, they must first escape the abuse. Whether it's abuse they no longer endure, but which follows them around like their shadow, and which stems from childhood molestation or parental neglect; or whether it's abuse they're still subjected to, that they must face every day when they wake up, and fear every night when they fall asleep.

The men who killed Shannon Stafford, Lori Dodson and Leslie Layman have their own demons to deal with. (At least in the case of Stafford and Layman, since Dodson's killer committed suicide.) And I have some ideas about what can work for them, to help them change. At their very core, you see, they're not that much different from the women they batter: they're dying from emotional starvation and insufficient self-worth, because their own childhoods were marred. Abused boys become abused men; abused girls choose these very men, who then abuse the women as they were themselves abused. It's a vicious cycle.

I was invited to join the ABIP board in March, after speaking about escaping my past abuse at their annual conference. If you listen to these people talk about how they work with batterers, you learn two things pretty quick: 1) The facilitators (composed of a man and a woman, who model a healthy relationship for the men in their group) truly believe these men can change and, 2) They believe that what's needed for an abusive man to change is for him to be shown compassion and empathy—not disdain and disrespect that then fuels his rage.

Another vicious cycle, for how can a woman respect a man who beats her, verbally, emotionally, sexually, or physically? I have some ideas about that, but that's a topic for another day. For now, I want to focus on the women, because there will be cases where her abuser won't get help, won't see the need to change, and who may ultimately kill her. So she has to be prepared, in case this happens and she wants, or needs, to leave.

For the past year, I've been traveling all over the place, as much as I can, to give away books to battered women's shelters, to social service agencies, to hospitals, to schools and to women themselves. (Anyone who believes this is self-serving please think again; there is no way I can possibly recoup all of the time, energy and money I've spent on these excursions. That will take many, many years, and thousands of sales.) Using every spare penny from my unemployment, and then some, I did this because of what readers were telling me.

"I feel like you read my mind . . . like you know what I went through . . . like we could be sisters, our stories are so similar."

"I think this book belongs in every school in the country, and every counselor's office and every shelter."

"This should be mandatory reading for every girl and she should have to read it twice—once when she enters high school and again when she leaves."

That's just a few of the thoughts readers have shared with me. There are many more. But they convinced me that my story of survival and empowerment carries enough weight that other people somehow see themselves in it. They see what is possible, in their own lives, and the lives of their daughters, and sisters, and girlfriends.

That's why I went beyond just writing a book, a story about my journey, and why I created an organization that can help educate people in such a way they can either not become victims in the first place, or they can escape abuse, if they're stuck in such an environment. The Silent No More Foundation will allow me to continue educating people about abuse, and there's no better place to start than at home. In Preston County.

It's exhilarating to see so many people who want to stand up and speak out for the three women whose own voices have been silenced. I invite you to break your own silence by helping me make these workshops a reality. Together, we can make not just a dent in the problem, but a real difference.

Please join me next Thursday, May 24, at 6 p.m. at the Preston County Hospice building, (located on the hill in the old Arthurdale Inn), where Eleanor Roosevelt lived during her own efforts to empower Prestonians. We can limit our discussion to your ideas for the workshops, or we can expand to other ideas about how to do what tomorrow's Charleston Gazette will say is necessary, if we really want to get serious about changing our own little piece of the world.

* * * *
Daleen can be reached at daleen.berry@gmail.com.

Editor's note: Berry has expertise in overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment, and wrote about Postmaster Engle in her book. She's an award-winning author, editor and journalist who speaks at conferences around the country. Berry was one of two keynote speakers addressing a national audience at “The Many Faces of Domestic Violence,” the 18th Annual Conference of the Association of Batterers’ Intervention Programs on March 1, 2012, in Anaheim, Calif. She recently spoke to social workers from all over the country at the “Hope for the Future: Ending Domestic Violence in Families” conference at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her memoir (paperback and as an e-book) can be found at bookstores everywhere, or ordered online. To read the first chapter free, please go to Goodreads. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Berry "an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout."

If you want to read 30 other five-star reviews, check out this title on Amazon. To view the Sister of Silence book trailer, go to her VintageBerryWine Youtube channel. For a mock up of the SOS t-shirt readers are demanding, check out Berry's Facebook page.

Posted by Daleen at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

But Will She Be His Last?
The years have been hard on Dennis Ervin. But they’ve been even harder on the women who have loved him.

Denny and I are the same age, we attended three years together at our alma mater, West Preston High School, and he once dated one of my closest friends. If you look at his picture in the 1980 Panther Tracks yearbook, you’ll see a smallish looking guy with big, dark eyes and a shag haircut like the one worn by teen heartthrob Keith Cassidy. Back then Ervin was goofy but seemed a nice enough guy. Not a tough guy. Then again, I never dated him.

His police mug shot looks much different: older, harder and with a complexion that appears ravaged from booze and drugs. Ervin was arrested and charged with killing Leslie (Engle) Layman, who died from gunshot wounds near Independence, W.Va., last Tuesday, May 8. She was the third Preston County woman to die from a bullet during the last three weeks, thanks to another type of war that is carried on silently in homes all over the world. It's a domestic war, and far more deadly than many other battles have been.

I knew Leslie when she was a child. She was 10 years younger than me. I know her parents, but haven’t seen them for years. I probably knew her grandparents best (since Jim Engle was the postmaster in our tiny town, and once rendered us great aid) and even her great-grandfather. (He was the storekeeper whose store I skipped into each day after school, while still a child myself.)

When you lose touch with people you once knew, it can be hard to understand how their lives can come so unraveled. Yet this is what I’ve pieced together, after talking to three women who knew Ervin far better than I did.

He liked to drink, so heavily the state took his driver’s license after several DUI’s and placed him on home confinement for possession of marijuana. There’s a rumor, which is all I’ve heard it to be thus far—although his mug shot seems to confirm it—that he was into far more potent drugs, maybe even bath salts.

Local media reports indicate Ervin and Layman were exes. Being anyone’s ex doesn’t seem to be something Ervin handles very well. Take Nancy, for instance, who was friends with Layman. Her name has been changed at her request, but he mishandled her repeatedly during their time together.

“Four or five years ago, before (the) bath salts, he had pulled guns on her, dumped gas on her and threatened to light a match,” her friend, Donna Livengood, said.

Nancy often called Livengood when Ervin battered her, but one night her friend was too far away to help. She did the only thing she could think to do.

“I called her parents and told them what was going on and that she needed out of there,” Livengood said. “She stayed mad at me for awhile until she got the common sense to get out of there. Thank God she did.”

Nancy told me she moved in with Ervin after meeting him in a bar one night. Everything was fine for the first six months. Then he changed.

“He got very jealous. Very controlling. He was even jealous of my mom, dad and son,” Nancy said.

“The first time he punched me because we ran into an old friend of mine at the bar. We were all playing pool (and) he was acting fine. Then when we left, we went to Bamco were he used to work. We went there around midnight so he could work on a car,” Nancy said. “He ended up chasing me around the garage and threw a very big wrench and hit me in the back of the head. I had a huge bump (there).”

Nancy said she told Ervin, “I can’t believe you did that.”

He then ordered her not to call the police, since he was wearing a leg bracelet for home confinement. “Why did you hit me with that? Why did you do that?” she asked, trying to talk him down from his anger, and buy herself some time to think.

Nancy left Ervin, but went back repeatedly. She never called the police, never sought medical treatment for her injuries, and never filed paperwork for a protective order to keep Ervin away. “I’ve not done that much in my life,” Nancy said.

Now she wishes she would have.

Nancy misses her friend Leslie, and says “it’s been hard the last few days. I have a lot of guilt.” She also has “unbelievable stories (to tell). I think Leslie would be happy for me to tell you about what an ass he is.”

Another woman, another friend of Leslie’s, feels the same way. Helen, whose name has also been changed, was in college pursuing a law degree when she moved in with Ervin during her divorce proceedings. They had been friends for years, and Ervin—who was 15 years her senior—was no more to her than “a big brother who protected me and took care of me.”

Helen just needed a place to stay until her divorce was final. She got much more.

“I’d always heard about his violent past but never believed it because I’d never seen it,” Helen said. “Anytime him and I would go out anywhere, anybody who knew him would say “Oh my God, watch him. He’s beat up every girlfriend he’s ever had.”

But she wasn’t his girlfriend, and Helen didn’t believe the rumors could be true.

Ervin, however, didn’t see it that way. Maybe that’s because even though she was just staying there temporarily, they did have sex once. It was something that occasionally had happened in the past, but she never felt like they were a couple.

So one night after he had too much to drink, Ervin began hitting her with accusations, saying she was “(having sex) with other men and coming back and sleeping in his house,” Helen said.

It wasn’t true, and she didn’t know where the false charges had come from. But by then, she knew something was wrong. “He would get this look in his face like you could see the devil. You knew that you were in trouble,” Helen said.

She described how Ervin picked up the steel baseball bat he always kept at his side, and began threatening to hit her with it.

“If you’re going to do it, you’re going to look me in the face and do it. I’m not afraid of you but I’m not gonna’ turn my back and let you do it to me then,” Helen said she told him.

That’s when Ervin made good on his threat. He struck Helen “several times across the back. Then he kicked me while I was on the ground.”

Like Nancy, Helen didn’t seek medical treatment or call the police. Since she worked in the law enforcement field herself, she felt like it would have been too embarrassing. “I felt like it was dumb on my part,” Helen said.

Instead, she simply left.

“I managed to crawl out of the house and called my soon-to-be ex-husband,” she said. “I honestly can’t remember how many times he hit me.”

Ervin hit her so many times she couldn’t take off her own shirt later that night, and today has a herniated disc in that same area of her back, which causes her so much pain it interferes with her daily duties at home. At the time, she merely told friends she fell down the steps while carrying an armful of firewood.

The morning after the assault, Ervin, who begged her to return, kept apologizing via text messages. She refused to go back.

But then she realized all her belongings—her clothing, laptop, college textbooks, even kitchen appliances—were still there. So she decided to return for her things. “He told me before about changing the locks on people . . . I knew how he was. Knew if I didn’t go back, I’d never get (them),” she said. Helen believed he would destroy the belongings if she left them there.

And she “fully intended to leave” Ervin, after grabbing her belongings that day. She even had a plan of escape.

But she didn’t want to go stay with family members who lived nearby, for fear of endangering them. So she decided to stick around, play it cool, and during the evenings while Ervin was away at work, she would slowly cart off her belongings, a few at a time, so he wouldn’t notice. All “without causing any problems.” She hoped.

Before she could sneak all her things out, though, Ervin was drinking heavily and blaring the stereo late one night. She had to be up early for work the next morning, and knew not to make a fuss. So Helen offered to go sleep on her mom’s couch. She began gathering up her laptop and other items she needed and told him she would see him the next day. But Ervin refused to let her leave with anything.

“He would not let me have it so I left without it, and crashed on my mom’s couch,” Helen said. Her sister woke her up later that night, which is when Helen learned that Ervin had stolen her car.

That did prompt a call to the police. Helen said that local law enforcement was very familiar with Ervin, so a state trooper met her at Ervin’s house. Since Ervin had disabled the vehicle, a towing company was called. While Helen and the trooper stood outside in the road, waiting for the car to be loaded, Ervin was “standing in his doorway yelling profanities and threats.”

Finally, the trooper told her, "‘You leave, we’ll tow your car. Call us in the morning. You need to get a protective order,’” Helen said.

She almost didn’t get the chance. Before morning arrived, Ervin called a mutual friend of theirs, telling the friend to send police out to get him, because he was going to hunt Helen down and kill her.

Authorities were notified and police picked up Helen and took her to file for the protective order—which was granted. It ordered Ervin to stay away for 18 months.

But even after all of that, Helen didn’t press criminal charges. Neither did anyone in law enforcement who was familiar with Ervin’s repeat criminal behavior.

“I kicked myself every day afterwards for not (pressing charges),” Helen said. When asked why she didn’t, Helen gives the same answer that many abused woman have given in the past.

“I just wanted to be done with him. I wanted to go about my life. I thought, I’m walking away and it’s a domestic assault charge,” Helen said. “He’ll get six months probation and a slap on the wrist and then (I’ll have to) worry about him being ticked off at me and coming after me again.”

Now, she would do things differently. Which is what she wants to tell other women. “Report it. It doesn’t matter what it is. Get out. Stay away. There’s shelters . . . there are people to help you. You don’t have to stay in that situation,” she said.

Many women who end up being battered or even killed say they never saw the warning signs that experts say is a good predictor of abusive behavior.

“I could tell almost immediately after staying with him that he was very controlling. My family was never allowed around. If the phone would ring he’d get angry. Just little things like that,” Helen said, telling a story almost identical to that of Nancy.

Many other women see the signs, but ignore them. That’s what Helen did. “Still, I never saw anything major to throw too much of a reg flag,” she said.

And Ervin did destroy Helen’s laptop and a cell phone she had bought him. “I never was able to go back and get my stuff. He was told to pack it up and take to his attorney’s office and I would get it. He brought my clothes but that was it. I never got anything else,” she said.

Now, five days after Layman’s death, Helen couldn't care less about that.

“It’s just stuff. I’m alive, thank God. Other people suffered way worse than I did,” she said.

* * * *
Daleen can be reached at daleen.berry@gmail.com.

Editor's note: Berry has expertise in overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment, and wrote about Postmaster Engle in her book. She's an award-winning author, editor and journalist who speaks at conferences around the country. Berry was one of two keynote speakers addressing a national audience at “The Many Faces of Domestic Violence,” the 18th Annual Conference of the Association of Batterers’ Intervention Programs on March 1, 2012, in Anaheim, Calif. She recently spoke to social workers from all over the country at the “Hope for the Future: Ending Domestic Violence in Families” conference at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her memoir (paperback and as an e-book) can be found at bookstores everywhere, or ordered online. To read the first chapter free, please go to Goodreads. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Berry "an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout."

If you want to read 30 other five-star reviews, check out this title on Amazon. To view the Sister of Silence book trailer, go to her VintageBerryWine Youtube channel. For a mock up of the SOS t-shirt readers are demanding, check out Berry's Facebook page.

Posted by Daleen at 05:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It takes a lot to make a grown man cry. Especially in Preston County, where they just don’t. Centuries of struggle and tribulation have rendered these macho Mountaineers strong and stoic, when it comes to showing such emotion.

But on Friday, April 27, as the lid on Shannon Stafford’s white casket closed with a permanence no one in the funeral home was prepared for, grown men in Preston County wiped tears from their eyes and wept like little old ladies.

It seems particularly poignant that as a foster child who was removed from her biological home, Shannon never fell through the figurative cracks in what many people in this country call a broken system, one that often does more harm than good.

Shannon was different than so many other foster children who do fall through, often ending up crippled for life. So just how is it, after successfully reaching adulthood and becoming a mother herself, she died fighting for her own daughter, Faith?

Because that’s what happened: Shannon died trying to stop her only child from suffering the same abuse that led Shannon and five of her siblings to be removed from their biological home.

Fortunately, Shannon didn’t just survive in foster care with George and Gladys Adkins in Kingwood. She thrived. Ask anyone who knew her. Like, Gwenda Adkins. Gwen met Shannon when she was seven. Shannon, like their other foster children, called them “Papaw,” and “Mamaw,” and would later introduce them to people as her parents.

“Shannon was easy-going and sweet and unassuming,” Gwen said. Even after leaving her foster family and going to college, she would always call and check on them, or return home to visit and help them.

Shannon was blessed to have been placed with the Adkins family, who said they had more than 30 children come through their doors during the 23 years they were foster parents. She was blessed because the Adkins are no normal foster parents: each child was special to the couple.

“But there was something extra special about Shannon,” her foster brother, Barry Adkins, said during Shannon’s funeral service. While there, Shannon became a leader of sort in his parents’ home, because she loved people, and people wanted to be near her.

“And how she loved children. There was something special about this girl, how . . . children were drawn to her. She just seemed like a magnet to children and you could tell how much she loved children, how much she loved Faith,” Adkins said.

Relating how, following her death, someone asked him to describe Shannon’s qualities, Adkins said he couldn’t.

“There’s not enough good words in the dictionary to describe Shannon . . . how caring she was, how compassionate, how kind, how tender, how forgiving,” Adkins told the group who had gathered to tell Shannon goodbye.

Crystal Martin is Shannon’s biological sister, and four years her senior. Martin tried to convey a sense of who Shannon was, as a person. After acknowledging that she herself isn’t a morning person, she said Shannon would often call and wake her up, only to find Martin in a bad mood.

Sounding very upbeat and happy, Shannon would ask, “‘What’re you doing?’ She’s giddy at all times,” Martin said. Or she would say, in a singsong voice, “Good morning Buttercup, what are you doing?”

Shan, as Martin called her, “was really shy until you got to know her.” But because she was so sweet, “you cannot be mean to her. You can’t,” Martin said.

“No matter what kind of day it was, she was cheerful,” Martin added. “I think of her every second.”

It seems like everyone who knew Shannon felt likewise, and her foster family obviously adored her. “she really was like my sister, the only sister I had,” Tyra Nester said. The two girls spent five years together in the Adkins home, so Nester got to know Shannon during her teens, from age 14 to 19.

“Shannon never fought with anybody. Not at all. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body,” Nester said. “If she was upset with somebody, the most she would ever do was grunt.”

Perhaps that unwillingness to argue with loved ones was what caused Adkins to say that “loving” is the best word to describe Shannon.

Mary Newton agrees. “She taught us how to love. How to forgive people. She just was full of love. She taught me more about love in eight months than I knew in 55 years,” Newton said.

Newton is Nick Helms’ mother, and the last person Shannon spoke to before she died. The two women were on their cell phones talking when Shannon was shot.

“She taught us how to forgive . . . she just taught me that life’s too short. Life’s too short,” Newton said. “Not that you can’t get mad. You can get mad, but God wants you to forgive.”

Newton also spoke about Shannon’s magnetic personality. “She was so great with kids. She loved kids, loved them. She was so good with my granddaughter. (Lakin) just loves her.”

Tabitha Jeffries said Shannon was better with her own children than she is herself. Jeffries was Shannon’s best friend during their childhood years after Shannon moved into the Adkins’ home, next door to Jeffries.

“She just had a way with kids. She was good with them. She has more patience than me,” Jeffries said, slipping into present tense as though the shock of Shannon’s death still hasn’t sunk in.

Whenever Martin would tease her own children, Shannon would always come to their rescue. “She would say, ‘Don’t do that,’ and then add, ‘Aunt Shannon will save you,’” Martin said.

“She was so good with my kids and they would rather go to her than to me,” Martin added.

During her early years in foster care, Jeffries said Shannon was “fun, full of energy, hyper.” They went to church, played basketball together and went roller skating at the civic center or swimming in the city pool.

“If she wasn’t at my house, I was at her house and if we weren’t at each other’s houses, that means one of us was grounded,” Jeffries said.

When asked if she ever saw Shannon be mean to anyone, Jeffries almost takes affront to the question—and then says the same thing so many other people have said about Shannon.

“She didn’t have a mean bone in her body,” Jeffries said. “She liked to watch horror movies, and the worst thing she ever did to me was stand in the laundry room and scare me . . . after we watched a scary movie.”

During high school, Shannon was the type of person who would have been nice to you no matter who you were. “Shannon was never that type of person, that would hurt somebody else,” Courtney Austin, a former classmate, said.

It seems hard to believe someone so good could die so young, without realizing her dream of becoming an early childhood teacher. That’s because Shannon was very close to obtaining her undergraduate degree, where “her love would be bestowed on others deeply and often,” Gwen said.

Describing the beautiful blonde mother of one as “a sweet soul (who) chose to see the good in everyone she met,” Gwen wrote a tribute that was read at the funeral. In it, she said “Shannon was like a flawless diamond, sparking with a million lights in a dark world. We are the fortunate ones to have loved her and to have had her love in return.”

During the past several months, Shannon faced a particularly challenging divorce and custody battle. But even that couldn’t make her be mean to Faith’s father.

“She didn’t have a mean bone in her body . . . Even after all the terrible things they did to her and said about her, she wouldn’t say one negative thing,” Helms, who was Shannon’s boyfriend, said. “I told her I just couldn’t believe that she would let stuff roll off her back and just keep on going. She would say it was her faith, ‘it’s not me.’”

Helms said it was heartwarming to see Shannon interact with his young niece, Lakin. “She would see Shannon come in and run and give her a hug,” he added.

Adkins agreed Shannon’s faith was her stronghold. “Hers was a life of understanding . . . of tenderness. I don’t know that I’ve ever met . . . someone more forgiving than Shannon Stafford. She didn’t have a vengeful bone in her body. If somebody did her wrong, she’d just smile and come back again,” Adkins said.

Gwen, who accompanied Shannon every week during supervised visits with Faith, took that a step further. “She bent over backward being civil to people who don’t know the meaning of the word,” Gwen said.

“Faith was her life,” Adkins said.

“She loved that little girl more than her own life,” Helms said.

* * * *
Daleen can be reached at daleen.berry@gmail.com.

Editor's note: Berry has expertise in overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment, and can be pretty funny when she wants. She's an award-winning author, editor and journalist who speaks at conferences around the country. Berry was one of two keynote speakers addressing a national audience at “The Many Faces of Domestic Violence,” the 18th Annual Conference of the Association of Batterers’ Intervention Programs on March 1, 2012, in Anaheim, Calif. She recently spoke to social workers from all over the country at the “Hope for the Future: Ending Domestic Violence in Families” conference at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her memoir (paperback and as an e-book) can be found at bookstores everywhere, or ordered online. To read the first chapter free, please go to Goodreads. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Berry "an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout."

If you want to read 30 other five-star reviews, check out this title on Amazon. To view the Sister of Silence book trailer, go to her VintageBerryWine Youtube channel. For a mock up of the SOS t-shirt readers are demanding, check out Berry's Facebook page.

Posted by Daleen at 04:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Court documents prove Nathan Mitchell has history of abuse;
Facebook posts raise other questions

Five years of fear forced 25-year-old Kristin Thompson to keep mum about her own abuse. While she remains terrified of her former abuser, she says she must speak up, because she's afraid that silence may have cost Shannon Stafford her life.

After her good friend was brutally gunned down in public during a domestic-related shooting April 21, Kristin broke her silence. She formed a Facebook group called "Justice For Shannon Stafford" that now has more than 2,000 members.

At the center of the group's concern is Stafford's two-year-old daughter, Faith Mitchell. The child was at the Wal-Mart parking lot crime scene in Morgantown, W.Va. Nathan Mitchell took his daughter there to meet her mother, where she was shot and killed by her father-in-law before the custodial exchange could occur.

Police say Larry Mitchell, 54, opened fire on Stafford, 29, as she sat waiting for word of Faith's arrival. The Mitchell men took separate cars to the Wal-Mart, something the police are looking into. While the investigation continues, Faith remains in her father's custody.

Kristin, who lives just five miles from the Mitchell's Harrison County home, spoke about Nathan's abuse when she attended Stafford's funeral viewing last week. "I want her to get justice. And I want that baby—" Kristin breaks off. "I don't know how he treats that baby but I'm afraid," she said, crying. "I don't want them to raise her, because look how Nathan turned out."

Several witnesses have come forward, breaking their own silence to say that how Nathan turned out is abusive. One of those men is Kristin's father, Todd Thompson, who said his daughter barely escaped alive in 2007 from a three-year relationship with Nathan. Thompson also said the Mitchell family—or rather, Nathan and his mother, Sandra—made his daughter's life “a living hell."

"She told us horror stories about it. He'd be driving down the road and she'd changed the radio station and he would start choking her," Kristin's father said.

Thompson related an incident that occurred after Kristin invited friends to go swimming. "He drug her by the hair of the head and tried to stick her head in the toilet (because he didn’t want the friends at his home)," Thompson said Kristin told him.

That's something Shannon could relate to. "She sent me a message on MySpace . . . asking me if he had ever been abusive . . . because she was in the pool with him and was joking around splashing him and he got mad and grabbed her by the neck."

At the time, Kristin believed it was a trap set by Nathan, who continued to harass and stalk her after they broke up. He did this even after the courts ordered him to stop.

"I didn't message her back because they (Sandra and Nathan) were constantly trying to slander me and get me in trouble," Kristin said. "Now I feel like if I would have told her 'yes,' then she would have left and she could still be here. I was just scared."

As she talks about Stafford, the tears start falling. "I hate myself for this now," Kristin said.

The Thompsons aren't the only ones talking. Two former friends who insisted on anonymity, citing fear of retaliation, related other frightening occasions spent in Nathan's company. The first friend said he interceded once after Nathan threw a girl on the ground and began choking her. "I had to forcefully remove him from her and make him leave," he said.

The second friend called Nathan "very unstable," and shared a sobering story involving one of Nathan's earlier girlfriends. "He was drunk . . . and said, 'I want to find that bitch and I'm going to kill her,'" the friend said.

Thompson believes his daughter has repressed the memories of much of Nathan’s abuse. But what she can't remember, her father does and together, their words paint a very dangerous picture for anyone of the opposite sex living with the younger Mitchell.

According to Harrison County court documents, Kristin ended their relationship after Nathan climbed through her bedroom window and began choking her about 1:30 a.m. Sept. 1, 2007. "I couldn't breathe while he was choking me but he would let go before (I passed out) . . . then he would stop and ask me why I had to be this way . . . like I was making him do it," she said.

Pictures taken the following morning show a ring of bruises around her neck. And while she was initially terrified of filing a police report, her father helped her do so the next day. Those photos and Kristin's testimony led Harrison County Magistrate Keith Marple to grant her a six-month protective order.

"I knew if I pressed charges, it would make him mad. I didn't want (that). I just wanted him to leave me alone," Kristin said.

But Mitchell didn't leave her alone: after Marple granted the final protective order, Mitchell publicly posted his wrath on his MySpace page.

"You think it is over but it's NOT!!!!!!!" The Sept. 17, 2007 page also reads: "I just got out of a long relationship . . . I would like to meet a girl that (doesn't) lie, cheat and make me feel like shit . . ."

Again taking to social media after Stafford's death, Nathan posted something that appears ominously connected to this case. On April 23, according to his Facebook page, he was listening to the song "You Deserve It," by an artist called Future, which has outraged many people. The lyrics include these lines: "Ain't asked for this, I worked for this. I was in the dungeon, that place's a sin . . . I'm better than you and I know it. I will show it."

Nathan appealed the 2007 Harrison County decision, Thompson said, taking the case to circuit court. Official documents show he lost the appeal.

Nor did the protective order keep Nathan from harassing or stalking Kristin. Once, she had her parents come and get her, after she discovered Nathan, Sandra, and a Mitchell family friend were outside a restaurant taking photos of her. Kristin says that was just another attempt by Sandra to control her.

"She was scared to death," her father said.

He also remembers how Kristin's personality changed when she was dating Nathan.

"She was drawing away from us. Our relationship was deteriorating. They wanted her away from us. They wanted her to themselves," Thompson said, adding that Sandra tried to convince Kristin she could live with them.

That control is what has Kristin frightened for Faith. "If you loved your baby, you wouldn't take her mother from her. Everybody needs their mom," she said.

Because of Faith, she's fighting to overcome her fear, as a growing group of West Virginia residents rally behind her. "I've lived in fear of that family for five years but this has gone too far. I'm not going to sit back and watch them get away with this," Kristin said.

No one responded to phone calls about this story made to the Mitchell home, to Nathan's cell phone, or to an email sent to Nathan at his Facebook page. A supervisor at the Harrison County CPS did not return a call about the story. All attorneys involved in the case declined to comment.

Editor's note: Daleen can be reached at daleen.berry@gmail.com.

Berry has expertise in overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment, and can be pretty funny when she wants. She's an award-winning author, editor and journalist who speaks at conferences around the country. Berry was one of two keynote speakers addressing a national audience at “The Many Faces of Domestic Violence,” the 18th Annual Conference of the Association of Batterers’ Intervention Programs on March 1, 2012, in Anaheim, Calif. She recently spoke to social workers from all over the country at the “Hope for the Future: Ending Domestic Violence in Families” conference at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her memoir (paperback and as an e-book) can be found at bookstores everywhere, or ordered online. To read the first chapter free, please go to Goodreads. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Berry "an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout."

If you want to read 30 other five-star reviews, check out this title on Amazon. To view the Sister of Silence book trailer, go to her VintageBerryWine Youtube channel. For a mock up of the SOS t-shirt readers are demanding, check out Berry's Facebook page.

Posted by Daleen at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Shannon Stafford was holding a cherished love letter from her would-be fiancé when she was buried inside a white casket last Friday. Stafford was executed just six days earlier outside a Morgantown, W.Va., Wal-Mart, while her two-year-old daughter Faith was several yards away at the time. Police later allowed the child to go home with the man who threatened to kill Stafford, and that's where Faith remains today, as a quickly growing group of vocal Facebook supporters claim she's in danger.

Saturdays were undoubtedly Stafford's favorite day of the week, since the 29-year-old mother was permitted to visit Faith then. Last Saturday was the first time in almost a year that she would have had Faith for more than four hours once a week. Harrison County Family Judge Cornelia Reep had just granted Stafford an overnight visit with the toddler. Friends and family say Stafford was ecstatic but anxious, as she sat in a parked truck awaiting word about Faith's arrival. Stafford was supposed to get Faith from her estranged husband Nathan Mitchell, who was meeting her there.

Stafford's would-be-fiancé said he became worried when Nathan told Stafford to come alone and park in a specific location in the parking lot, but she insisted she had to do what Nathan asked.

"He was adamant about her being alone and walking over to his vehicle to get Faith . . . but she did it anyways, because she didn't want to do anything that would cause her problems," Nick Helms said. So he went inside Wal-Mart, while Stafford waited alone.

In preparation for the toddler's first visit to their Bruceton Mills home, Helms helped Stafford with the nursery. Pictures posted on Stafford's Facebook page show the bright, cheery room was decorated by people who lovingly paid attention to every detail, down to the ties that held back the bedroom window curtains.

But instead of having a joyous reunion after a year apart, 29-year-old Stafford was gunned down at the giant retailer. Police have charged her estranged father-in-law, 54-year-old Larry Mitchell, with the murder. Eyewitnesses say he began walking toward Helms' truck, firing rounds as he did so and stopping only to reload his weapon. Even as Stafford tried to get out of the vehicle, they said, he continued shooting until she laid there, unmoving, on the ground.

Family members say she was dead within 10 seconds.

Mitchell has since been arrested, is facing a murder charge, and sits in the Doddridge Regional Jail. Monongalia County Circuit Judge Phillip Gaujot denied Mitchell bail earlier today.

Although an older Mitchell fired the fatal shots, Stafford warned Helms it was the younger Mitchell—Larry's son, Nathan—who might kill her. (The two men took separate vehicles to the parking lot. After interviewing Nathan, police initially said they believed Larry acted alone.)

"He told her once he would kill her and put her out back and nobody would ever know she was there, or care," Helms said. Helms planned to propose to Stafford once her divorce was final.

"She told me about mental, verbal abuse," Helms said. "She said he threw her down on the bed (but) never got too much into that. She just didn't want to talk about it."

According to Helms' mother, Mary Newton, who worked with Stafford, Nathan was so controlling the young mother had to sneak calls to her friends while at work and wasn't allowed to visit her family while under his thumb. Other than one visit just after the toddler's birth, Stafford's relatives say they never saw Faith, because Stafford was not allowed to take the child for family visits.

It was that controlling environment that finally caused Stafford to flee the Shinnston home she and Nathan shared with his parents last year, after Nathan refused to go for marital counseling with her. She also begged him to move out, so they could have a place of their own for Faith, friends said.

So she left sometime in late spring 2010, and tried to take Faith with her. But the family refused to let the baby go. Instead, Nathan and his mother physically removed Stafford from the home, Helms said. Stafford did the only thing she could: she called the local police.

Shinnston Police Chief Michael Secreto said an officer went to the Mitchell home and he vaguely remembers hearing about the incident. "But there was nothing we could do. If there's no (custodial court order) we refer the parent to go get an order from the magistrate," Secreto said.

So Stafford did what she was told. She went to court, and then she tried to negotiate the challenging legal system without an attorney. Helms said she couldn't afford one, not even when the Mitchell family claimed she was a drug user who abused her baby—an allegation Stafford's family and almost everyone who knew her flatly disputes, in dozens of Facebook posts.

Nonetheless, Stafford found herself facing a family judge who based her decision on testimony given by the Mitchells and erred on the side of caution, in initially only permitting supervised visitation between mother and daughter. Child Protective Services (CPS) also got involved.

Then Stafford got a break. That's because just two months ago, Helms, whose father Terry died in the Jan. 1, 2006 Sago mine explosion, sold his father's house. Helms used the money to hire Stafford an attorney.

She had been cleared of all child abuse allegations brought up by the Mitchells.

“There never was an open case, because CPS never found anything,” Tabitha Jeffries said. Jeffries and Stafford were best friends throughout childhood. They grew up next door to each other in Kingwood.

Jeffries, a nurse, said she spoke to Stafford after an April 18 court hearing, when Reep ruled Stafford could have overnight visits with Faith, as well as shared custody with Nathan Mitchell. But three days later, Stafford was murdered.

Reep was to issue her final custody decree on April 27, the day Stafford was buried. According to The Dominion Post, the case has since been dismissed.

Everyone close to the case says the Mitchell family—who have had custody of Faith all this time—feared they were losing control of Stafford and her daughter. That's what friends of the slain mother are posting on Facebook.

"If you would have asked me on April 20, I would have said (Larry) was a good guy, but he was controlled by Sandra (his wife) and Nathan," Kristen Thompson, a friend of Staffords, said during an interview at the funeral home. "(Larry) was in the background . . . he'd come home, eat dinner, and go into his bedroom. He was already in prison, pretty much, living there."

Kristen said her gut tells her "Larry didn't act alone." That wouldn't surprise Helms' mother, Mary Newton, who was worried about Stafford's safety.

Newton said the Mitchells couldn't be trusted. "Shannon said, 'Well Nathan won't do anything to me when he has the baby around.'"

But Newton persisted. "I asked about his dad and Shannon said, 'Larry wouldn't do anything like that. He's not that kind of person.'"

Stafford's estranged mother-in-law was another matter, however. "She knew Sandra was. She was afraid of Sandra," Newton said.

No one responded to phone calls about this story made to the Mitchell home, to Nathan's cell phone, or to an email sent to Nathan at his Facebook page. Stafford's attorney, John Danford, said he couldn't comment on the case. Judy Sawyer, who has been appointed Faith's guardian ad litem, said likewise. A call to the Harrison County CPS office was not returned.

Morgantown Police Chief Ed Preston said every detective in his department is working on the case, and all evidence will be handed over to Monongalia County Prosecutor Marcia Ashdown once the investigation is complete.

Editor's note: You can reach Daleen at daleen.berry@gmail.com.

Daleen Berry has expertise in overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment. She's an award-winning author, editor and journalist who speaks at conferences around the country. Berry was one of two keynote speakers addressing a national audience at “The Many Faces of Domestic Violence,” the 18th Annual Conference of the Association of Batterers’ Intervention Programs on March 1, 2012, in Anaheim, Calif. She recently spoke to social workers from all over the country at the “Hope for the Future: Ending Domestic Violence in Families” conference at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her memoir (paperback and as an e-book) can be found at bookstores everywhere, or ordered online. To read the first chapter free, please go to Goodreads. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Berry "an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout."

If you want to read 30 other five-star reviews, check out this title on Amazon. To view the Sister of Silence book trailer, go to her VintageBerryWine Youtube channel. For a mock up of the SOS t-shirt readers are demanding, check out Berry's Facebook page.

Posted by Daleen at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just three miles from where Shannon Stafford rested in her white casket Friday morning, there’s a huge billboard you can’t miss, just as you leave Masontown, W.Va. It urges Prestonians to help prevent child abuse, saying: “It’s your turn to make a difference.” Everyone who drives by is encouraged to “reach out” and “speak up.”

That’s what the people of Preston County (along with a handful of others in Harrison, Marion and Mon counties) are trying to do: stop a child from being abused. The problem is, though, the wheels of justice move ever so slowly. And it has only been a week since Shannon was gunned down in a Walmart parking lot.

But that’s yet one more week Faith—the two-year-old child at the center of the custody battle that ensued between Shannon and her estranged husband, Nathan Mitchell—spent in a home many people are calling toxic.

Given that Shannon’s boyfriend, Nick Helms, has been telling anyone who will listen that Faith was not far from Shannon’s body after she was killed, people are justifiably upset. "He was parading her back and forth, not right up beside her but probably 10-15 yards away," Helms said.

Authorities have said they have no proof the toddler was abused, when the proof has been staring them in the face for the last seven days: Shannon’s estranged father-in-law, Larry Mitchell, murdered Shannon in front of her daughter.

By “in front of,” I mean she was—we hope and pray and, at the very least—in her father’s truck, a few spaces away from where Shannon was parked. (And at the very worst, it’s possible 28-year-old Nathan Mitchell intentionally took the little girl out of his truck for the purpose of showing her the scene, making the abuse even greater.)

When I say abuse, I’m speaking about the abuse the elder Mitchell perpetuated against Shannon—because experts know that any violence directed at a parent also damages the child. In fact, it’s been said that one of the most important things you can do for your child, is to love your spouse.

Experts aren’t the only ones who know this, which is why laws based on this premise are now in place all over the country.

We don’t know that Faith actually saw her grandfather kill her mother, but eyewitnesses say Nathan stood nearby laughing afterward, his toddler in tow. Nor do we know she even saw her mother’s body or, at age two, whether she could comprehend what she was seeing.

But the study of child development has come a very long way, and considering that they now know an unborn fetus is dramatically affected by everything that happens to and around the mother, why would a two-year-old not be affected by the stress level of such a crime scene, at the very least?

If, though, Nathan did place his daughter in a position so she would see her mother, or hear comments about her in the ensuing chaos of the shooting, he is guilty of intentionally abusing Faith. I’m not a mind reader, so I certainly don’t know. And I wasn’t at the scene. But I’ve interviewed enough people in the last week that it sounds in keeping with his abusive character.

Helms said he doesn’t know, either. But in his mind—and many other people’s—the child should not have been near the crime scene. That she was, constitutes abuse—in their minds, and in my own.

Friday at Shannon’s funeral, one woman who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “If she was shown her mother’s dead body by her laughing father, that’s abuse.”

Which is why, regardless of what the police did or did not do at the crime scene—by covering Shannon’s body with a plastic tarp and during their own interrogation of Nathan—I believe the authorities should have erred on the side of caution, and taken Faith from him immediately.

I say this because that’s what the state law demands. There, under the procedural rules for abuse and neglect hearings (W.Va. Code § 49-1-3), an abused child is defined as one “whose health or welfare is harmed or threatened by . . . domestic violence.” While child abuse and neglect is defined as “physical injury, mental or emotional injury,” among other things.

After attending Shannon’s funeral Friday, I sat down with Morgantown Police Chief Ed Preston. Quite a stickler for rules, Preston said his department follows those laid out by the Governor’s Committee on Crime, Delinquency and Correction, when it comes to handling domestic violence incidents such as this one. I haven’t had time to do more than briefly review this updated version, but it’s quite comprehensive and Chief Preston says his department follows it to the letter. Check it out for yourself and let me know.

That being said, from professional and personal experience, I do know any family member who believes a child’s health and welfare are in danger can file a motion with family court, requesting an emergency hearing be held about the perceived dangers. Free templates can be found online, if a family member wants to go “pro se,” instead of hiring an attorney.

Other than addressing general procedural issues involved in criminal cases like this one, the MPD is not talking.

But that hasn't stopped the public from doing so. And in the court of public opinion, something is very wrong with this picture. Nearly 1,500 people have joined Harrison County resident Kristin Thompson’s "Justice for Shannon Stafford" Facebook page. Kristin, who became good friends with Shannon after she left Nathan, set up the page for the murdered mother, as a way of not having been able to do more for her friend before she died.

Many of the posts indicate more is involved than an ugly custody battle. The more I'm speaking of is Faith, the toddler who Shannon lived, breathed and, ultimately, died for.

When asked if Faith saw her mother laying there, Helms said there was no way the child could have done otherwise.

Helms and Shannon shared a home, after she was forced her in-laws’ home, which she shared with her estranged husband. Helms was inside the store when he saw people scrambling, and heard news of a shooting. He knew instantly Shannon was the victim. That's because she had forewarned him.

"Shannon made me promise if anything ever happened to her that I would fight for her and Faith," Helms told WDTV, a local television station.

****

In spite of everything she endured, Shannon Stafford never lost faith. And yet she did. She lost custody of her daughter, Faith, as a battle waged within the family court system became as contentious and deadly as the one Shannon had been fighting outside the courthouse steps, with her estranged husband and his parents.

For the last few months, Shannon had chronic stomach pain, brought on from the stress of having her daughter taken from her, she underwent a thyroidectomy, and she suffered a miscarriage.

These are things you haven’t seen in any newspaper article, but they are just as important as all of the other facts about this case, because they speak to what her psyche was facing, as she quietly waged her own war against the Mitchell family.

My daughter Courtney went to school with Shannon, and she sent me screenshots of Shannon's Facebook page, which showed the young mother's concern over the then-pending surgery, her happiness over becoming a mother again (prior to the miscarriage), and posts in which Shannon referred to life being harder than usual.

Shannon’s FB posts were not adversarial toward the Mitchell family, Courtney said, but “she was always writing how she needed to be strong.”

Shannon’s family and closest friends knew the details of her ordeal, but other people might not have. For instance, Courtney said Shannon posted once that Mitchell “wouldn’t let her take Faith when she left.”

Shannon never spoke about the abuse in public—and rarely discussed it in private. “She didn’t post that he was abusive. But there were some issues there, you could read between the lines and know there were problems there. She didn’t badmouth him,” Courtney told me.

Nor did Shannon speak badly about her estranged mother-in-law, Sandra, with whom she worked at Madonna Day Care in Shinnston—before she lost her job there when she left Nathan. And yet, parents who take their children to the daycare center have said they and their children were all told Shannon ran off.

Posts on the 'Justice for Shannon Stafford' FB page during the last week include those from parents who say they simply didn't believe that when Sandra told them, and their children, that. Over and over—online and in person—people keep saying that Shannon loved children, that she was someone children were drawn to, like a magnet, and that she would not abandon any child in her care.

None of these things, though, caused Shannon to utter a single complaint. That’s because, according to the people who have known both Shannon and the Mitchell family for years, Shannon was like a quiet little lamb.

“Shannon was very kind-hearted and careful not to speak ill of people,” one family member told me recently. Looking back, people close to her said they can now see that “Shannon avoided confrontation with (the Mitchells) at every step, which makes us think that she knew they were capable of generating distress.”

****

The Mitchell family allegedly set out to destroy Shannon’s good name and take her child. Using the court system as a weapon, it appears they were successful for nearly a year, as they kept Shannon from all but a few hours of weekly access to Faith.

But the tables appeared to be turning when the elder Mitchell gunned down the 29-year-old mother the very day she was going to be allowed to spend more than four hours of supervised time with the little girl.

People close to the case said the Mitchells manufactured evidence against Shannon, and believed they had every right to do so. Among their claims: Shannon did drugs and partied. But hundreds of people who knew her far longer than the Mitchells say that’s bogus. Totally untrue. These are people I know personally, who are good people, and I’m inclined to believe them.

Shannon’s family says the Mitchells wanted total control—no matter the cost—and that’s why they even tried to undermine the partial custody Shannon received, as she gained ground in the legal battle and the court recognized she was a good parent.

This isn't the first time I've made phone calls and asked questions about a murdered woman who was being abused. And that is what this case is really about: domestic violence and a controlling, manipulative Mitchell family who literally put the young mother "through hell," as several people have told me.

But this case mirrors one I covered when I reported on Wanda Toppins’ murder. She was killed in September 1990 by her ex-husband, Jerry Toppins Sr., in front of their three-year-old son, David.

Jerry Toppins Jr., said that memory haunts his younger brother. “He is 25 now and still remembers that day vividly,” Toppins posted on FB.

Another similarity between the two cases: Helms was on the verge of proposing to Shannon, since her divorce was just days from being final. While Wanda and her fiancé were to have been married the day she was murdered.

Just like the elder Mitchell, Toppins also continued firing at his victim long after she fell, leaving her body riddled with bullet holes. Right in front of his son. Then he, again like Mitchell, callously turned his back on Shannon and coldly walked away.

Editor's note: Daleen Berry has expertise in overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment, and can be pretty funny when she wants. She's an award-winning author, editor and journalist who speaks at conferences around the country. Berry was one of two keynote speakers addressing a national audience at “The Many Faces of Domestic Violence,” the 18th Annual Conference of the Association of Batterers’ Intervention Programs on March 1, 2012, in Anaheim, Calif. She recently spoke to social workers from all over the country at the “Hope for the Future: Ending Domestic Violence in Families” conference at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her memoir (paperback and as an e-book) can be found at bookstores everywhere, or ordered online. To read the first chapter free, please go to Goodreads. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Berry "an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout."

If you want to read 30 other five-star reviews, check out this title on Amazon. To view the Sister of Silence book trailer, go to her VintageBerryWine Youtube channel. For a mock up of the SOS t-shirt, check out Berry's Facebook page.

Posted by Daleen at 10:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If I had a dollar for every woman I've met who never healed from the abuse heaped upon her at the hands of a man, I daresay I'd be pretty wealthy by now. As the hour draws near for tonight's Grammy Awards, I keep asking myself: was Whitney Houston one of those women? Did she never heal from her abusive marriage?

I don't know, but it rather looks that way. Given what authorities are saying could have been a fatal combination of Xanax and alcohol for the six-time Grammy winner, it's highly possible Whitney never could quite overcome the damage she sustained as an abused wife.

I know what that feels like, to want to hide behind the pain of abuse with a bottle in your hand. This is how I described it in my memoir: "It was at night, when he came to me, that I needed the alcohol to drown out what happened whenever he touched me."

Fortunately, helped by divine faith that allowed me to wield an incredible amount of self-discipline, I stopped drinking before I ruined my body, drowned my spirit, or killed myself.

My sister, however, was not so fortunate. She remains a drug user and an alcoholic today, long after the abuse she suffered at the hands of a man. She is, so far as my family knows, living on the street, seeking handouts from anyone who will give her one.

Whitney Houston's death has made me angry: angry at the Chris and Bobby Browns who think women are punching bags; angry at a society that allows these Browns and other men to get away with it, and angry at the women who fail to help themselves.

In this day and age, there is so very much help out there—family violence centers, battered women shelters, and excellent resources that literally walk you through the process of escaping a violent environment—that there is no reason for women not to try to help themselves.

Beyond that there is therapy (even free, or income-based therapy) that can help you to begin the hard work of pulling yourself up from the lowest place of negativity, oppression and shattered self-esteem. There are support groups in the real world and the online one, filled with women who have done it—who have escaped their past lives, and gone on to build bigger and better ones for themselves and their offspring.

Many people believe addicts should simply get their act together. Until you've lived with one or been one yourself, it's hard to understand that it simply isn't that easy. People who battle addiction—be it drugs, alcohol, food, sex or work—are running away from the incredible pain they've become mired in. They don't want to face whatever it is that's hurting them, so they block it out by making themselves so numb they feel nothing at all.

Many other women, years after the actual physical, emotional or sexual abuse has stopped, engage in equally damaging behaviors: cutting themselves, becoming anorexic or bulimic, or living lives that teeter on the edge of disaster in other ways.

I'm not a psychologist, although I've seen plenty of them, so I don't know what the single biggest factor is that separates women like me from women like my sister or, possibly, Whitney. Why did I make it out and why am I still alive, fighting and thriving and trying to make a difference? In the case of me and my sister, I seriously doubt it has to do with genetics.

What I think might be a major component to this difference is the ability to tell yourself that you have value, and believe it—long after an abuser has beaten you down and convinced you that you are absolutely worthless. I put it like this in the workbook I developed to help teach women how to regain their self-esteem:

"I believe each and every one of us was born with an intrinsic feeling of being valuable. Even if our parents mistreated, ignored or molested us (or allowed someone else to do so), that abuse and neglect could not wipe out what each one of us received from our Creator.

That old poster, with the little boy saying, 'I know I’m valuable, ‘cause God don’t create no junk,' is really true.

Before our birth, each of us was instilled with something much more powerful, much more concrete and long-lasting than anything that harmed us after we were born. It’s true that this gift sometimes gets lost or misplaced—but it’s always there, waiting like the water in a well, to be drawn up and used to quench our incredible thirst.

It’s a resource that may be buried under so much garbage, though, that you have to really dig to find it. But it is there. I know it is. I found it, and you can, too!"

For every Whitney, there are 1,000 other women who also can't see their own true value. That's why it's up to us to remind them—at every opportunity—how valuable they are. In the meantime, we as women have to realize that it isn't the words of a man, or the bruises from his fists, that define us: it is we ourselves.

It is the little girl we once were, when we made up stories or wrote poems, tossed a basketball through a hoop or beat a teammate to the finish line, won a coveted role in a community play or were chosen to represent our school at a state championship.

That child is still in there, buried deep within you, waiting for you to find her again. If you can put down the bottle or the pills long enough, I know you can do it. She deserves to be nurtured and cherished, because she has value. And no matter what your age today, so do you.

My sister might not yet believe that. And Whitney might not have, either. But Whitney did know it, at least on some level, when she said that "learning to love yourself, it is the greatest love of all."

Editor's note: Daleen Berry is a national expert in the area of child sex abuse and interpersonal violence, as well as an award-winning author and an accomplished journalist who speaks about these important social topics at conferences around the country. Berry will one of two keynote speakers addressing a national audience at “The Many Faces of Domestic Violence,” the 18th Annual Conference of the Association of Batterers’ Intervention Programs on March 1, 2012, in Anaheim, Calif. She recently spoke to social workers from all over the country at the “Hope for the Future: Ending Domestic Violence in Families” conference at the University of California, Berkeley.

Her memoir (paperback and as an e-book) can be found at bookstores everywhere, or ordered online. To read a free preview, please go to Amazon.

Posted by Daleen at 06:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you know anyone who needs to make some serious life changes, please buy them a copy of Sister of Silence. If you're a therapist or have one on speed dial, tell them to download it from Amazon. If you're a parent, a teacher or someone who still stumbles through life numb and encumbered, get the book. It really can help you, as well as those important people whose lives you touch.

I recommend it not because I wrote it, but because so many other people say my story resonates with them, and they are recommending it to anyone and everyone. One reader has literally become a one-woman band, as she tells anyone whose path she crosses about this book, urging them to read it.

From California, another reader said her therapist is going to use Sister of Silence with her own patients.

I recommend it because a well-respected national expert in the field of domestic violence suggested I introduce it at an upcoming conference being held at the University of Berkeley.

And I continue to recommend it because daily—and often, more than once a day—I hear such positive feedback from readers who keep telling other people about it.

It's honest and raw, and thoroughly candid in discussing some pretty ugly topics—but in a way that hopefully will leave you (the reader) more open to talking about sexual abuse, domestic violence, and filicide-suicide.

"Your book was amazing." (A social worker who read Sister of Silence told me this yesterday.)

Another woman I just met, who owns a publishing company, said her dentist asked her if she'd read my book. (Now that's great word of mouth advertising!)

"Your style of writing captures SO much emotion that I found myself swept away with each sentence!!! Please know that I will continue to suggest your book to others as it is a message that NEEDS to be heard," another reader wrote.

"I finished reading your book last night. What a powerful story you have told! I admire your courage in making the choices that you had to make. I also admire your courage in telling your story. This book can be a significant aid to women who are living in their own Hell. I won't ever forget your story. It breaks my heart that you had to live that way, but I am encouraged by the fact that you have made something positive of the experience by writing this book." That's what Rhonda Jenkins, an educator who's seen her fair share of children stunted by abuse, told me last month.

"I am impressed with Daleen Berry. She is bright, brave, and a true blessing. This woman is making a difference." (This is from another reader and while she credits me for what's happening when people read my book, I don't. I do believe that anyone who has survived something painful can—if they are willing—turn their negative experience into something positive that has the ability to help other people.)

At a recent book reading, one woman bought four copies of my Sister of Silence. Four! One for herself, one for her daughter, and two for friends or family! She had heard enough about it to believe its message would make a difference. I hope it is. And does.

Posted by Daleen at 01:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Domestic violence is a term that has been replaced, to some extent, with the phrase “intimate partner violence.” That’s because such violence doesn’t just happen inside the home, and it isn’t only confined to spouses. IPV encompasses all types of intimate violence, in a variety of settings, and between people who are intimately involved.

One thing that’s finally coming to the fore of IPV research is what experts are calling “reproductive violence.” Johns Hopkins Nursing Professor Dr. Jacquelyn Campbell says it’s a big issue for adolescents. This type of violence is what often causes a girl or a woman to become pregnant when she doesn’t want to.

I’ve known about this type of violence since I was a teen, when it happened to me. It left me feeling like I had no control whatsoever—no say so—over my own body. This isn’t just a loss of dignity, it’s the denial of a basic human right: the right to choose for yourself what happens to your body.

Two years ago, I reported on a study by Dr. Elizabeth Miller, a leading expert on adolescent health and trauma with the University of California, Davis. She found that many teen males sabotaged their female partners’ birth control efforts. This could include refusing to wear a condom, poking a hole in her diaphragm, or hiding her birth control pills.

I’m happy that experts are finally recognizing this type of violence for what it is: another way for an abuser to control and manipulate the woman he’s with. This is a very deadly form of violence, as can be seen from what almost happened to me, and what almost happened to my four children. That’s because, when a woman doesn’t believe she can take care of a baby she conceives, it can turn into a personal and societal nightmare. At the best, a child can end up being simply unloved. At the worst, it could end up dead.

It’s not easy to recognize when someone is being abused in this way. But it is possible. Quite often, the symptoms are there, if you’re alert and watch for them. So if you know a woman who’s a victim of reproductive violence, do your part and help her. If nothing else, be there to lend a hearing ear. Let her know it’s all right to speak up, and then listen to what she has to say. That’s the first step, and it’s a big one.

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One of the most serious problems facing the world is the ongoing demise of journalism.

As one newspaper after another makes its final print run, and reporters walk away wondering what to do next, a sad fact escapes the masses: If investigative journalism, that traditional method of gathering hard news, weighing what’s real with what isn’t and then turning what’s left into a story that readers can actually understand, goes the way of the dinosaur, we will take a giant step backward.

Especially is this true when it comes to crimes against women. Instead of it being a sometimes thing, victims of rape and domestic violence will then regularly get the cold shoulder when it comes to the time law enforcement will invest to
investigate these crimes, and the energy prosecutors will use to take such cases to trial.

In 1998 I wrote a two-part series for The Dominion Post about news tools available to police officers, including $2,000 camcorders they carry around with them to make their jobs easier—and make prosecution of such crimes more successful. (That article is no longer available online, but a similar one written at the same time, can be read here.)

Eleven years later, I have learned that these expensive tools aren’t, in many cases, even being used. A recent case I know about shows the damage that comes from what can only amount to laziness: a woman was assaulted to the point of needing surgery, she called 911, the police showed up—but the officer didn’t investigate.

Didn’t use his camera. Didn’t take notes. Didn’t ask if she was injured or arrest her batterer.

Maybe that’s because, as a recent West Virginia prosecutor told me, police officers’ attitudes basically haven’t changed. While acknowledging that most cops do a good job, he said they still don’t like investigating domestic violence cases. In fact, he added, if not for the law requiring them to do so, they would do what they used to, before such laws were enacted—many officers would just ignore them completely.

I’m not sure what happens when it’s a matter of rape, since that’s a crime that can be even trickier. But I do know this: some prosecutors won’t even take a rape case if the woman has been drinking. Here at West Virginia University, where more than 700 campus rapes occur a year, if any of those cases involve a female student who imbibed alcohol, she may as well not even report the rape.

Knowing how hard it is for a woman to report rape and domestic violence, I can’t help but wonder where we will be, down the road, when newspapers are gone and no one’s left to dig around to find stories like these.

Sadly, there are already too many of them, even with real journalists still at the helm of many daily newspapers. But that’s changing. What then?

When investigative reporters clean out their desks and don’t receive a paycheck for digging up the dirt on police and prosecutors, it’s a safe assumption that these crimes against women will be assigned even less importance than they are now.

And today, in 2009, that’s far too little, as it is.

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To help educate and increase awareness about domestic violence, many events are slated around the country this month, including some here locally. At the bottom of this list are my speaking engagements in October. Please feel free to attend ~ and bring a friend!

One of the most difficult topics to talk about when it comes to domestic violence is the idea that rape can and does occur within marriage, and other intimate relationships where love should be the basis for sex. Perhaps even more challenging to talk about, though, is the fact that pregnancy does occur through these acts of rape. This is really a much bigger problem than you might expect, and one that is supported by several major studies, as reported at the Centers for Disease Control website.

According to the CDC, 10% of American women were raped (or experienced an attempted rape) by a husband or significant other. And the evidence reports that this rape doesn’t just occur once—it occurs repeatedly.

Approximately 4.7% adult women become pregnant through rape. This led that agency to take U.S. Census figures, and arrive at the conclusion that an estimated 32,000 such pregnancies occur annually in women who are 18 or older.

Where pregnancy occurred:

• 32.4% of victims didn’t know they were pregnant until they their second trimester
• 32.2% kept the baby
• 50% had an abortion
• 11.8% had a spontaneous abortion

Because of the numerous associated problems (such as depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and attempted suicide), this is what the CDC’s study found:

“Rape-related pregnancy occurs with significant frequency. It is a cause of many unwanted pregnancies and is closely linked with family and domestic violence. As we address the epidemic of unintended pregnancies in the United States, greater attention and effort should be aimed at preventing and identifying unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual victimization.”

Please see the CDC’s website for more details about this serious problem.

Daleen’s calendar

• Monday, Oct. 9—Silent Witness; 7 p.m. WVU Mountainlair Ballroom The SILENT WITNESS EXHIBIT was first conceptualized by members of the Minnesota Arts Action Against Domestic Violence, an ad hoc group of artists and writers, in cooperation with the Minnesota Women’s Consortium. The first exhibit in 1990 featured 27 life-size figures, each representing a woman whose life ended as a result of domestic violence. A WVU Public Service Grant made it possible to update the Exhibit in 2004. The silhouettes represent 50 women, children, and men in WV who were murdered by an intimate partner or a family member between 1999 & 2001. For more information, please contact Leslie Tower at (304) 293-293-3501, ext. 3126.
• Monday, Oct. 16—Morgantown Public Library; 6-8 p.m.; DV Awareness Program featuring a video and speeches. For more information, please contact Tamara Woods at (304) 291-7425.
• Thursday, Oct. 19—Morgantown Courthouse Square; 6:30 p.m.; RDVIC Annual Vigil, featuring information about how the legal community helps survivors of domestic violence. For more information, please contact RDVIC at (304) 292-5100.

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THE deaths of 12 miners in the Sago Mine disaster and then four additional miners in other mines made international headlines. But below the radar, unemployment and uncertainty in the U.S. coal mining industry leak an invisible poison, claiming silent and stoic victims in the frustration and rage of domestic violence.

I know because I was one of them. I was married to a coal miner for 10 years, from 1980 to 1990. In 1991, I moved to Buckhannon, not far from the Sago Mine, to be managing editor of The Record-Delta. As a coal miner's wife, the quality of my week depended on how much coal the mines produced. In 1982, my husband lost his job, and we nearly lost our home, located not far from the site of the Jan. 21, 1866, Newburg mine explosion in which 39 miners died. My husband's verbal abuse of me soon turned to physical abuse.

As the number of coal miner jobs in West Virginia has decreased, domestic violence has increased. By 2004, employees in the West Virginia coal industry numbered a little more than 20,000, less than half the 1983 figure. And the number of domestic violence incidents documented numbered 14,489 in 2004, up from 1,232 in 1983, according to the West Virginia State Police's Uniform Crime Reports.

Ann Shaver, professor of behavioral sciences at Fairmont State University, recognized a connection between unemployment and domestic violence as early as the 1980s. Students from coal families confided to her fears about the violence that "seemed to be beginning or escalating in their families."

This is in no way an indictment of the coal miner or the unemployed. Many of my closest friends are from mining families. At Sago, my family lost a good friend in miner Terry Helms. But it is testimony to the ripple effects of unemployment. And it is a warning to Ford, Sago and other company families.

Experts are only now recognizing what a critical component unemployment can be in domestic violence. Unemployment doesn't cause abusive behavior but exacerbates stress, relationship tensions and insecurity about failing to be "a true man in our society," says Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing. She has studied domestic violence for about 25 years. Her 2003 study involving "intimate partner violence" and the abuse or murder of 563 women in 11 cities revealed unemployment was the only significant social, or demographic, risk factor.

Unemployment makes it four times as likely a woman will be killed, Campbell found. In overall risk factors, unemployment was second only to a man owning a gun as risks for family violence. Until recently, law enforcement didn't consider a man's employment status when conducting investigations.

In October, at the 13th Annual West Virginia Children's Justice Task Force in Charleston, Mark Wynn, a decorated Nashville, Tenn., police officer, advised police handling domestic disputes to ask about employment. That way, they can assess how deadly the episode of family violence might become. Unemployment, he says, is "a possible aggravator" and a "double whammy" that exacerbates other issues such as alcohol use, marital woes or depression.

History shows that the life of a coal mining family follows the ups and downs of King Coal. In 1976, West Virginia had nearly 65,000 employees on the mining payroll, its highest number during my lifetime. In 1980, my husband was employed in a union mine as a section foreman, earning about $40,000 a year. Life was good, and my worries were few. By 1981, however, he was making much less working in a non-union mine. As a journalist, I reported facts and figures about the cycle of unemployment within the coal industry. But as the wife of a coal miner, I knew what happened only too well when a man came home with a pink slip.

My husband joined the growing number of unemployed coal miners. And I joined the growing number of women suffering domestic violence. We were among the many mining families who stood in long lines at the Newburg Senior Center in Preston County for free food, including "Reagan cheese." My husband was stressed and depressed at being unemployed. He often took it out on me.

By 1983, the state's unemployment rate hit 18 percent, nearly double the national figure, largely the result of layoffs in the coal industry due to changes in regulation, technology and profits. The industry employed 42,483. According to the West Virginia State Police, the number of reported domestic violence incidents rose from the 1,232 cases in 1983 to 2,565 cases in 1989 - a year when West Virginia saw the biggest fall in the number of people employed in the coal industry. Police say most domestic violence incidents go undocumented.

Domestic violence in West Virginia has deadlier consequences than in the rest of the nation. From 1993 to 1999, only 12 percent of the nation's homicides were related to domestic violence, according to the Department of Health and Human Resources. But in West Virginia, that figure is almost 40 percent. The State Police say a domestic homicide occurs every 14 days - a figure that has held steady since the late 1970s.

In Upshur County, the Sago disaster adds stress that can exacerbate domestic violence. "Tensions run high. People become more irritable, and then you have explosions," says Harriet Sutton, director of HOPE Inc., a women's shelter in neighboring Marion County that has seen increases in domestic violence after layoffs.

In West Virginia, the unemployment rate has decreased to 5.3 percent in 2004, or 41,900 people out of work, according to the Bureau of Employment Programs. But the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, a part of the U.S. Commerce Department, says unemployment is a much greater issue in Appalachia, especially in central counties of West Virginia and Kentucky, compared to the rest of the country.

Shannon Wamsley's husband, Alton, survived the Sago mine disaster, one of 16 men who rode out of the mines just before the explosion. She said the families are very fortunate that International Coal Group has provided jobs and counseling. But she - like everyone - is worried about the long-term effects, especially among those who are too spooked by the tragedy to return to work.

"They can have all this pent up emotion inside of them," she said, "which turns to anger and frustration because you have to blame something."

Daleen Berry is a journalist in Morgantown who is writing a memoir on her life as a survivor of domestic violence.

NOTE: Reprinted with permission from Charleston Newspapers (West Virginia). This op-ed originally appeared February 9, 2006, on page 5A. (Copyright 2006)

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Domestic Violence and Human Rights

Did you know

• In just two minutes, you can change her life in a profound way?


• If you don't listen, she may never speak up again?


• You may be the only lifeline she has?

Dr. Jane Schaller came back a different person from war-torn South Africa in 1985. Her experience led to Physicians for Human Rights, a Boston-based group that believes health professionals have a great moral and ethical influence on human rights issues. Schaller, who has documented the effects of war on children, as quoted in the Journal of the American Medical Women's Association (Vol. 52, 1997), says:

"It is true that one doctor cannot end a tyranny, make all children well or end all torture used against innocent human beings. But one physician can make some difference, and a group of physicians or other health professionals can make a great deal of difference..."

In this country, there is another war going in, one in which many, many women and children are victims.

Continue reading "How Doctors Can Help" »

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