“I had to do what I was told by him, he beat me, threatened me and my children. [He] wouldn’t let me leave with both kids, always kept one so I would have to come back.”

“It was domestic violence. My husband was hurting my children. We both worked at a domestic violence shelter. We both used drugs. I told the truth. He lied and people believed him.”

“He beat me up, took my $4,300. I was selling his stuff to get my money back & I got arrested for property crimes. They dropped his case!”

“He was abusive and I needed and wanted to get out from him. Very verbal and the physical was getting worse everyday.”

“My ex-husband told me that I would get less time [than] him if I took all the charges & he was also very abusive.”

“He would strike me, like punching me in the side of the head, or hold me by the neck against the wall. He would track me with his rifle like he was hunting me. The sexual abuse became a regular event. He would force me to do things against my will, crazy stuff. It was devastating. I couldn’t stop him. He was 6’4” tall and 250 pounds. I was terrified of him”

“I hated our “home.” It was a place of emotional, physical, and sexual torment combined with the additional nightmare he created with his hoarding.”

“I was in a constant state of fear and panic. It’s hard to explain how imprisoned I was in my relationship. He told me that if I ever left, he would hunt me down and drag me home. But also him telling me that he would leave me put the fear of God in me. I was so dependent on him. The fear of the unknown, the fear of having no where to live, the fear of being without him kept me in the relationship. My life was chaotic. My life was violent and scary. I was miserable. I think a person can’t really understand it until they’ve been in the middle of it.”

“I was so out of it, in such a fog. [When you have been abused for so long,] you feel like they’ve already hung you. You have no self-esteem to defend yourself.”

“He could tell me, I love you, you’re beautiful, and the next minute he’s calling you the c-word, degrading you, spitting on you, shoving you on the floor. . .Then we got into a huge fight, he had guns, it got crazy. He took the keys to the car and he would not let me leave. He would beat the shit out of me.”

“It wasn’t too bad in the beginning when he was trying to court me . . . I had been in an abusive relationship before and he almost killed me. He knew about it and used to throw it in my face.”

“After I was arrested, I wanted to go to prison because it would be better than the prison I was living in with him. Suicide wasn’t even a way out because he told me if I killed myself, he would torment my sick mother.”

“Every night, after the children went to bed, he would critique how I did that day, as if he were keeping a score card. He would scold and criticize me for failing as a mother and a wife. He would hit me, pinch me, and force me to have sex with him, and it was violent and degrading. I dreaded every evening because I didn’t know what he would do.”

“He never struck me in the face again or anywhere on my body where others would see the marks. Usually, I could predict when he would strike me or grab me violently on the shoulder. But there were times when I was completely caught off guard. I lived in constant fear of what he would do next. Sometimes he would apologize, but then tell me that it was my fault for making him angry because I was an unworthy wife and I forced him to hit me and berate me.”

“The isolation, humiliation, constant yelling and hitting, and his control over every aspect of my life broke me. I became a shell of a woman. He stripped me of all that made me the strong and stable person I was before I met him.”