A little backstory . . .
My BIL (brother-in-law) is young, 22 to be exact. He is the type of guy who wants to fall in love, settle down, and start a family. He is loving, creative, a little hyper, but overall a great kid. He has had some problems with drugs for a couple years and we’re trying to help him through it without going the route of rehab (he has no insurance).
About 2 years ago, during his roughest time with a very popular speed drug, he met a girl (19 years old). She seemed wonderful. She was trying to get away from the drug scene as well and they decided they’d help one another. Love quickly blossomed, they thought they were meant for each other.
The family, for the most part, liked her. Her and my MIL (mother-in-law) hit it off immediately and we saw more and more of her. They wanted to get married, we warned them it was too soon, but they were determined. We decided to have the families meet and we all fell in love with her family, they are immigrants and showed us a culture and world we had never seen. They were loving, generous, and overall very happy people. The girl had said she had problems with her family and wasn’t very close to them, moving out of their home at the age of 16. It seemed this relationship was helping her to forge a new bond with them.
Not heeding our warning to take things slow, they forged ahead with wedding plans. Since they were both young and had trouble holding down jobs, the families had to foot the bill. Luckily, they had a small wedding and a beautiful dinner at her parents afterwards (caviar, salmon, the whole nine yards). We were shocked at the display, they had always told us her family didn’t have much money and we thought they had blown all their savings on the new double house they recently built to house them and the grandparents in an affluent neighborhood. But we don’t think much of that is our business, just things don’t add up quite well. Her mother works an office job and her father drives a semi. I come from a long line of semi-drivers and I know what the income is like. But I digress, it’s none of my concern.
We quickly found out that instead of helping each other through their drug problems, they were perpetuating them. One would want to quit, the other wouldn’t. Back and forth this went on for months. Between the two families, they paid for their rent and utilities for over a year. They couldn’t stay off the drugs long enough to keep a job, they would lose sleep, get sick frequently, blow all their money they did earn on drugs, they even went as far as selling their personal items for more drugs. It was spiraling out of control.
My husband never really trusted her, he said she seemed fake. If only we had listened . . .
About 6 months ago, the calls started. Every day one of them would call me crying (I’m the “listener” in the family). They started fighting incessantly. We shut them off to money and forced them to work, by this time they had borrowed over $5,000. We thought if they worked, they would fight less because they wouldn’t be around each other 24 hours a day and feel like they were doing something with their lives. They had dreams of going back to school and starting their careers, but they also had a sense of entitlement. They didn’t want restaurant jobs, or gas station jobs, they felt they deserved 9-5 jobs in an office making $30,000 a year. It just doesn’t work that way with no education or experience.
They started wearing on one another, then the drug problem got worse. The depression kicked in and they started drifting from each other. The fighting got worse. In February, my BIL came to us one evening and said he wanted to stay with us for a couple days. She had punched him in the nose. Not wanting him to be away from her, she called and called. The next morning we found her asleep in her car in the driveway. They talked and he went home.
This continued for the next couple months, we had him over once or twice more. Then he stayed with his mother a couple times and she would stalk him there too. She started rubbing my MIL the wrong way and the anger and resentment started to build. We told him he needed to leaver her, but he couldn’t. He loved her. When she would hit him (and this happened several times), we would tell him to call the police on her. He didn’t want to do that to her because he knew what would happen.
My BIL has always been the type of guy who was gentle to everyone and everything. He has this magnetic-like force with children and animals and anyone who meets him finds him kind and loving. He’s a momma’s boy and hippy in all sense of the word.
A couple weeks ago, the fights were getting worse. At this time they have been married a short 8 months. He was leaving for a couple days at a time and she was getting upset over it. He decided that he had jumped into things a little too quickly and was wanting out of the relationship. He told her he wasn’t in love with her anymore and wanted to part ways. She didn’t like that.
The fighting got worse. From his account (and from hers), she would barricade him in the house, if he tried to leave she would chase him down the road screaming at him, at 4 in the morning. Last week, they argued for 3 days straight, they were both on speed again. No sleep, no food. Things escalated quickly and she started to punch him, bite him, kick him, and scratch him. Their friends and neighbors saw a little of it and overheard the arguing. She was out of control and he was trying to subdue her by holding her arms down. At one point, he put a pillow over her face for a few seconds to muffle her screaming. She had kicked him in the stomach and grabbed his balls and pulled. She told him if he left her, she would call the police.
My BIL manages to escape from the house and call his mother. He tells her she is hitting him and he wants someone to come pick him up (his car had been towed yet again). My MIL tells him she can’t (she lives almost an hour away) and he should either go stay with friends for a while or call the police. He still does not want her to get in trouble, he just wants out as peacefully as possible.
He manages to stay away from his house for roughly 6 hours. He visits his friend across the street. His friend steps outside and sees the police at their house. My BIL walks outside to look and her mother points him out and yells “There he is!”. So he walks over and proceeds to be handcuffed. She told the police he tried to kill her and he slammed her head in the floor multiple times. My BIL is taken to jail.
We find out about 10 p.m. that evening he’s in jail. The only thing we can picture is him standing in the corner of the holding cell in a puddle of his own piss and a snot bubble hanging from his nose. We know jail is the last thing he can handle.
The next morning is the arraignment. Seeing my BIL standing there in the courtroom shackled is too much for us to handle. We all break down in tears. When his wife walks in, the tears dry up with hatred. How could she do this to him?
The cops refused to take a statement from him during the booking and how she didn’t get arrested as well baffles me. This poor kid, the one who gets his feelings hurt so easily, the one who just wants to be loved and give love in return. We bail him out of jail and that evening we take him to urgent care. We have dictation from the doctor that he was beat up by his wife and I took multiple photos of the bruises, cuts, bite marks, etc. This feels like a nightmare.
We take him to his house to get his tuff, we need a police escort because of the protection order. She has thrown away some of his stuff and has destroyed his television. All his stuff is piled up by the front door. We make two quick trips and manage to get what we can.
Over the past week, she has tried calling him. She leaves long messages saying she loves him and misses him, and that she didn’t think it would turn out this way and she didn’t mean to get him in trouble. She says her parents emotionally blackmailed her into calling the cops. She can’t understand why he won’t call her.
Do you think we’re going to let you set him up? You have got to be smoking crack.
So he gets divorce papers this week. She wants to drop the protection order and have a “talk” with him. She wants one of two things to happen: if he wants to be with her, she wants to drop charges and have him go to rehab, if he doesn’t want to be with her, she’s going full-force and get him locked away.
Why does this not seem right to me?
Why don’t men call the police more often if their wives/girlfriends beat up on them? It doesn’t make you manly to take it from them. Now because of the way the legal system is, he doesn’t stand a chance unless we get a jury trial. We can prove she has been emotionally abusing and stalking him. I want her psychologically tested, but I’m not sure if that will happen. We did find out that he has had several conversations with her parents about her hitting him, so we know we can subpoena them, but I’m not sure if they’ll lie to protect her. Because my in-laws are getting divorced, my DH and I have been paying for the bail and the retainer fee for the lawyer. We can’t afford to pay any more.
I pray that not all hope is lost. We’re afraid if he goes to prison, he will never be this carefree, loving, happy boy we all know and love anymore. This will ruin his spirit and destroy his chances of having a real job for a long time.
I don’t have the energy to swear or this would have went to the pit. I just needed to get this out to you, especially to those of you in the legal field. We don’t know what to do except wait and see what happens. This is so sad, not just for us, but for my BIL and his future.
If I can help anyone who’s in an abusive relationship, I’ve done enough good with this. Please, if you are being abused, please seek help and get as far away as you can. Thanks for taking the time to listen.
