Prisons Without Walls
By
Yvette Taylor- Kanarick (Ph.D.)
Smashwords edition
Copyright 2002 Yvette Kanarick
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ISBN 978-1- 4661-8593-7
Contact Information
Chayel Inc.,
Tel: (561) 247 2712
Email: Ytaylorkan@chayel.com
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Prologue
My inspiration for this book came one day as I was walking down the streets of Miami. It was a few months after I fled my home. I was still a visitor to this country. There I was walking the streets, the tears were still in my eyes and the pain was still in my heart, but I was free. They say this is the land of the free and I felt free.
For the first time in fifteen years, I walked the streets without being afraid. I still jumped every time, I heard a car pulling up behind me and I still felt the instinctive urge to run whenever I saw a tall dark figure looming ahead of me. And I asked myself, when did this madness begin? At what time in my life did I begin to learn fear and accept it as part of my existence? It had grown on me so long that I had taken it in and accepted it as normal.
Now, here I was in this strange land where I was being called an alien. People looked at me strangely when I spoke because they knew that I am different. But, was I really different from the rest? How many others walked the streets like me, living in fear, because they chose to love? They love their children, their homes, their country, their jobs, their insecure securities.
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Shaken by violence
I learned fear, I lived fear; I walked in fear. I walked in fear for my life until that day that I found that if my life is all that I have, then I have to rise above my fears so that I can keep my life. I placed the stakes on my life, so that I could save the lives of those I loved most.
And now, I was free in the land of the free. I had no job, no money, willing to accept that which was beneath what I truly deserve, just so that I could be free. I was free.
And so, I looked back and I asked myself about the things that imprisoned me; my thoughts, my insecurities, my soul, my religion, my principles, my beliefs; tools in the hands of the abuser to wield his power over me. And well did he wield it, until I became the warden of my prison. I built protective walls around my heart, around me and those walls kept in the fear and fed the fear that kept me a prisoner in my Prison Without Wall.
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The Empty Chase
Searching but never finding
Hoping but never seeing
The better day I had planned
Trusting but always losing
Playing and never winning
The games of life you played
Believing without faith
Dreaming without a vision
Of the desert I call home
This barren empty prison
Built with shackles of promises
And hopes that never come
Running and always staying
Weeping but never laughing
As life flies by before me
Maybe one day,
I’ll break through these hollow walls
And rise beyond the bounds of thoughts
Maybe one day,
I’ll find the strength to stand
And leave these prisons without walls.
Yvette Taylor - Kanarick (Ph.D.)
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Prelude
I was a victim of domestic violence. I was a battered wife. No one ever told that I had the right to be free, to live free. No one ever told me, that I had the right to live without abuse.
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Each year, an estimated 5.3 million women in the United States are abused by their male partners. (American Institute on Domestic Violence, 2001)
Every 9 seconds a woman is beaten
Every 6 hours a woman is murdered by her husband or boyfriend
Every year 2,000 - 4,000 women die as a result of abuse
Domestic Violence is the leading cause of injury to women
Children are present during 80% of the assaults against their mothers.
63 % of boys between the ages of 11 -22 imprisoned for murder killed the man that was abusing their mother
Approximately 900,000 men in the US are abused each year
(Based on FBI figures and estimate)
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Another Scar
When I was a child,
My mother told me about her friend
When I was a child, I met that friend
And that friend showed me her scars
When I was a girl, that friend showed me a lump that had grown from the scars from the kick that she received from her lover
When I was a girl, that friend of my mother died from the lump that was caused by the scars from the kick that she received from her lover
When I was a girl, I knew a man who murdered a woman with a kick that he gave her that turned into a scar that became a lump that caused the death of his lover.
Now I am a woman, I know a man who kicked his lover and it turned into a scar
I know a woman threatened by a scar from a kick that she received from her lover
Now I am a woman, I know a man living free to kick another woman to cause a scar to turn into a lump to kill that woman
She would live with the scars that could turn into a lump that could take her life; and her lover would go free to kick another woman to cause another scar.
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I Have the Right
…not to be abused
…to be free from intimidation and fear of abuse
…to be angry because I’ve been beaten
…to have friends
…to be able to share my thoughts and feelings
You do not have the right
…to isolate me from others
I have the right
…to privacy
…to a safe place call home
…where I am treated with respect
I have the right
…to be treated like an adult
I have the right
…of choice
…to want better for myself
…to have a good role model for my children
I have the power
…to choose to change my situation
…to leave the battering environment
I have the Right
…to protection
…to ask for support from friends and family
…to request and expect assistance from police and social agencies
…to legally prosecute my abuser
I have the right
…to a peaceful environment
I have the right
…to be me
…to be free
…to be the best that I could be
You do not have the right
…to make me feel ashamed
You do not have the right
…to abuse me
I have the right
…not to be perfect
I have the right
… to happiness
(Expanded Version: Yvette Kanarick (2001)
Adapted from: Victimology: An International Journal, Vol. 2 1977-78, No. 3-4, p.550)
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I am not to be blamed
…for your shortcomings
I am not responsible
…for your insecurities
I do not have to be
…the brunt of your anger
I do not have to be mistreated
… Because you are hurt
I am not to be blamed
… Because I am battered
I am not to be blamed
… Because I am beaten
I am not to be blamed
… Because I am abused
I am not to be blamed
… Because I am a Victim
Intimate partner abuse is like a prison based on a foundation of fear that victims build around their situation. The abuser uses a bundle of insecurities that the victim receives, internalizes and keeps within. As the abuser taps into the victim’s psyche, he recognizes these fears and pounces upon them and so the thing that one fears most becomes a reality.
As the abuser feeds the fear and the insecurities, the victim begins to build walls that keep the victim trapped within the violence and the abuse. The abuser paints and reinforces these walls until the time comes that even when the abuser walks away the victim continues to live behind the walls.
Abuse creates emotional imprisonment within the victim’s psyche. After a while, the victim begins to understand that abuse is happening, but the walls keep the victim locked away behind the fortress of fear, and prevents the bid for freedom. The abuser reinforces the victim’s fear and uses this as the key component to perpetuate abuse.
Most murders in intimate partner violence occur after the victim attempts to leave. In my case, I had taken out a restraining order, but the person that had been abusing me returned to the home. He was armed. He said to me, you are free to go and come, but if you tell anyone that I am here, I will first kill the children, then I will kill myself and you will be responsible. For three days, I kept silent and told the world that everything was all right, because I was afraid of the consequences. The abuser, to me had become larger than life; larger than institutions and seemed even larger than God himself. I could not see beyond the walls that there was freedom that would or could come. I felt trapped. The forceful rage of the abuser instills such a level of fear that the victim comes to think that the quality of life, the individual’s existence and circumstances are determined by the abuser’s actions.
Even though I am a survivor, there are still things that I carry as a result of being abused. My world would be falling apart and I would still say that I am all right. I had come to distrust the world. No one reached out a hand to help me when I needed it. I had come to think that I was alone in this world, I still think that way, and I do not let people in.
But, one thing I have learned over the years that I am the only one who holds the key to free myself from the prison within which I lived. In my case, the abuse also included confinement. I was never free to go and come without the permission of my warden. Several keys were used to keep me physically confined within my beautiful home. The fear of the physical fight that would break out, the fear of the actual beatings, the fear of the verbal abuse and accusations were enough to keep me away from friends and family.
Ten years later, I am finding the strength to look within myself and analyze the things that I still do. I am still a recluse within the city and a hermit without a mountain. And then there is the other side of me, the side that would defy accepted standards that violated principles of freedom and independence to demonstrate that I am free and that I am independent, but is it really me?
Have I really left my prisons behind? In this book, I hope to show you the way to begin unlocking the doors to your Prisons Without Walls.
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Chapter One
Are You Being Abused
Many persons are in an abusive relationship without identifying that they are being abused. The following checklist is to help you determine whether you are in an abusive relationship.
Do you feel like a prisoner within your own home?
Do you feel like you are walking on eggshells just to keep the peace?
Does your partner monitor your actions and time?
Do you have to account for every minute that you are away?
Does your partner follow you; show up at work, school or friend’s homes?
Do you feel forced to have sex when you do not want to?
Does your partner refuse to practice safe sex, consequently putting you at risk of unwanted pregnancies and of contracting sexually transmitted diseases?
Does your partner, call you names or verbally threatens you?
Is your partner violent to children, pets or property?
Does your partner smash things around and make you feel intimidated?
Do you feel powerless to make your own choices, have your own opinions or come and go as you please?
Does your partner make all the money decisions; deny you access to money or make you account for every penny?
Does your partner humiliate you through actions or words privately or in front of others?
Does your partner frequently accuse you of having affairs?
Abuse is a system of behavior that is used by one person to control another person’s actions and feelings. Abuse is the wrongful use of authority that causes harm to another person, who is in a subservient role or submissive relationship to the person wielding power. The abuser uses various strategies to manipulate and control the victim. Abusive behavior is not limited to physical violence only. The abuser uses intimidation, threats, emotional manipulation, sexual dominance and financial deprivation as tools in the process of disempowerment and subjugation.
There are several kinds of abuse viz., emotional, physical, verbal, spiritual, sexual, financial and mental. Domestic violence occurs among individuals within a familial relationship, while intimate partner violence occurs between intimate partners in both heterosexual and non-heterosexual relationships. Domestic violence encompasses intimate partner violence when the intimate partners share a common household, or when violence is directed towards other family members such as children and the elderly who share the household. Domestic abuse encompasses all forms of abuse and control, including violence. In this book, the term domestic abuse because it encompasses all types of abuse and violence.
Abusive people have issues with authority and power relations. For example, individuals with conduct disorder or adults with anti-social personality disorder, mental disorders characterized by refusal to submit to authority, often engage in abusive behavior. The abuser is not one who has merely lost control, or one who is out of control, but much more insidious is the fact that the abuser is actually attempting to control the victim. Controlling behavior is contrary to natural laws and moral principles.
The abuser adopts two strategies to initiate and perpetuate abuse; first by dis-empowering the victim using physical force, mental manipulations and threats of physical violence. Emotional manipulations are used to establish unhealthy control by playing upon the victim’s fears, values and beliefs. The second tactic involves a pattern of behavior that reinforces and entrenches the abusers dominance in the relationship. Once the abuser has established a pattern of dominance through fear, other tactics are included to reinforce this pattern of fear. These tactics include isolation, violence, rape, withholding money, sex or ‘privileges’ and using past victories to keep the victim in bondage.
Men Are Abused Too: Can Men be Abused?
In this book, we will refer to the victim as female for ease of reference and because there is a higher incidence of reported abuse among women as compared to men. This does not preclude the fact that men and people in non-heterosexual relationships are also abused. Consequently, all the issues discussed in this book are pertinent to men, except in those instances where the issues are gender specific.