Abused woman speaking out to raise awareness

DOVER-FOXCROFT – Her memories are horrible.

A Penobscot County woman, known locally as Cynthia, remembers daily the look in her ex-husband’s eyes as he held guns to her head and knives to her throat and told the woman repeatedly that he would kill her and her loved ones if she left him.

She recalled the times her ex-husband shot and killed pets in front of family members. Anything that went wrong in their relationship was her fault and she was treated accordingly.

It took 26 years for Cynthia to get the courage to gather her two children and flee the state and the abuse that held them captive. She has had no contact with her ex-husband since their divorce was made final in 1990, but she still gets nervous when a vehicle follows her car for a prolonged time and when she answers the telephone and no one is there.

Despite the constant fear, the 54-year-old woman, who has since remarried, will share her experience with mental, physical and sexual abuse during the annual speakout and candlelight vigil in Dover-Foxcroft sponsored by Womancare Aegis on Oct. 16 during National Domestic Abuse Awareness month.

In addition to the speakout, the event will include a family walk and a 5K run at 9 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 6, beginning at Piscataquis Community High School in Guilford. A public breakfast will be served from 8 to 10 a.m. for $5 per person or $12 for a family.

The proceeds from these events will help the nonprofit domestic violence prevention project with its operational costs and will serve as seed money for state and federal grants.

The abuse that women and some men suffer at the hands of a loved one is real, Cynthia said. She recalled that no one ever suspected her ex-husband of domestic violence because he was well-liked in the community.

After a childhood of sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, Cynthia said, she and her ex-husband, who had been raised in a physically abusive household, initially found comfort in one another. At 17, she married. Two months later, the abuse started when he locked her out of the house. “He would slap me, not really beat on me that hard, and he would tell me that I was stupid. He just kept bringing up my past,” she said.

“I had so much abuse in the past, I thought it was my fault,” Cynthia said.

It wasn’t until the 1980s that the abuse escalated. Because she wasn’t allowed to have any friends or a job until much later in the marriage, only their five children witnessed the abuse, she said. The nights her husband left for the bars, her daughters would barricade their bedroom doors for fear he would come to them in a drunken stupor, she said. As soon as they became old enough, the children left the home to be on their own.

Cynthia said that she was required to help her husband in his garage and remembered a time when she held a piece of raw steel with her bare hands so that he could cut it. As she held it, he pulled it from her hands with such force that slivers of steel sliced her hands . “I love you, but you made me do this,” was his response.

Another time, he struck her on the face and broke her nose because “it was her fault” that a vehicle in front had rolled back into their vehicle.

There was a breaking point for Cynthia.

She said that after a really abusive day, she took one of her husband’s loaded guns, intending to kill him. That course of action was disrupted when her eldest daughter pleaded with her not to because they would lock Cynthia up and place the children in foster care.

Cynthia did make attempts to flee the home over the years, staying with relatives. But each time, her husband found her and told her that if she didn’t return home with the kids he would kill her, the children and the relatives. She always returned home because she believed he would carry out his threat.

“No matter where you go, you can’t hide,” her husband would tell her.

In the last few years of her marriage, Cynthia managed to convince her husband that a job would help the family’s finances. With reluctance, he allowed her to go to work but he continually threatened to get her fired. And she “sweet talked” him into allowing her to get a car. She also managed to set aside some money without her husband’s knowledge.

Cynthia saw her chance to escape for good when her husband left for a fishing trip. She and the daughters jumped into the car with a few of their personal items and left the state, telling no one where they were headed. Through an attorney, a divorce was arranged and she later found herself in Maine.

“It’s horrible that someone can put so much fear in you,” Cynthia said. She’s speaking out now because someone may be in the same situation. Her advice to them: “There is someone who cares, there is help out there.

“A woman has got to know there is hope out there,” she said.

For information, call Womancare at 564-8165.