Last time I saw him, I was 16. When I pulled up to the new house to get my things, he stepped outside to meet me. The beard was gone. He’d lost weight. He was calm. He held a shotgun in his hand. It was pointed down, non-threatening. There was finality in the moment. I was leaving home for good. There was finality in the presence of a weapon. If I was willing to use a knife, he was willing to use a gun.
My sister was still in that house. My mother was still in that house.
Everybody knew.
Neighbors, coaches, grocery store cashiers, elementary, junior and high school teachers, school principals, classmates. Her parents knew, my father knew.
Everybody knew. Nobody said a thing.
What we allow will continue. What continues will escalate.
I never saw my stepfather again. There is no big turning point moment here, where I confronted him about the abuse. Where I asked him, point blank, why did you beat my mother? Where I told him, point blank, the pain he caused my sisters and me could be forgiven, but it could never be undone. My mother left him a few years later. She died a few years after that.
My stepfather did not murder my mother. My stepfather did not murder me.
But had my stepfather picked up a gun and killed us all, nobody would have been surprised. He was a violent guy, they’d tell the news cameras. Everybody knew that.
But nobody got involved. Because we somehow believe that we are safe from a guy who “only” beats his wife. We’re not a member of that family, so it doesn’t really affect us.
Had my stepfather picked up a semi-automatic weapon and killed scores of strangers in a public place, nobody would have been surprised by that either. He was a violent guy, they’d tell the news cameras. Everybody knew that.
But now everybody’s involved. Because innocent people have been killed in a church, in a nightclub, at a concert or a cafe, and in an elementary school.
Domestic violence no longer lives inside that one house on the block. Domestic violence lives in the public now.
According to Everytown for Gun Safety, the majority of all mass shooters in the United States killed an intimate partner or family member during the massacre or had a history of domestic violence.
Somebody out there, right now, knows the next big mass shooter. Somebody out there is getting blamed, screamed at, beaten up.
Somebody out there wants to believe that he’s sorry, that he’s changed and that love means giving him a second chance. Even if that second chance means giving him another bullet because he missed the first time.
Somebody out there, right now, needs our help.
Once, you could feel sorry for the three little girls from the violent home forging a check at the grocery store. Once, you could smile softly, avert your eyes and do nothing. Not anymore.
The facts show that domestic violence is a very clear warning sign that people outside of the family might also be hurt in the future.
Violent men don’t just drop out of the sky with guns and start shooting up people in public places. There are warning signs.
