To flee domestic abuse, some need a Safe Nest in which to land

These days she gets by in a budget motel, but even they have mirrors. When she looks in one, it’s hard to imagine she could ever forget, or forgive, the broken nose and bloody lip he gave her — this father of her youngest child. She explains her ex-boyfriend suffers from alcohol problems, drug problems and, mostly, anger issues. She has difficulty bringing herself to blame him.

She recalls almost nonchalantly the time when, in a fit of rage, he knocked her to the kitchen floor and banged her head against it until she nearly lost consciousness. She suffered a concussion. Lisa got that treatment for daring to leave the house.

After that, he barricaded her in the house. He controlled the money. He tried to control her movement. On days she managed to get out, he followed her.

He punched her when she was pregnant, and she didn’t leave him.

She learned he had been to prison for a prior felony conviction for coercion and had a record that included a string of batteries on previous girlfriends, and she still stood by him.

Listen carefully as Lisa says, “He would punch me like I was some man. I’m just this little girl. He could have pushed me and that would have been enough.”

When they got back together, their happiness was fleeting, almost immediately eclipsed by his dark side.

In July at a local casino, their quarrel erupted and she fled to a women’s bathroom. He burst in, kicking open a stall, and burying the coat hook attached to the door above her left eyebrow. When she finally managed to get medical attention, the gash took 20 stitches to close.

That, she says with resignation, marked the end of the relationship. They are “platonic” now. But they will still see each other. They have a son in common.

If you find Lisa’s inability to spot the obvious danger and leave her relationship disconcerting, you are beginning to appreciate the emotional and psychological complexity of domestic abuse. Her attitude is a defense mechanism, Safe Nest Clinical Director Tim Hamilton says. It is part of the language of the chronically abused and extremely traumatized.

“All of what you see is self-protective,” Hamilton says. “It is a defense that her personality has come up with in order to protect her from more abuse in the future. … She doesn’t feel she has other options.”

It’s easy to say you would walk, or run, from such a violent relationship. But what if you lack the family support system? What if police and social services have been unreliable? What if your children depend on the abuser’s monetary support to survive?

Lisa now takes domestic violence awareness classes at Safe Nest, the Southern Nevada nonprofit shelter and crisis resource center. She is learning a new vocabulary and new rules as she tries to gather the pieces of her life.

“When she finds a place that she can be safe doing so, all of that anger that you think ought to be there … will be able to come back up. But not while she’s still in a place that’s not safe,” Hamilton says.

For her part, Lisa says she realizes she’s co-dependent, a clinical tendency to behave in an overly passive way in a relationship while having an unhealthy focus on the needs of others.

Although her voice seems uncertain, she vows to change for herself and her young son. Lisa knows the example she is setting, and she doesn’t want her son to grow up witnessing violent behavior.

“I don’t want my son to turn into a monster,” Lisa says.

John L. Smith’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0295. He also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/smith.