The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence

by Gavin De Becker

  You talk to him and then you leave.”

  —Nicole Brown Simpson to police

  I don’t see how anyone could have had doubts after hearing the eloquent prosecutor describe the case. We all know the story: The murdered woman had reportedly suffered violence at the hands of the defendant for a long while, virtually since the start of their relationship. A few times, she had called the police, and once she even brought battery charges against him (he was acquitted). The day of the murder, she hadn’t invited him to come along to a social event, and not long after ten P.M., she was stabbed to death. The defendant told a friend that he’d had a dream in which he killed her, but later his lawyers said she was probably murdered by drug dealers.

  These facts became famous during the O.J. Simpson case, but the story I just told occurred thousands of miles from Brentwood, when Nicole Brown Simpson still had six months left to live. The murdered woman in this case was named Meredith Coppola. If I told of all the women killed in America this year by a husband or boyfriend, the book you are holding would be four thousand pages long—and the stories would be stunningly similar. Only the names and a few details would change.

  I worked with the prosecution on the stalking aspects of the Simpson criminal trial, and later on the civil suit brought by the Goldman family, but I don’t discuss the case here as an advocate. In one sense, it is nothing more than an example of this common crime. In another sense, however, it is much, much more. For American children who are under ten in 1997, this one case dominated the news for at least 30 percent of their lives. It was all that was on daytime TV, all they saw on tabloid covers at their eye-level at the supermarket, and all that the adults seemed to be discussing at the dinner table. It is, ultimately, an American myth about Daddy killing Mommy—and getting away with it. Whatever your opinion of the case, that myth is part of its legacy. So are the many myths that were widely promoted by the Scheme Team, Simpson’s criminal defense lawyers.

  They told us, “Just because a man beats his wife doesn’t mean he killed her,” and that’s true. But what’s that got to do with O.J. Simpson, who beat his wife, broke into her home, threatened her (at least once with a gun), terrorized her, and stalked her? That behavior puts him very near the center of the predictive circle for wife murder.

  The Scheme Team’s observation is a little like saying, “Just because someone buys dough doesn’t mean he’s going to make pizza,” and that’s true, but if he buys dough, spreads it around on a tin tray, adds tomato sauce, adds cheese, and puts it in the oven, then, even if Simpson lawyer Alan Dershowitz tells you differently, you can be comfortable predicting that pizza is being made.

  Why do I call the Simpson lawyers the Scheme Team? Because it reminds me that wife murderers and their lawyers frequently scheme to design defenses for an indefensible crime. Every murder discussed in this chapter, except those in which the perpetrators committed suicide after killing their spouses, was followed by some creative legal excuse making.

  What was clear in the Simpson case is that while Ron Goldman may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, Nicole had been in the wrong place for a long time. As prosecutor Scott Gordon, now the chairman of L.A.’s forward-thinking Domestic Violence Council, said, “Simpson was killing Nicole for years—she finally died on June twelfth.” This concept of a long, slow crime is what I want to focus on as we discuss predicting and preventing these tragedies.

  Despite the misinformation offered to the American public by paid advocates in service of just one man, there are many reliable pre-incident indicators associated with spousal violence and murder. They won’t all be present in every case, but if a situation has several of these signals, there is reason for concern:

  1) The woman has intuitive feelings that she is at risk.

  2) At the inception of the relationship, the man accelerated the pace, prematurely placing on the agenda such things as commitment, living together, and marriage.

  3) He resolves conflict with intimidation, bullying, and violence.

  4) He is verbally abusive.

  5) He uses threats and intimidation as instruments of control or abuse. This includes threats to harm physically, to defame, to embarrass, to restrict freedom, to disclose secrets, to cut off support, to abandon, and to commit suicide.

  6) He breaks or strikes things in anger. He uses symbolic violence (tearing a wedding photo, marring a face in a photo, etc.).

  7) He has battered in prior relationships.

  8) He uses alcohol or drugs with adverse affects (memory loss, hostility, cruelty).

  9) He cites alcohol or drugs as an excuse or explanation for hostile or violent conduct (“That was the booze talking, not me; I got so drunk I was crazy”).

  10) His history includes police encounters for behavioral offenses (threats, stalking, assault, battery).

  11) There has been more than one incident of violent behavior (including vandalism, breaking things, throwing things).

  12) He uses money to control the activities, purchase, and behavior of his wife/partner.

  13) He becomes jealous of anyone or anything that takes her time away from the relationship; he keeps her on a “tight leash,” requires her to account for her time.

  14) He refuses to accept rejection.

  15) He expects the relationship to go on forever, perhaps using phrases like “together for life;” “always;” “no matter what.”

  16) He projects extreme emotions onto others (hate, love, jealousy, commitment) even when there is no evidence that would lead a reasonable person to perceive them.

  17) He minimizes incidents of abuse.

  18) He spends a disproportionate amount of time talking about his wife/partner and derives much of his identity from being her husband, lover, etc.

  19) He tries to enlist his wife’s friends or relatives in a campaign to keep or recover the relationship.

  20) He has inappropriately surveilled or followed his wife/partner.

  21) He believes others are out to get him. He believes that those around his wife/partner dislike him and encourage her to leave.

  22) He resists change and is described as inflexible, unwilling to compromise.

  23) He identifies with or compares himself to violent people in films, news stories, fiction, or history. He characterizes the violence of others as justified.

  24) He suffers mood swings or is sullen, angry, or depressed.

  25) He consistently blames others for problems of his own making; he refuses to take responsibility for the results of his actions.

  26) He refers to weapons as instruments of power, control, or revenge.

  27) Weapons are a substantial part of his persona; he has a gun or he talks about, jokes about, reads about, or collects weapons.

  28) He uses “male privilege” as a justification for his conduct (treats her like a servant, makes all the big decisions, acts like the “master of the house”).

  29) He experienced or witnessed violence as a child.

  30) His wife/partner fears he will injure or kill her. She has discussed this with others or has made plans to be carried out in the event of her death (e.g., designating someone to care for children).

  With this list and all you know about intuition and prediction, you can now help prevent America’s most predictable murders. Literally. Refer the woman to a battered women’s shelter, if for nothing else than to speak to someone who knows about what she is facing, in her life and in herself. Refer the man to a battered women’s shelter; they will be able to suggest programs for him. When there is violence, report it to the police.

  This list reminds us that before our next breakfast, another twelve women will be killed—mothers, sisters, daughters. In almost every case, the violence that preceded the final violence was a secret kept by several people. This list can say to women who are in that situation that they must get out. It can say to police officers who might not arrest that they must arrest, to doctors who might not notify that they must notify. It can
say to prosecutors that they must file charges. It can say to neighbors who might ignore violence that they must not.

  It can also speak to men who might recognize themselves, and that is meaningful. After Christopher Darden’s closing argument in the Simpson trial, co-prosecutor Scott Gordon and I joined him in his office. We read faxes from around the country sent by victims of domestic violence, but we were equally moved by messages from abusive men, one of which read, “You may have just saved my wife’s life, for as I listened to you describing Simpson’s abuse, I recognized myself.” Unlike some murders, spousal homicide is a crime that can strike with conscience.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  Before any discussion on how a woman can get out of an unwanted relationship, we must first recognize that many women choose not to get out. Right now, as you are reading these words, at least one woman in America is being beaten by her husband—and now another, for it happens once every few seconds. So while it’s old news that many men are violent, we must also accept that a nearly equal number of women choose to stay with them. This means that many accurate predictions of danger are being ignored. Why?

  I can share part of the answer from my personal experience as a boy. I vividly recall the night when my sister and I ran out the door at two A.M. after hours of violence. Afraid to go back home, we called the police from a pay-phone and reported two kids loitering so that we’d get picked up and taken to jail, where we’d be safe. That experience and the years that led up to it helped me to understand that many women stay for the same reason I stayed: Until that night, no other possibility ever occurred to me. Before that night, you could no more have gotten me to voluntarily leave my family than I could get you to leave yours right now.

  Like the battered child, the battered woman gets a powerful feeling of overwhelming relief when an incident ends. She becomes addicted to that feeling. The abuser is the only person who can deliver moments of peace, by being his better self for a while. Thus, the abuser holds the key to the abused person’s feeling of well-being. The abuser delivers the high highs that bookend the low lows, and the worse the bad times get, the better the good times are in contrast. All of this is in addition to the fact that a battered woman is shell-shocked enough to believe that each horrible incident may be the last.

  Understanding how people evaluate personal risk has helped me better understand why so many women in danger stay there. As I learned from my experiences with violence as a child, many of these women have been beaten so much that their fear mechanism is dulled to the point that they take in stride risks that others would consider extraordinary. The relationship between violence and death is no longer apparent to them. One woman who’d been at a shelter and then returned to her abuser gives us a good example: She called the shelter late one night to ask if she could come back. As always, the first question the counselor asked was “Are you in danger now?” The woman said no. Later in the call the woman added, almost as an aside, that her husband was outside the room with a gun. Hadn’t she just a moment earlier said she wasn’t in danger? To her, if he was in the same room with the gun or the gun was being held to her head, then she would be in danger.

  How could someone feel that being beaten does not justify leaving? Being struck and forced not to resist is a particularly damaging form of abuse because it trains out of the victim the instinctive reaction to protect the self. To override that most natural and central instinct, a person must come to believe that he or she is not worth protecting. Being beaten by a “loved one” sets up a conflict between two instincts that should never compete: the instinct to stay in a secure environment (the family) and the instinct to flee a dangerous environment. As if on a see-saw, the instinct to stay prevails in the absence of concrete options on the other side. Getting that lop-sided see-saw off the ground takes more energy than many victims have.

  No amount of logic can usually move a battered woman, so persuasion requires emotional leverage, not statistics or moral arguments. In my many efforts to convince women to leave violent relationships, I have seen their fear and resistance first-hand. I recall a long talk with Janine, a thirty-three-year-old mother of two who showed me photos the police had taken of her injuries after one of the frequent beatings she received. She was eager to tell me about her husband’s abuse but just as eager to make excuses for him. Though the most recent beating had left her with three broken ribs, she was going back to him again. I asked her what she would do if her teenage daughter was beaten up by a boyfriend. “Well, I’d probably kill the guy, but one thing’s for sure: I’d tell her she could never see him again.”

  “What is the difference between you and your daughter?” I asked. Janine, who had a fast explanation for every aspect of her husband’s behavior, had no answer for her own, so I offered her one: “The difference is that your daughter has you—and you don’t have you. If you don’t get out soon, your daughter won’t have you either.” This was resonant to Janine because of its truth: she really didn’t have a part of herself, the self-protective part. She had come out of her own childhood with it already shaken, and her husband had beaten it out completely. She did, however, retain the instinct to protect her children, and it was for them that she was finally able to leave.

  Though leaving is not an option that seems available to many battered women, I believe that the first time a woman is hit, she is a victim and the second time, she is a volunteer. Invariably, after a television interview or speech in which I say this, I hear from people who feel I don’t understand the dynamic of battery, that I don’t understand the “syndrome.” In fact, I have a deep and personal understanding of the syndrome, but I never pass up an opportunity to make clear that staying is a choice. Of those who argue that it isn’t, I ask: Is it a choice when a woman finally does leave, or is there some syndrome to explain leaving as if it too is involuntary? I believe it is critical for a woman to view staying as a choice, for only then can leaving be viewed as a choice and an option.

  Also, if we dismiss the woman’s participation as being beyond choice, then what about the man? Couldn’t we point to his childhood, his insecurities, his shaky identity, his addiction to control, and say that his behavior too is determined by a syndrome and is thus beyond his choice? Every human behavior can be explained by what precedes it, but that does not excuse it, and we must hold abusive men accountable.

  Whoever we may blame, there is some responsibility on both sides of the gender line, particularly if there are children involved. Both parents who participate are hurting their children terribly (the man more than the woman, but both parents). Children learn most from modeling, and as a mother accepts the blows, so likely will her daughter. As a father delivers the blows, so likely will his son.

  Though I know that dedicated, constructive people want to educate the public as to why so many women stay, I want to focus on how so many women leave. Helen Keller, a woman in another type of trap said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  Many batterers control the money, allowing little access to bank accounts or even financial information. Some control the schedule, the car keys, the major purchases, the choice in clothes, the choice in friends. The batterer may be a benevolent control freak at the start of an intimate relationship, but he becomes a malevolent control freak later. And there’s another wrinkle: He gives punishment and reward unpredictably, so that any day now, any moment now, he’ll be his great old self, his honeymoon self, and this provides an ingredient that is essential to keeping the woman from leaving: hope. Does he do all this with evil design? No, it is part of his concept of how to retain love. Children who do not learn to expect and accept love in natural ways become adults who find other ways to get it.

  Controlling may work for a while, even a long while, but then it begins not to work, and so he escalates. He will do anything to stay in control, but his wife is changing, and that causes him to suffer. In fact, the Buddhist definition of human suf
fering applies perfectly: “clinging to that which changes.” When men in these situations do not find out what is going on inside them, when they do not get counseling or therapy, it is a choice to continue using violence. Such men are taking the risk that violence will escalate to homicide, for as Carl Jung said, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

  Working closely with the Domestic Violence Council, I’ve learned that for every battered woman who makes the choice to leave, we as a society must provide a place for her to go. In Los Angeles County, where eleven million people live, there are only 420 battered women’s shelter beds! On any given night, 75 percent of those beds are occupied by children.

  In Los Angeles we have a hotline that automatically connects callers to the nearest shelter. Through that number, established by Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti, battered women are taught how to get out safely. They learn to make duplicates of car keys and identification papers, how to hide these items from their husbands, how to choose the best time to run, and how not to be tracked when they escape into the modern-day underground railroad that shelters have become. I believe so strongly in the value of this hotline that my company funds it. I mention it here because every city in America needs such a number, and needs to get it prominently displayed in phone booths, phone books, gas stations, schools, and hospital emergency rooms.