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

by Gavin De Becker

  There is a glib response to all this: when men are very violent and dangerous, they are going to kill no matter what, so the TRO can’t make things worse. But here’s the rub: The TRO does hurt by convincing the woman that she is safe. One prominent family court judge has said, “Women must realize that this paper won’t stop the next fist or the next bullet.” But it isn’t only women who must realize it—it is the whole criminal-justice system. A woman can be expected to learn from her own experience, but the system should learn from all the experiences.

  Carol Arnett has had experience running a battered women’s shelter and, years before that, running to a battered women’s shelter. Now the executive director of the Los Angeles County Domestic Violence Council, Arnett says:

  We shelter workers have watched the criminal justice system fail to protect, and often even endanger women for so many years that we are very cautious about recommending restraining orders. We rely upon the woman herself to plan a course of action. Anyone, in or out of the system, who tells a women she must follow a particular course that goes against her own judgment and intuition is not only failing to use the philosophy of empowerment, but may well be endangering the woman.

  Above all, I want to encourage people to ask this simple question: Will a restraining order help or hurt in my particular case? At least then, whatever choice is made can be called a choice, and not an automatic reaction. Think of restraining orders as an option, not the only option.

  Among those options, I certainly favor law enforcement interventions such as arrests for battery, assault, breaking and entering, or other violations of the law. You might wonder how this differs from being arrested for violating a TRO. Charges for breaking the law involve the system versus the law-breaker, whereas restraining orders involve an abuser versus his wife. Many batterers find intolerable the idea of being under the control of their victims, and with a court order, a woman seeks to control her husband’s conduct, thus turning the tables of their relationship. Conversely, when the system pursues charges for a crime like battery, it is the man’s actions—not those of his wife—that bring him a predictable consequence. Abusers should be fully prosecuted for every offense, and I believe prosecutions are an important deterrent to further abuse, but even then, the women must be prepared for the possibility of escalation.

  The bottom line is that there is really only one good reason to get a restraining order in a case of wife abuse: the woman believes the man will honor it and leave her alone. If a victim or a professional in the system gets a restraining order to stop someone from committing murder, they have probably applied the wrong strategy.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  So what can we tell a woman who thinks she might be killed? Seek and apply strategies that make you unavailable to your pursuer. If you really believe you are at risk, battered women’s shelters provide the best way to be safe. Shelter locations are secret, and the professionals there understand what the legal system often doesn’t: that the issue is safety—not justice. The distinction between safety and justice is often blurred, but it becomes clear when you are walking down a crowded city sidewalk, and an athletic young man grabs your purse or briefcase. As he runs off into fast-moving traffic, justice requires that you chase the youth down to catch and arrest him. But as he zig-zags through traffic, cars barely missing him, safety requires that you break off the chase. It is unfair that he gets away unpunished, but it is more important that you come away unhurt. (To remind clients that my job is to help them be safer, I have a small sign on my desk that reads, Do not come here for justice.)

  Shelters are where safety is, where guidance is, and where wisdom is. Admittedly, going to a shelter is a major and inconvenient undertaking, and it’s easy to see why so many victims are lured by the good news that a restraining order will solve the whole problem. But imagine that your doctor said you needed immediate surgery to save your life. Would you ask, “Isn’t there a piece of paper I can carry instead?”

  Los Angeles city attorney John Wilson, a thoughtful and experienced man who pioneered the nation’s first stalking prosecutions, knows of too many cases in which the victim remained available to her victimizer after the man was arrested and released. Wilson attended a talk I gave to police executives, and he later wrote to me. I am comfortable sharing this part of his moving letter:

  Your theme really hit home. Unfortunately for one young wife, I failed to heed your advice in mid-April. I filed a battery on her husband, and when he got out of jail, he killed her. This was my sixth death since joining the office, and each of them fit right into your profile.

  Having read all of this, you may wonder how there is any disagreement whatsoever about the indiscriminate use of restraining orders and other confrontational interventions, but there is. I’ve heard all sides of it, and I must tell you, I don’t get it. Perhaps since TRO’s are issued in America at the rate of more than one thousand every day, and women aren’t killed at that same rate, it may look, statistically speaking, as if they are successful. I don’t know, but in any case and in every case, police must urge extreme caution in the period following issuance of a TRO. That time is emotionally charged and hazardous, and I hope that when police recommend restraining orders they will also put great effort into ensuring that the woman takes every practical step to make herself unavailable to her pursuer.

  Psychologist Lenore Walker, who coined the term “battered wife syndrome” (and who later surprised the domestic violence community by joining O.J. Simpson’s defense team) has said of spousal homicide, “There’s no way to predict it.” She is wrong. Spousal homicide is the single most predictable serious crime in America. Walker’s error does make clear, however, that there is an urgent need to help police, prosecutors, and victims systematically evaluate cases to identify those with the ingredients of true danger. Toward this goal, my firm designed MOSAIC-20, an artificial intuition system that assesses the details of a woman’s situation as she reports it to police. This computer program flags those cases in which the danger of homicide is highest. Part of the proceeds from this book go to its continued development, and I am proud to be working with the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and the Los Angeles Police Department on the nation’s first use of MOSAIC-20. (See appendix 5 for more information.) This system brings to regular citizens the same technologies and strategies used to protect high government officials. That’s only fair considering that battered women are at far greater risk of murder than most public figures.

  In the meantime, restraining orders continue to be what author Linden Gross calls law enforcement’s “knee-jerk response.” I can’t ask rhetorically if somebody has to die before things change, because so many people already have.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  Thousands of cases have made it clear to me that getting away safely is wiser than trying to change the abusive husband or engaging in a war, even if the police and the courts are on your side. As with other aspects of safety, government cannot fix violent relationships. Many people in law enforcement, motivated by a strong desire to help, are understandably reluctant to accept that some forms of criminality are beyond their reach. Thankfully, there are also those in law enforcement tempered by experience who know all about these cases and become heroes. That brings me to Lisa’s story.

  Lisa did not know that this police sergeant had looked across the counter into plenty of bruised faces before that night. She thought her situation was unique and special, and she was certain the department would act on it right away, particularly when she explained that her husband had held a gun to her head.

  An hour earlier, after climbing out the window and running down several darkened streets, she had looked around and realized she was lost. But in a more important sense, she was found. She had re-discovered herself—the young woman she’d been 15 years before—before he’d slapped her, before he escalated to choking her, and before the incident with the gun. The children had seen that one, but no
w they would see her stronger, supported by the police. They would see him apologize, and then it would be okay. The police would talk some sense into her husband and force him to treat her right, and then it would be okay.

  She proudly told the sergeant, “I’m not going back to him unless he promises never to hit me again.” The sergeant nodded and passed some forms across the counter. “You fill these out—fill them out completely—and then I’m going to put them over there.” He pointed to a messy stack of forms and reports piled on a cabinet.

  The sergeant looked at the young woman, the woman planning to go back to her abuser, back to the man with the gun he claimed he bought for self defense but was really for defense of the self.

  The sergeant then said the words that changed Lisa’s life, the words that a decade later she would thank him for speaking, the words that allowed her to leave her violent abuser: “You fill out these forms and go back home, and the next time I look for them, it will be because you have been murdered.”

  ▪ CHAPTER ELEVEN ▪

  “I WAS TRYING

  TO LET HIM DOWN EASY”

  With these words begins a story my office hears several times each month. Before meeting with me, the intelligent young woman may have told it to friends, a psychologist, a private detective, a lawyer, a police officer, maybe even a judge, but the problem persisted. It is the story of a situation that once seemed innocent, or at least manageable, but is now frightening. It is the story of someone who started as a seemingly normal suitor but was soon revealed to be something else.

  There are two broad categories of stalking: unwanted pursuit by a stranger, and unwanted pursuit by someone the victim knows. The cases of total strangers fixating on private citizens are, by comparison to other types of stalking, very rare, and they are also the cases least likely to end in violence. Accordingly, I’ll be exploring those cases that affect the largest population of victims: stalking by someone who has romantic aspirations, often someone a woman has met or dated.

  Though it is fashionable for the news media to report on stalkers as if they are some unique type of criminal, those who choose regular citizens are not. They’re not from Mars—they are from Miami and Boston, San Diego and Brentwood. They are the man our sister dated, the man our company hired, the man our friend married.

  Against this background, we men must see in them a part of ourselves in order to better understand the issue. Giving talks around the country, I sometimes ask the audience, “How many of the men here ever found out where a girl lived or worked by means other than asking her? How many have driven by a girl’s house to see what cars were there, or called just to see who answered the phone and then hung up?”

  By the overwhelming show of hands, I’ve learned that the acceptability of these behaviors is a matter of degree. After one speech, a policeman who’d been in the audience asked to talk with me alone. He told me how he realized just then that he had relentlessly pursued a female student at the police academy when he was on the staff there. She said no to him for eighteen months, all the while concerned that the rejection would have an impact on her career. “She gave me no indication that she wanted a relationship with me, but I never let up, not for a moment,” he said. “It paid off, though. We got married.”

  I suppose you could say it paid off, but the story tells more about how complicated the issue of romantic pursuit is. It is clear that for women in recent decades, the stakes of resisting romantic attention have risen sharply. Some invisible line exists between what is all right and what is too far—and men and women don’t always agree on where to place that line. Victims and their unwanted pursuers never agree, and sometimes victims and the police don’t either.

  Everyone agrees, however, at the point where one of these situations includes violence, but why can we not reach consensus before that? To answer this, I have to recall the images of Dustin Hoffman storming into a church, and Demi Moore showing up uninvited at a business meeting. I have to talk about regular, everyday guys, and about the dictionary. It may seem that these things aren’t related to stalking and unwanted pursuit, but—as I’m sure your intuition has already told you—they are.

  In the sixties, a movie came out that painted a welcome and lasting picture of how a young man could court a woman. It was The Graduate. In it, Dustin Hoffman dates a girl (played by Katherine Ross) and then asks her to marry him. She says no, but he doesn’t hear it. He waits outside her classes at school and asks again, and then again. Eventually, she writes him a letter saying she’s thought it over carefully and decided not to marry him. In fact, she is leaving town and marrying another man. That would seem a pretty clear message—but not in the movies.

  Hoffman uses stalking techniques to find her. He pretends to be a friend of the groom, then a family member, then a priest. Ultimately, he finds the church and breaks into it just seconds after Katherine Ross is pronounced the wife of another man. He then beats up the bride’s father, hits some other people, and wields a large wooden cross against the wedding guests who try to help the family.

  And what happens? He gets the girl. She runs off with Dustin Hoffman, leaving her family and new husband behind. Also left behind is the notion that a woman should be heard, the notion that no means no, and the notion that a woman has a right to decide who will be in her life.

  My generation saw in The Graduate that there is one romantic strategy to use above all others: persistence. This same strategy is at the core of every stalking case. Men pursuing unlikely or inappropriate relationships with women and getting them is a common theme promoted in our culture. Just recall Flashdance, Tootsie, The Heartbreak Kid, 10, Blame it on Rio, Honeymoon in Las Vegas, Indecent Proposal.

  This Hollywood formula could be called Boy Wants Girl, Girl Doesn’t Want Boy, Boy Harasses Girl, Boy Gets Girl. Many movies teach that if you just stay with it, even if you offend her, even if she says she wants nothing to do with you, even if you’ve treated her like trash (and sometimes because you’ve treated her like trash), you’ll get the girl. Even if she’s in another relationship, even if you look like Dustin Hoffman, you’ll eventually get Katherine Ross or Jessica Lange. Persistence will win the war Against All Odds (another of these movies, by the way). Even the seemingly innocuous TV show Cheers touches the topic. Sam’s persistent and inappropriate sexual harassment of two female co-workers—eight years of it—doesn’t get him fired or sued. It does, however, get him both women.

  There’s a lesson in real-life stalking cases that young women can benefit from learning: persistence only proves persistence—it does not prove love. The fact that a romantic pursuer is relentless doesn’t mean you are special—it means he is troubled.

  It isn’t news that men and women often speak different languages, but when the stakes are the highest, it’s important to remember that men are nice when they pursue, and women are nice when they reject. Naturally this leads to confusion, and it brings us to the popular practice of letting him down easy.

  True to what they are taught, rejecting women often say less than they mean. True to what they are taught, men often hear less than what is said. Nowhere is this problem more alarmingly expressed than by the hundreds of thousands of fathers (and mothers), older brothers (and sisters), movies and television shows that teach most men that when she says no, that’s not what she means. Add to this all the women taught to “play hard to get,” when that’s not what they are really feeling. The result is that “no” can mean many things in this culture. Here’s just a small sample:

  Maybe Not yet

  Hmm… Give me time

  Not sure Keep trying

  I’ve found my man!

  There is one book in which the meaning of no is always clear. It is the dictionary, but since Hollywood writers don’t seem to use that book very often, we have to. We have to teach young people that “No” is a complete sentence. This is not as simple as it may appear, given the deep cultural roots of the no/maybe hybrid. It has become part of the contract between men a
nd women and was even explored by the classic contract theorists, Rousseau and Locke. Rousseau asked: “Why do you consult their words when it is not their mouths that speak?” Locke spoke of a man’s winning “silent consent” by reading it in a woman’s eyes “in spite of the mouth’s denial.” Locke even asserted that a man is protecting a woman’s honor when he ignores her refusal: “If he then completes his happiness, he is not brutal, he is decent.” In Locke’s world, date rape wouldn’t be a crime at all—it would be a gentleman’s act of courtesy.

  Even if men and women in America spoke the same language, they would still live by much different standards. For example, if a man in a movie researches a woman’s schedule, finds out where she lives and works, even goes to her work uninvited, it shows his commitment, proves his love. When Robert Redford does this to Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal, it’s adorable. But when she shows up at his work unannounced, interrupting a business lunch, it’s alarming and disruptive.

  If a man in the movies wants a sexual encounter or applies persistence, he’s a regular everyday guy, but if a woman does the same thing, she’s a maniac or a killer. Just recall Fatal Attraction, King of Comedy, Single White Female, Play Misty for Me, Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and Basic Instinct. When the men pursue, they usually get the girl. When the women pursue, they usually get killed.