by Hoda Kotb
One relative followed Robert up to the bathroom and began screaming at her.
“Robert grabbed me by the back of the hair and was beating me on the bathroom floor.”
The other relative bounded up the stairs and told Robert, “That’s enough.”
Amy says she doesn’t know the exact street value of the cocaine she dumped into the toilet, but she did feel that had his relative not intervened, Robert was enraged enough to have killed her.
To her knowledge, Robert never again brought drugs into the house. Amy admits to making poor decisions of her own during the relationship with Robert. She says she did things with him and for him that were against her principles.
“Honestly, when I was with him, I was an ugly person; he made me an ugly person. I became a very negative and hateful person, and that’s not who I am. I don’t deny anything I ever did that I’m not proud of, but I was a product of my environment.”
Things got very ugly. The pattern of violence was reinforced month after month and year after year. Robert did not abuse Marcus or Terrell; he saved his cruelty for Amy. She would take the abuse until she reached a breaking point and then leave. She and the boys would show up repeatedly at her parents’ house. Despite their horror, Amy says they never turned their backs on her.
“I came home two, three, or four A.M. and I had a bloody face, and I was bruised, and my mom took a picture of me and said, ‘This is what he’s doing to you and your family and your kids!’ and I literally didn’t care,” Amy says, describing her state of mind. “You’re not hearing what they’re saying. My mom said, ‘You have a choice at this point. It’s gonna be you or your kids.’ At that point, I was like, ‘F you, Mom, you can’t tell me what to do, I’m grown!’ Two hours later, Robert is calling me and begging and crying and saying, ‘Baby, I’m sorry, I promise I’ll get help.’ My mom and I would get in screaming fights. She would beg me, ‘If you want to go back to that nonsense, leave my grandbabies here.’ I was blessed to have my parents, as much as I’m sure they wanted to kill me, because every time I’d knock on their door at three o’clock in the morning bloodied and bruised, and say that me and my kids needed a place to stay, two days later, they’d watch me walk out of their house with the same person who did that to us.”
The pain of watching that pattern runs so deep for Amy’s mom and for Amy’s closest friend, who also housed Amy several times, that neither wanted to share her memories of that time. It’s a door they’ve closed and dead-bolted. Imagine the immeasurable frustration and fear they felt. Amy just kept going back, and taking the kids with her.
“He would beg and plead, ‘I’ll never do this again. We’ll go to counseling,’ all these broken promises. And I would go back. Every time. The person that is there is the person you love and has a great personality. You fell in love with Jekyll, but then when they abuse you, it’s Hyde. But when they beg for you back, they put forward Jekyll, who you love and who made you feel special. It’s a never-ending battle of abuse and the person you love, especially when you are two, three, four hundred pounds,” she says. “Every time he came back to me he said, ‘No one’s gonna love you like me. No one’s gonna love you because of the way you look. I’m the only one who’s ever gonna love you because you’re as fat as you are,’ and I’d be thinking, You’re right; I’m four hundred pounds.”
Amy felt hopeless and numb. She had big problems and little faith.
“I was raised in the church. I was confirmed. We went to church every week. But I turned from God. I was like, If there really was a God, he would not have me going through this,” she says. “I threw Bibles in the garbage. I threw crosses and crucifixes in the garbage, because I was sure there was not a God.”
By the time Marcus and Terrell were seven and four years old, they were very afraid of Robert. Their mother’s pattern of escaping his wrath became a routine part of their young lives.
“When we escaped in the middle of the night, Marcus knew to be quiet. Whenever I went into his room and woke him up at two o’clock in the morning, as a seven-year-old, he knew he needed to be quiet. He would put on his shoes without question; he knew that he was going to walk next to me,” she says, “and we would walk into his brother’s room, and his brother was only four, and I would pick my young son up, and at that time I was five hundred pounds, so here we were, trying to escape in the middle of the night.”
Amy starts to cry, thinking about what she was asking of her little boys.
“Marcus would put on his shoes, and he would grab his jacket without making a sound so we could go wake Terrell. Even at four years old, Terrell would wake up and not cry. He would just grab his shoes, knowing we were trying to escape that night.”
Amy had mapped out the quietest escape route before she ever needed to use it.
“The house we were in, the floors would creak. And because I was so heavy,” she explains, “I would actually, when Robert was gone, get out of bed, and I would walk on the floor to find out where the boards creaked, so I could make an escape route where he wouldn’t hear me. I knew the third and the seventh step I couldn’t step on, because I was too heavy and that the floor would creak, and I would be too scared that he would wake up.”
Amy’s plan extended beyond the floorboards and out onto the street where her truck was parked.
“I knew how to pop a clutch without actually turning on the vehicle to get it started once I rolled down the hill, so he wouldn’t hear us.”
In early 2004, following a series of numbing episodes of abuse, Amy woke up on a Sunday morning with an intense need to go to church.
“I didn’t even believe in God at that point, because if there was a God I would not be going through what I’d been going through. But there was just an overwhelming feeling—I can’t even explain it—that I needed to go to church,” she says. “I didn’t even know what church I would go to because I hadn’t been to church in years.”
Amy left the bed and went into the bathroom. When she began to shower, Robert woke up and asked her where she was going. She told him to church.
“So, of course, there was this extreme jealousy, like I was going to see someone. The next thing I remember is him pulling me out of the shower and beating me.” She starts to cry, recalling how her youngest found her lying on the bathroom floor. “I woke up to my four-year-old son waking me up, scrubbing my face with the drenched bath mat, saying, ‘Mama, wake up. I want to make you look beautiful again.’ ”
Amy never made it to church, but she did make up her mind.
“I was like, That’s it. I cannot be here anymore.”
When Robert left the house, Amy packed as much as she could into her truck and, with her parents’ support, hit the road. She and the boys moved in with girlfriends who lived in Madison, Wisconsin. Before long, she found a town house and created a more peaceful setting for herself and her sons.
Three months later, the doorbell rang at midnight.
“And I opened the door and he was standing there,” she says. “The sense of fear and urgency—I can’t even explain the feeling. He was crying and begging and ‘I’m sorry, I came to find you,’ and ‘I can’t live without you,’ and all the things abusers do to get you back. They feed on your insecurities and all the things that they’ve been priming you for during the years that you’ve been in this ridiculous relationship.”
Amy wanted desperately to believe Dr. Jekyll, standing on her doorstep.
“The person that comes back to you—and this is with every abusive relationship—and begs for your forgiveness and begs for you to come back to them is the person you fell in love with. It’s this kind person who is smart and gorgeous and affectionate. And he is standing on the opposite side of the doorway.”
Robert told Amy he’d enrolled in anger management classes and that he loved her. But Amy squared up to Robert and beat back the kernel of hope she felt forming in her heart.
“I was like, ‘Screw off. I’m not taking you back.’ ”
; Robert didn’t give up. Every weekend, he drove the four hours from Minnesota to Wisconsin to see her. He showed her the certificate he got from attending anger management classes. He reminded Amy of his difficult childhood—raised by a crack-addicted and physically abused mother who suffered a fatal heart attack in front of him—claiming she, Amy, was all he had.
I hate to even ask Amy if she took him back, but I do.
“Of course. A complete dumbass. I was a complete dumbass,” she admits.
In mid-2004, she and the boys moved back to Minnesota into Robert’s house. Two weeks later, Amy needed to drive back to Wisconsin to put her house on the market. The kids had to go to school, so she left them with Robert. The honeymoon period was in full effect.
“It was the person I fell in love with,” she says. “He was wonderful with me; he was wonderful with the kids.”
Amy returned from her trip on a Monday, and asked Robert to go with her to pick up the boys, now eight and five years old, from school.
“I get to the school, and the principal says to me, ‘I can’t give you any information about your kids; you have to call social services.’ ”
Confused, Amy got back in the car with Robert and called her mom.
“She said, ‘Are you with Robert?’ and I told her yes. She said, ‘You have a custody hearing on Thursday morning at eight thirty because your kids were beaten very badly. And because you were out of state, the state gave your dad and me temporary custody of the boys.’ ”
The situation that sparked the abuse occurred while the boys were staying by themselves with Robert. He found laundry on the floor, became angry, and went after Terrell. When Marcus came to his brother’s defense, Robert beat them both. The boys showed up for school with welts and bruises on their bodies caused by Robert’s blows with a cable cord. Ultimately charges were filed against Robert for beating the boys.
Amy was shocked by her mother’s words. Your kids were beaten very badly. She was infuriated. The usual nausea she felt before a confrontation with Robert was replaced by focused rage. Amy turned toward him, still holding the phone.
“I was in the car with him and I looked at him and I said, ‘You beat my kids?’ For him to see that anger and fear in my face, he must have worried that he was going to lose control of me. He took the phone while I was still on with my mom and threw it out the window. My mom said she thought that was the last time she would ever hear my voice. And he said, ‘I did not beat your children. I disciplined them, and if you have any lack of understanding between the two, I will show you the difference between discipline and a beating.’ ”
And he did. He drove Amy home and beat her for the next three days.
“I had no concept of time. I couldn’t see because my eyes were swollen shut. And when you black out from being beaten, you don’t know if you’ve blacked out for two minutes or two days. My only concept of time was what I could hear on the TV. Robert was so physically exhausted from beating me, he would fall asleep. But before he did, he would shackle me to him. And when you’re almost five hundred pounds, there is nothing you can do gracefully or quietly. I had lost blood, I hadn’t eaten, I had urinated on myself; I was a mess. But I knew at that point I had to get to that hearing in court.”
Amy says when she heard late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien’s voice on television on what she guessed was the third night, she knew she didn’t have very much time left to get to the eight thirty A.M. hearing.
“I literally got on my knees,” she says, beginning to cry, “and I said, ‘God, I know that this is my time, and I am asking your forgiveness, because it’s either me or him. Either I am going to kill him and ask your forgiveness and that you take my soul to heaven, or he’s going to kill me, and I need you to take care of my kids and take my soul.’ I was mentally prepared to kill him, still shackled to him, so I could get away from him and get to my kids.”
When Amy attempted to free herself from Robert, he woke up and was enraged.
“I was at the point where I was done. I didn’t care anymore. The only thing that had kept me alive for the past two or three years was my kids. If it wasn’t for my kids, I wouldn’t have cared if he killed me. Abusers take your soul from you. You have no soul.”
Robert and Amy’s toxic three-year relationship had come down to a death match.
“I said to him, ‘It’s me or you.’ And he said, ‘It’s not gonna be me,’ ” she says. “The next thing I remember is him stabbing me with a knife in the center of my stomach, and everything went black.”
When she came to, Amy heard sirens blaring and voices asking her questions.
“I had no ID, nobody knew who I was,” she says. “I was just this fat, bloodied, abused person lying on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. To this day, I do not know for sure how I got there.”
Emergency workers in front of the Sherburne County courthouse were trying to get a handle on the identity of the beaten, bleeding woman. Amy was trying to get answers about the date and time.
“I’m like, ‘What day is it? What day is it?’ And they said, ‘It’s Thursday. Who did this to you?’ I told them and said they needed to bring me to my kids,” she says. “They said, ‘Ma’am, you’re in critical condition.’ I told them I didn’t care, and I blacked out. Everything went black.”
Amy says emergency workers later told her that they lost her heartbeat for a few seconds. They managed to stabilize her and get her into the ambulance. She continued to tell them she needed to go to court, but they insisted that she go instead to the hospital.
“I said, ‘You cannot legally keep me here and I have to get to my kids.’ There was a cop who told the EMTs they couldn’t legally take me, even though I was in critical condition. So, they wheeled me to court on a stretcher, covered with a sheet because I was naked, and they stabilized me with tubes. I will never forget the look on my father’s face,” she says, breaking down, “but I looked at the judge and I said, ‘I just want my kids back.’ ” She continues through tears. “And the judge said, ‘You have to get healthy for them.’ The judge didn’t care that I was five hundred pounds. The judge didn’t care that I was fat. He was saying, in order for you to get your kids back, you have to be mentally and emotionally healthy. It wasn’t about me getting physically healthy, it was mentally and emotionally. I was a freakin’ basket case because of all the stuff I was going through. And honestly, at that point in my life, I didn’t care if I lived or died, but my kids are the reason I breathe. The judge said, ‘In order to get your kids back, you have to get a job, you have to find a place to live, you have to pass assessments by the state.’ ”
The ambulance took Amy to the hospital, where representatives from a local battered women’s shelter told her they had a bed waiting for her if she wanted it. She told them to save it for her.
Once Amy was released from the hospital, she entered the shelter, the Alexandra House. She took advantage of pro bono legal work offered at the shelter and filed an order for protection against Robert. She also divorced her estranged husband. Amy wanted a clean slate and, first and foremost, her boys back. Amy immediately began looking for a job.
“The judge said to me I needed to have a job, and I didn’t care if it was at 7-Eleven; I needed to get my kids back,” she says.
Amy applied for any and all jobs. She got a call back from a software company to interview for a position as an executive assistant and a paralegal.
“I was black and blue when I went to the job interview. My eyes were swollen shut, I had stitches in my body; I was a hot mess. The guy asked me, ‘What would be your availability?’ and I said, ‘I’m not leaving here without a job.’ ” Amy pauses, crying. “And he gave me a job. And that was the only thing I needed, was for someone to be able to believe in me enough to work so I could get my kids back.”
The job paid her bills, which led to an apartment and a car. In August, Amy threw a party for Marcus’s ninth birthday and to celebrate their upcoming reunion as a family. In Septem
ber, Amy’s hard-earned dream came true: she got full custody of her sons after a trying four months. All three continued counseling to deal with what they’d endured over the years at the hands—and mouth—of Robert.
“I lived in fear of him. I always looked over my shoulder. The counselors gave the kids whistles for around their necks to express their fears. So, anytime they saw something that reminded them of him, like his sedan,” she explains, “they would blow the whistle. If they heard a song that reminded them of Robert, they would blow the whistle. That was their security.”
Ultimately, Robert pled to lesser charges arising from the incidents in May and spent a few months in jail. Still, Amy’s peace of mind was rattled by the relentless ringing of her cell phone. Robert’s calls were a violation of the protective order against him. He even called Amy during the few months he spent in jail.
“Each time he called my cell phone, I called the police, and they would file an order-for-protection violation,” she says. “The Plymouth police department already had pre-filled-out police reports because they knew they were going to have to come out and see me, because I was going to call them to file an order-for-protection violation. They wouldn’t have to fill out my name and address; they’d just fill in the time that he called and the number that he called from.”
At some point, Amy said she’d simply had enough. Ring-ring!