“I would say it is a strong pattern.”
“But in coming to that conclusion – that there’s a strong pattern of behavior – do you rely on all of the…let’s say, other instances Mrs. McMillan says happened but were never tried or proven in a court of law?”
“Yes.”
“And, Dr. Hamilton, hypothetically speaking now, if you ignored everything Mrs. McMillan says except for the three proven assaults – would you still say Mr. McMillan’s actions establish a pattern of behavior?”
“Yes, I would.”
“But wouldn’t you agree with me the pattern of behavior is much, much weaker than if you include all the other alleged assaults?”
The witness paused. “Yes, I’d have to agree with that. But it’s still a pattern of behavior.”
The lawyer shifted forward and read from a paper. “Mr. McMillan told you he owns a successful commercial insurance agency? He makes a good living and provides all the comforts that make life pleasant?”
“Financially, the family had a good standard of living, yes.”
“Every summer, he took them camping and fishing? They’ve been to Disneyland and Hawaii?”
“Yes.”
“Do you agree he offered his children lots of activities and filled their lives with opportunities? That he always did his best for his children?”
“On the surface, yes.”
“And Mr. McMillan is under a restraining order – he’s not allowed any contact with his wife or his children for the indefinite future?”
“Yes.”
“And the hidden gun? The gun with the tag? It was removed the day after the December assault? He’s not allowed to have a gun anymore?”
“Yes.”
“And they’re getting a divorce?”
“Yes.”
“And when you interviewed him, he said he loved his wife? And he was very sorry for what he did?”
“Yes, he said those things.”
“Thank you, Dr. Hamilton. Those are all my questions.” Mr. Miller returned to his seat.
“Any redirect, Ms. Johnson?” asked Judge Cunningham.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Sandra replied as she stood. “Dr. Hamilton, what do you think of Mr. McMillan’s parenting skills?”
“Mr. McMillan thinks of himself as a model father, but he doesn’t understand what he does to his wife also affects his children. He’s not a good parent.” The psychiatrist looked at Danny. “In fact, I would say he is no better than a child abuser.”
Danny’s face flushed, and he wished he could sink into the ground and hide from view. The prosecutor continued her questioning.
“Is it unusual for an abuser to show remorse after an assault?”
“Not at all. In fact, it’s part of the standard cycle of domestic violence. Violent men express a lot of sadness and remorse afterwards. It’s one of the ways they lure their victims into staying, or coming back into the relationship if they’ve already left. Then, the cycle starts again.”
“Now, you said you know there’s a restraining order, a gun prohibition, and a divorce. In your experience, do any of these things make any difference to an abuser’s behavior after release?”
“If anything, they can make the behavior worse. The most dangerous time for a woman is immediately after a separation. It doesn’t matter what any paperwork says. In fact, going to court can anger the abuser even more. If Mr. McMillan were released today, this would be the most dangerous time for his wife – the time he is most likely to seek her out and hurt her again. He’s like a…like a spider. He spins a web and lures his victim into it. The spider’s silk is thin, almost invisible, but incredibly strong. The prey becomes ensnared, and in the isolation of the web – the privacy of the home – the spider encases the victim in silk, wraps the silk tighter and tighter, and then injects her with poisonous venom. Eventually he consumes her.”
“Dr. Hamilton, in your forty years of experience in forensic psychiatry, how would you rate Mr. McMillan’s threat to his wife?”
Dr. Hamilton stared hard at Paul. “My gut tells me that Mr. McMillan is one of the most dangerous men I have ever met.”
Chapter 5
Monday
“Madam Prosecutor, I understand you have additional evidence.”
“Yes, Your Honor. Over the last few months, Mrs. McMillan has written a victim impact statement.” She pulled a sheaf of handwritten pages from a folder. “She’s here today, sir, to read her statement.”
Justice Cunningham replaced his reading glasses and examined his copy. “Madam Clerk, please mark the victim impact statement as Exhibit 8.”
“Exhibit 8,” repeated the clerk, thumping her rubber stamp across the corner.
“Go ahead,” the judge instructed.
“The Crown calls Catherine McMillan.”
Catherine stood, squared her shoulders, and patted Danny’s knee as she left her seat and walked to the witness box. The clerk swore her in.
“Mrs. McMillan, you may be seated,” the judge said.
“I prefer to stand.”
“Very well. Ms. Johnson, please proceed.”
“Mrs. McMillan, you wrote a statement about the effect this assault and the previous assaults have had on you and your family. Is that statement in front of you?”
“Yes.”
“When you’re ready, would you please read it to the Court?”
Catherine took the first page in trembling hands. She swallowed and started reading.
“My name is Catherine Marie McMillan. I married Paul McMillan on August 17th, 1986, almost sixteen years ago. When I married Paul, I thought we’d be just a normal couple. We’d raise a family and enjoy our careers. We’d share the good times and support each other in the bad times. We’d grow old together and still hold hands when we were seventy.”
Her voice gathered strength. She looked up at Paul. “When we married, I didn’t know Paul had something else in mind when he said ‘Until death do us part.’ ”
Paul pursed his lips and shook his head.
“For the first year or even longer, Paul was the charming, generous, kind man I married. I used to think of him as my knight in shining armor. We had good times. We had friends, we visited with family, and we had fun. We didn’t have a lot of money, yet some of my happiest memories are of our camping vacations. We’d sit around the campfire at night with a cup of hot, sweet wine under the brilliant starry sky.”
Catherine looked at the judge. “I am trying to be completely honest. I won’t say Paul was always a bad man, because he wasn’t. Not at first.
“In 1987, Paul started his own insurance business,” she read. “He spent long hours at the office. He worked very hard to make it a success. Paul was always a hard worker.
“But he changed. He’d come home tired and short-tempered. He started criticizing me. Little things, at first – how I wore my hair, how I cooked dinner, how much time I spent on the phone with my family. I’d never had anyone say such things to me, criticize me for things that seemed so unimportant.” She shrugged her shoulders. “And they were little things. I thought it was just because he was stressed, working too hard. So I tried to change the things he mentioned, to make adjustments, to please him. I thought doing those things would turn the clock back and I’d have the charming man I married – the man I loved. I didn’t say anything to anyone, because I thought it was just a phase he was going through.
“But no matter what I did, it was never enough. The verbal abuse went on and on for months, getting worse instead of better. And when I got pregnant with Danny in the late fall of 1988, the abuse became physical.”
Catherine took a sip of water and turned the page. “He’d pinch me or push me and then make light of it. If I reacted, if I told him I didn’t like it, he’d say I was just being stupid, or too sensitive, and he’d lay off for a while. But soon pushes became slaps and criticisms became threats.
“I didn’t understand what was happening. Even though we both wanted childre
n, Paul blamed me for getting pregnant while his business was still struggling. Sometimes money was tight. It wasn’t the easiest pregnancy, but I thought if I stayed at my job as long as I could, we’d be better off financially when I took maternity leave, and that would reduce some of the stress.
“That wasn’t enough either. I bought things for the baby, and he said they were too expensive. So I went to the secondhand store, and that made him furious. He said that no kid of his would ever wear someone else’s abandoned clothes.”
She looked up at Sandra. “It didn’t matter what I did. It was never right.
“Danny was born on June 13, 1989. Paul was so happy that it was a boy. I arranged for six months’ maternity leave. I was happy, Paul was happy, and Danny…” She looked at her son. “Danny was a wonderful baby.
“Still, it didn’t take long before I started getting mixed signals. In one breath he said it was good that I stayed home to take care of his son, and in the next he’d nag that I was spending too much. He cut down on the amount he gave me for groceries. I thought I’d better get back to work even before my maternity leave ended, and I started making child care arrangements. That didn’t please him either. Somehow, he wanted me to stay home and take care of Danny, and he wanted me to work and earn money – all at the same time.
“He was impossible to please. And from then on, things only got worse.”
Danny didn’t want to hear any more, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from his mother and didn’t dare glance at his father for fear of what he would see – that every word was true. He was unable to get up and leave the courtroom. All he could do was sit and listen as his mom continued.
Catherine looked down and brushed her fingertips along the edge of the witness box. “February 29, 1992. Leap year,” she said, looking up at Paul and tilting her head. “Funny. I remember the day it happened, but I don’t remember why it happened.”
Her eyes returned to the paper. “Danny was almost three. He wasn’t with me just then, he was playing somewhere in the house. Paul lost his temper and hit me twice in the face – with a closed fist. I had bruises and a black eye, and I couldn’t hide them like I’d hidden everything else. He was arrested and convicted of assault.”
She shifted her weight and looked again at her husband. “That first blow – that’s when I knew Paul would never be the same. I could never, ever turn back that clock. That blow – it turned him into a stranger.
“He told me how sorry he was. He promised and promised it would never happen again. He went to all his anger management counseling. Looking back on it, I realize that was my opportunity to leave him, but it didn’t look that way at the time. He had already started to isolate me from my friends and family. Now I had something tangible – bruises – to hide. So I began withdrawing. I felt responsible for it all. I’d already hidden so much from everyone that it seemed impossible to confess.”
Catherine looked at her son. “And I had Danny to consider,” she said, a catch in her voice. “He was just a toddler. I still thought, then, that Paul was a good father. Besides, he’d made all those promises and I desperately wanted to believe him.” She looked at Paul. “I insisted on marriage counseling. He cooperated. We finished the sessions and everything seemed better. He settled down, and we had a normal, even happy, family life. At least that’s what I talked myself into believing.”
Catherine returned to her notes. “Jennifer was born the next year – September 1, 1993. Paul was disappointed she was not another boy. It made him cross with me, as if I’d had a choice. Right from the start, he wasn’t as involved with Jen as he’d been with Danny. He treated her indifferently, more like a stranger’s child than his own. When it came time for me to go back to work, he started in on me again. He didn’t want me to work. He didn’t like the people I worked with. It was no good having both our kids in day care. By then I’d had the same job for three years, and I liked it. His business was going well and financially things were fine. For me, it wasn’t about the money. Work was a place where I felt productive and safe. I felt confident in my own abilities. So I tried reminding Paul that he’d agreed from the beginning we’d both have careers, but it was like trying to reason with a rock. The night before I was supposed to return to work, he told me – no, he threatened me – that if anything happened to the children, it would all be my fault. Then he hit me again.
“We repeated the same cycle over and over. The good times between bad times kept shrinking. Soon there weren’t any good times anymore, just times when I pretended life was good. He started hitting me every couple of weeks. He was careful to cover his tracks. He hit me in places where people wouldn’t see the bruises. He always beat me at home, always at night, always out of sight. The bruises from one blow would just start to fade when he’d hit me again.
“I was careful to cover his tracks, too. No one understood why I wouldn’t wear shorts in the summer, or why I always preferred long-sleeved shirts – even a turtleneck, one time, when he choked me and left thumbprint-shaped bruises. No one knew I had nightmares, or understood why I was always tired.” She lifted her left hand and traced her right forefinger along the discolored, thickened line that ran along the edge of her palm up to the wrist. “One time he pushed me into the stove. My hand hit the burner, and Paul laughed and told me to be careful not to burn myself because it would hurt.
“I knew the marriage was broken, but I still thought I could fix it. I kept hoping that as the kids got older and he saw they were fine in day care, he’d stop criticizing me for working.” She gave a slight, puzzled shake of her head and looked at the judge. His chair was turned toward Catherine, and he was listening intently, tapping the arm of his reading glasses against his lips.
“It must seem crazy to you,” she told him. “Now, it seems crazy to me too. It was as if I saw myself reflected in one of those fun-house mirrors. Somehow I had become the horrible person he kept telling me I was. He really cared about the kids. I was the failure. I told him a thousand times that I was sorry, because it was all my fault.” Catherine turned to confront Paul. “But now I know. I know that he’d started using the children as ammunition against me.”
Danny ran his fingers through his hair. Ammunition? Dad would do that?
Catherine’s lower lip began to tremble, and she blinked rapidly as she looked back at her notes. She hesitated, and then plunged ahead.
“November 20, 1996. Danny was in second grade. Jennifer was just three. I was late from work. I rushed through the door and asked him to fetch the children from the day care. He snapped. He screamed at me for being late. He swore and said there was no way he would get the kids. It was my responsibility. It was the price I had to pay for my idiotic, selfish decision to work. He started saying things. The violence of his language matched the violence of his blows.” She couldn’t control the tremor in her voice. Her eyes filled with tears.
The judge leaned forward. “Mrs. McMillan, would you like a short adjournment?”
She lifted her chin and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.
“No thank you. I have to finish what I’ve started.”
“Take your time, then. Take your time.”
She smoothed the paper with the palm of her burnt hand. “He called me such horrible names, and then he stopped swearing. He looked at me like he never had before – with a murderous look in his eyes. What he said next scared me to the bone. I remember every word. ‘If I can’t count on you to take care of my kids, I might as well get rid of you. I ought to get my gun right now. You’re a piece of shit.’”
Catherine swallowed. “I tried to run away, but Paul caught me by the hair and pulled me back. I screamed when he pulled a patch of hair right off my scalp. He put his hands on my shoulders… spun me around…and spit in my face.
“We were in the living room. He shoved me backward onto the floor. I must have put out my hand behind me because it hit the coffee table. The table flipped over, and the glass bowl shattered. When I tried to get up
I cut my palm on the broken glass, but I couldn’t even push myself up because my wrist was broken.
“I thought he was going to start kicking me, so I used my feet to push myself along the carpet away from him. But he just left without saying another word. I waited a minute or two, because I was afraid he might come back. I sat with my hand in my lap because…because I didn’t want to stain the carpet with blood. But I knew this time I had to call for help. The police came and took me to the hospital.
“The police laid charges, and the hospital social worker urged me to leave Paul. She talked to me for a long time. She offered to take the children and me to the women’s shelter. She promised we’d be safe there, and I could take some time to clear my head. The doctor gave me some medicine that was supposed to calm me down, but there isn’t a medicine in the world strong enough to dull the shame and humiliation of being beaten by your own husband. All I wanted was to get Danny and Jennifer and go home. By the time I walked out of the hospital, I’d made up the escalator story and called the day care. By the time I got there, I’d made up an excuse about Paul having to take an emergency business trip.
“By then, lying was what I did best. I lied to the children every day that Paul was in jail. I quit my job because I couldn’t face my boss or my co-workers. My broken wrist was a convenient excuse – I couldn’t write or type, I told my boss. But I didn’t let my children know I’d quit. I just told them I’d go back to work when my wrist healed. I repeated the escalator story so many times that I started to believe it myself. It was easier than facing up to the truth of my hidden life.”
Catherine looked at Danny. “Since December, 1996, I have raised my children on deceit.
“When their father came back from his ‘business trip’ he was the old Paul, the one I married. He was nice to us. I blindly hoped we could put the past behind us and move on. I stayed home with Jen and Danny until March. And then the cycle started again. Those ‘changes’ had just been a smoke screen for the violent man behind it. My new job got me out of the house, and those few hours of routine a day were all that kept me from succumbing to a life of endless beatings, threats, and intimidation.
The Second Trial Page 3