Elderly Domestic Violence Client

Summary

Elizabeth is an elderly Anglo-American who is legally blind. Issues in her history of domestic violence include physical violence, abuse of the elderly, abuse of the disabled, the impact on her children and grandchildren and the fact that she grew up in an abusive home. The local domestic violence center referred her to Legal Aid to help her get a protective order. The story is 5:00 long.

Full Text Transcript

(Leffler, Narrator)
Elizabeth, which is not her real name, is a sixty-seven years old Anglo-American. She left her husband after forty-three years of an abusive relationship.

(Elizabeth)
It got worse as I got older. It's still a little hard to talk about. He was very, very controlling and very, very abusive. He was unfaithful. He physically and mentally abused me. Pushed me down on the floor and kicked me in the stomach. Called me stupid, dumb, ignorant. He kept me up one night and I was sixty-one years old at the time, he kept me up until four o'clock in the morning accusing me of stuff, hitting me. He had me crying . My eyes were so swollen the next morning so I could hardly open them where I cried. I was scared to death of him. I didn't know one minute to the next what he was going to do or the next day what he was going to do.

(Leffler, Narrator)
One thing that really bothered her was that the violence often took place in front of her children and even her young grandchildren.

(Elizabeth)
My grandsons saw him hit me a lot. My husband got the cord that goes to the telephone and put it around my neck and tried to choke me. He tried to kill me. I guess it was so bad that I blocked it out but my grandson remembered that when he was real little. He saw him do it.

(Leffler, Narrator)
She says it's too early to know how it affected her grandchildren, but her son abused his first wife. Elizabeth herself is from an abusive family.

(Elizabeth)
I saw my dad hit my mom. Take a dish rag out of my hand and hit her across the face with it. And I seen him hit her, bruises. I was just a baby but I remember it just like it was yesterday. He put her in an oven. Tried to burn her and then he made her lose her first baby.

(Leffler, Narrator)
She says she hopes leaving her husband will help break the cycle of violence in her family. Something that made it harder for her to leave was the fact that she's been legally blind since she was in her thirties. She says her husband used this to take advantage of her and humiliate her like this time when she had to sign papers for medical insurance.

(Elizabeth)
I told him I can't see the line and he got me by the back of the hair and pushed my face right down on the paper and said, "Now can you see it, Stupid?" So I mean he's done a lot to me and had me down to where I didn't think I was worth nothin'. He just kept getting worse and worse abusing me and said, "I don't need someone who's blind." "I'll get me a younger woman who can see and do what I want them to do."

(Leffler, Narrator)
He also took advantage of her blindness by bring pornographic videos and magazines into the house.

(Elizabeth)
He thought I wouldn't see them 'cause of my eyes. My eyes wasn't as bad as they are right now. But he took advantage of getting stuff like that, wasting money that we could use for other stuff and then lie to me and say he didn't have any money.

(Leffler, Narrator)
One day when her two kids were grown she decided she'd had enough. She called her daughter who took her to a domestic violence program and she moved in with her daughter. Now, six years later she's divorced and living in a housing complex for senior citizens who have been abused. She says she's but the past behind her and enjoys frequent visits with her grand children and even though she walks with a cane she stays active.

(Elizabeth)
And I'm sixty-seven and I still dance. I still do what they did in the fifties. I still do the jitterbug and I can still do the twist even though I'm sixty-seven years old. I was dancing to "That Old Time Rock and Roll" and I heard that and I had to get up and dance. Nobody to dance with but I danced. So I try to keep in shape.

(Leffler, Narrator)
This interview was produced by Susan Leffler and is being presented by the West Virginia Coalition Against Domestic Violence with financial assistance from The West Virginia Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this interview do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.