A Stalking Ex-Spouse

Summary

Lannie is from a small rural community. Issues in her history of domestic violence include extreme physical violence, years-long stalking, harassment, the impact on her child and alcoholism. The story is 5:53 long.

Full Text Transcript

(Leffler, Narrator)
Lannie is a pseudonym for a middle aged Anglo-American from a rural county in the central part of the state. She was in an abusive marriage for twenty years and has three children.

(Lannie)
It started out with just punching me or shoving me and then it got to where he would hide behind the door and when I would come through he would hit me on the back of my head and knock me down and then pull my hair. He drug me through the house by my hair before. And one time he knocked me down and he had on his steel-toed work boots and he kicked me in the side and kicked me in the legs with his steel-toed work boots. And he would get his gun out and put it in his mouth and say he was going to shoot hisself and then he would go outside and the kids would be screamin' and cryin'. And he would go outside and shoot it up in the air to make us think he shot hisself.

(Leffler, Narrator)
Nearly all the time this was going on he was drinking heavily and taking drugs. One day he turned over the refrigerator in a fit of anger. Lannie called a neighbor who connected her with a domestic violence shelter. She took the kids there until his job sent him to a ninety day drug and alcohol rehab program. Once he was gone, she went back to her house.

(Lannie)
And he was home thirty days exactly and he was drinking again and it just started all over again. The same thing. And he said, "If you leave me again, they'll never find you and I'll hunt you down just to kill you" and he would say a lot of vulgar things to me.

(Leffler, Narrator)
Four years later he threatened to kill her with a knife while they were driving in their truck. He got out and she drove away, picked up the kids with the clothing on their backs and went to a friend's who lived a couple hours from Lannie. The local domestic violence program helped her relocate there with a fake identity and start a new life. But he never stopped harassing and threatening her even sending letters to the domestic violence program.

(Lannie)
He'd say, "I'm going to hunt you down until my dying day." He even went so far as to call my brother-in-law lookin' for me and left a voice mail on the machine tellin' me he was going to kill me and that he was going to kill them for hidin' me and I wasn't even there.

(Leffler, Narrator)
So she decided to leave the state, again with a fake identity. Eventually she got divorced and re-married. Then her father, who lived in the rural county where she and her ex-husband originally lived got sick. She and her new husband and the children moved back to West Virginia to take care of him but tried to keep it a secret from her ex-husband. Even though five years had passed he found out and went after her again. This time he looked for the kids. Lannie anticipated this and didn't enroll them in the school district where they lived. She put them in another county instead and alerted school authorities to the problem. Her ex-husband was devious enough to figure this out and went from school to school all over the area, avoiding the principals and people in authority.

(Lannie)
He would just say he was a parent wanting to speak with the wrestling coach or the football coach or the cheerleading coach and then he would ask about the children by name and try to find us that way.

(Leffler,Narrator)
After going to several schools, he found the right one and a coach confirmed that his son was there. Luckily, he was suspicious.

(Lannie)
The coach went to the office to check on my child's records and found out that they were not supposed to give out any information and they called the State Police in and surrounded the school and brought all my children to the one school .They were all...like one in junior high and one in high school and called me and they went to pick him up for violating the order. He had an order not to even try to contact us.

(Leffler, Narrator)
Not surprisingly, the incident at the school, which was the culmination of a life time of intimidations, threats and witnessing domestic violence, had a big impact on her teenage boy.

(Lannie)
My son was old enough then that he said, "I'll take care of him." "If I see him, I want you to get me a gun, I'll take care of him." And we had to set him down and go through counseling that that's not the way you handle things.

(Leffler, Narrator)
She says now her children are all doing well. Her son's in a Christian band and won't have anything to do with alcohol. As for Lannie, she and her second husband are back living in rural West Virginia. The day of the school incident her ex-husband went into the hospital and died shortly of complications from his drinking.

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.