It Was The Worst of Times #BehindTheBlogger

It Was The Worst of Times #BehindTheBlogger

Here is new spin on Blog Hops for you. We are participating in a biweekly #BehindTheBlogger blog hop. This is different from other hops because each blogger participating will be sharing information about themselves. This way you will get to know a little more about the blogger and what makes them tick.

The post this week is based on answering the following question…..

It was the worst of times that day when a friend of one of my girls showed up with pictures that she had sent with a note that said, “When he kills me, let my parents know it wasn’t an accident”. These pictures were of bruises and welts where she had been beaten by her husband.

I still shake when I think of that moment.

Briefly, here is the rundown of the next several months..

Within an hour, myself and another daughter were on our way to North Carolina to save her. We drove straight through and arrived in the middle of the night. When we got close, her friend called her on the phone and did a three way conversation with us. We were sitting at the end of the street.

Her friend told her to look down the street. We flashed our lights and slowly started pulling up the road as her friend told her that she had come to see me and that we were in the car. We were going to stop at the end of the driveway and all she needed to do was get in the car.

We pulled up, opened the door and… she wouldn’t get in the car! She was terrified that her husband would catch her and kept telling us to leave…

The lights came on inside the house and she was crying so hard and telling us to leave.. leave now. We told her that we would drive down the road and wait for her but we were not leaving without her. We sat for about 30 minutes and she never came. The lights were on but she didn’t answer the phone when we had her friend call her back. So we called the police and told them what was happening and asked for a car to be dispatched.

Ummmm.. according to the 911 operator, this was not an emergency and they would send someone when they had time!

Another 30 minutes pass, nothing.. NO daughter.. No police. We called 911 this time and told the operator that we were going to the house to get my daughter.

Ummmm… they suggested that I not get involved!

Finally my daughter called her friend back and said she was in the yard so we pulled up to the end of the driveway. She is out there and again starts telling us we need to leave. That he will not let her go and that he will hurt us all if he finds us there. Yeah.. not the thing to tell a momma that just found out one of her girls is being hurt.

Ummmm… this momma pulls her car into the driveway and gets out.

Yeah, now we have his attention. Now I can call 911 and tell them that he has a firearm on us. Now strangely enough they show up as if they were sitting at the corner waiting on the call.

Needless to say… she left with us.

The next several months were full of court dates and battling with the system that claims to protect battered women but we didn’t see much help. I am thankful that we have a large enough family that help is always available. We made six trips to North Carolina in a three week span for domestic court and then another four trips to try to get the protective order enforced in our home state of Kentucky. It wasn’t until he came here that the courts actually took things serious enough..and it was almost too late!

Today, our daughter has a new life, a new husband and two of the sweetest little children. Her life is full of love, joy and happiness. Several of us now work to help other women that are caught in abusive relationships. The county we live in has a new shelter and works hard to protect both women and children. They are just a small part of the services through the National Domestic Abuse Hotline.

What I have learned from this experience is that there is not enough help available and the courts still side with the abuser unless there is a ridiculous amount of proof which there usually isn’t because most women don’t tell anyone or don’t have physical proof of the ongoing abuse.

My advice to anyone in this situation. Get out and get your children out! Do whatever it takes to stay alive and get out~!

 

 

Thank you for reading a story from #BehindTheBlogger. Every 2 weeks a group of bloggers is given a writing prompt. These prompts are very open ended, so our bloggers can write about whatever they desire. The main rule is that their blog post directly relates to the topic of that week. The point of this hop is for our readers to get to know us on a personal level.

Please hop along and read all of the blog posts in this weeks hop. Just click the links below. If you want real and raw emotion, then you will find it here. After you read each post, please comment and share. We want to get to know you too!

Are you a blogger looking to join our future hops? Click here Sign Up Here