The killing fields of domestic life

When Heather met her second husband, Mike, she thought she'd won the lottery. After years of juggling a bar gig while raising three children by herself, here was Mike, cooing that he'd take care of her and the kids.

"He swept me off my feet," says Heather, 42, who asked that I not use her real name. "I moved in with him. He paid the bills. For the first time ever, I could relax, stay home and just be a mom."

The abuse started slowly. Mike discouraged her from seeing her parents and friends. He put a wedge between her and her kids by lying to them about her. She had a child with him anyway, even though her gut told her something was wrong.

Still, she gave Mike more chances because "when he was bad, he was really bad; but when he was good, he was great. I'd never known true love. I thought this was what it looked like."

Jealous, passionate, possessive.

So she forgave Mike when he choked her in front of friends at a barbecue, and beat her bloody after a disagreement. She gritted her teeth when he physically hurt her sons and killed their pets. She even had the children lie to child-welfare officials who visited their home to investigate an anonymous complaint of abuse.

"What I regret, now that I know what abuse looks like, is that I didn't protect my children," says Heather, who left Mike for good the day it occurred to her that he wouldn't be "finished" with her until he killed her. She and the kids have been in therapy ever since for post-traumatic-stress disorder. "I struggle with knowing that I should have left him sooner. It's because of my choices that my children suffer now."

Heather, who lives outside of Philadelphia, contacted me last week after reading my Aug. 6 column about the murder-suicide of the Short family in Berks County. Mark Short, 40, killed his wife Megan, 33, on the day she planned to leave him with their three kids. He shot the little ones, too, and then himself.

Heather was not the only domestic-abuse survivor rattled by news of the Short murder-suicide. Others, too, were eager to speak anonymously. Decades after the fact, they were still haunted by monstrous violence they had witnessed or endured.

It has been over 40 years since Linda, a suburban attorney, and her three siblings cowered as Linda's father slapped and punched their mother in the farmhouse they shared on five isolated acres in New Jersey.

"I could hear her fall down, get up, get punched and then fall again," says Linda, 56, who is happily married and whose two grown children know few details of their mom's tragic adolescence. "The next day, my mother covered her bruises and acted like it never happened. No one talked about abuse back then."

Her parents eventually divorced, but her father was not done with Linda's mother. One day, when he arrived to retrieve the children for his weekend visitation, he pulled a gun, pointed it at Linda's mother and pulled the trigger. It jammed. When Linda's little sister intervened, he pistol-whipped her and tore the phone off the wall. Linda and her brother fled to a neighbor's house, chased by their maniac dad.

The police arrived, but no charges were filed. Instead, Linda's father agreed to never, ever set foot in the state again. It was considered a "family incident."

"I've spent the rest of my life contemplating the difference between suicide and homicide," says Linda.

"My father felt that he owned my mother. I don't know if he intended to kill all of us, or just her. I don't know if he intended to kill himself when he was through.

"I see domestic abuse from a lot of angles. There is no single solution because there is no single cause: Anger so blinding that no future can be seen. Depression so deep that no light can penetrate. Humiliation. Rage. Despair. Inability to control what used to submit. How can one solution fit?"

Linda is grateful she got to keep her mother and siblings.

Howard was not as fortunate. Two decades ago, his sister, who thought she'd escaped her abusive husband, was instead killed by him, leaving her four young children motherless. Also killed was his sister's new boyfriend, a kind, good man who treated her with dignity and respect.

What haunts Howard is that he himself knew, from the moment he met his sister's husband, that the man was a menace.

"He was abusive to her physically and verbally. It was blatantly obvious to me, and I was all of 16 years old. I'd ask her why she loved somebody who was always so mean to her. She said that he wasn't mean 'all the time' and that he 'did a lot of nice things.' "

Excuses, Howard said. The madness will end only when "women stop marrying men that are irrational and unstable."

A reader I'll call Eric recalled how his murderous brother, Tim, killed himself, his wife and two children decades ago in an act of narcissism and self-pity. The night before the carnage, Tim called Eric and begged him to bring his own wife and child over to the house.

"I think he was going to kill us, too," says Eric. "He was facing legal and financial trouble related to his company. But he had never been violent. For 20 years, I have asked myself,'Why?' "

In the aftermath, two of Eric's siblings attempted suicide; one succeeded. And Eric himself leaned on alcohol and pills to avoid the guilt and grief that ended his own marriage. He has since remarried, his children are happy adults and he now volunteers with child-welfare organizations.

"The impact of domestic violence can last forever," he says.

As I write this column, the family of Joseline Perez - a Collingswood mother - are reeling from her stabbing death Monday evening at the hands of her estranged husband, Timothy Moorman, police said. Moorman then stabbed himself. Children were witnesses to the horror.

Twenty years from now, what shape will those children be in? What will they remember of Monday night? What will they never, ever forget?

The madness never ends.

polaner@phillynews.com

215-854-2217 @RonniePhilly

Blog: ph.ly/RonnieBlog

Columns: ph.ly/Ronnie