Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities and intimate partner violence.

Panelists

VALERIE B Survivor VICTORIA CRUZ Domestic Violence Advocate/Counselor New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project THERESA JEFFERSON Community and Police Relations Program Coordinator New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project LISI LORD Associate Director of Programs My Sisters' Place DAVID PUMO Director Lesbian & Gay Youth Project Urban Justice Center LT. GRACE A. TELESCO Chair Behavioral Science Department New York Police Academy Valerie B (1)

Survivor

VALERIE B: I think of myself as a strong, intelligent person. When I met a woman who was also strong and intelligent, I thought I was going into a relationship that would grow with time. She was accomplished at the things that she did; she was an artist. I was very impressed with her. Six months into our relationship, I knew I had to get out. It took me four months to do that.

We did most things together, including traveling. I started really loving her because she was generous almost to a fault. She would often suggest I quit work, that she would support me, to which I just laughed, because I thought, "Well, why?" And there were these feelings in the back of my mind. I thought, "Why did she say that? That did not come out of our communications."

There were things that happened in the beginning, where I would say I had to work and I would be at home. She would show up at the door and I would be surprised to see her. The first thing she would say was, "Oh, I know you, you hate me, you hate me. I am so terrible. You wanted to work and I showed up. Here are some flowers."

Then, suddenly, it was something I was doing wrong. It was very small in the beginning. As time went on, though, I began to trust her as my advisor in almost all areas of my life.

Then the time came for her to say to me, "Well, you know, we should live together, because I am over here all the time, let's live together. You have a great house; I will move in, which will be better for you and me. It will be wonderful." I thought it would be. As I said before, we had traveled, and she had been generous, so we'd become very close. There were tiny indications, which with a healthy person would have been kind of normal.

When we were in Europe once, she said to me, "I haven't eaten, I'm really hungry. I'm so angry." I thought, "Oh, it's low blood sugar, it's the kind of thing I feel." I went downstairs to the non-English speaking kitchen people and talked them into giving me this huge meal. When they and I entered the room she said, in front of a number of people, "You were really lucky."

I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Usually, I don't let people leave when I'm angry." That was the end of it. There was no further mention of it. We had the food.

There were moments like that, which I now recognize as warning signs, but at the time this was not clear to me.

It began the day she moved into my house. It was almost as if this was her plan, it was her timing. She said, "You don't want me to live here." Out of nowhere. I responded, "No, I love it." This was her pattern, to get me to beg for something that she wanted to do. She used this to put me on the defensive. I would find myself reassuring her, making sure she knew that I was not deficient in my love for her, and that I was showing her enough love and affection.

About three weeks after she moved in, she came home from work. Something had been bothering her at work, and she began to talk about it. This was a cycle I came to know. She said somebody forgot to tell her something. Whatever I was doing was suddenly drawn into the construct of her rage. If I was sitting down, she would turn to me and say, "Oh, you're just sitting down. You're sitting down." She walked toward me and said, "You just sit there, don't you? You just sit there like everybody else. You don't even care about me."

Suddenly I was in the whirlwind, in the tornado, and there was no way to extricate myself. She was such a smart woman that she took real things about my personality and constructed a case out of them. So I listened, because it made sense. "Yeah, you are a person who does not understand when someone else is needy because you like to go in your office and work." Well, she was right. I like to go into my office and work.

So, every time she was losing ground because her hysteria was growing, she would bring back something real. She was a fantastic extemporaneous speaker. Her battle was always a winner, because I didn't have a place in it. I could not find my place. I could not see where she was and answer her, and that was another flaw, and another reason for her to further escalate her rage.

On that occasion, I remember saying, "I am going to go into my room and sit down for a minute because I can't get things straight." I could never fight with her, which was a problem. So, she got on top of me that night and put her hands around my throat and started screaming into my face and spitting at me and saying, "You--," whatever it was. It was crazy; I was terrified.

I fell into two days of depression and we talked to different therapists. But she was also brilliant at that. My therapists advised me to go back to her, to try and make it work, to not pull away from her.

The rage continued. There was more physical violence, until I read some books in the library. I took them to my therapist and he said, "That's not you. These things are not happening to you." He had seen her once, and she had persuaded him.

I went to the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. They advised me to get rid of this therapist, and helped me find My Sisters' Place. (2) I went into a group where I learned how to get her out of my house very carefully. I called her family. I said I would call the police.

Slowly I got out. I was in such trauma that for the following year, I was walking around in a daze wondering what had happened.

That is my story. Thank you.

Questions and Answers

QUESTION: I am a prosecutor. There has been a concern in the community about revictimization. Can you tell me any specific experiences you've had, and what can I, as a prosecutor, do to avoid possibly revictimizing survivors of domestic violence?

VALERIE B: There is no way you would have believed me if I had gone to your office with my perpetrator. No one ever believed me, because she was organized and rehearsed. I was scattered and unorganized. She had been trained, she had trained herself for years and she went into my therapist's office, a man who is not stupid, and convinced him that she had this silly woman at home who was scared for no reason. And he knew me--I had been going to him for a year. And he said to me, "Just go home. Just try to be better."

So, that's something to remember. I know it's a very tough challenge to put before you, but you've got to remember that there is a slickness to abusers that blows your mind.

QUESTION: I've been engaged in a research project, an interview with police officers and district attorneys. One of the things that has come out from police, prosecutors, and defense attorneys is that if you see one partner being calm, slick, smooth, and saying, "Mary Smith is just a scatterbrain that needs help, and this and that," and the other person is scattered, disorganized, and speaking disjointedly, then you arrest the slick organized one and not the one who's disorganized. The disorganized one is the person who can't take it anymore.

Lisi Lord (3) Associate Director of Programs My Sisters' Place (4) MS. LORD: I want to give you an overview of things I have learned working with victims of domestic violence in the LGBT (5) community. Without understanding the experience of LGBT folks on a day-to-day basis, it is very hard to understand how their batterer can turn those experiences against them. I encourage you to start getting some training, experience, and exposure to LGBT community issues. (6)

Obviously I am talking about a broad category of folks with very different issues. My specific experience is working with battered lesbians. Most of that experience is from having run a support group for battered lesbians, and also, from being part of the Lower Hudson Valley Task Force on Same-Sex Domestic Violence. (7)

The LGBT community shares certain qualities with other marginalized communities that create barriers to accessing services. Some of these attributes are loyalty to group; a sense of connectedness to what the group is and not wanting to take issues outside the group; a fear of the system. There is a very real fear they will not be listened to, taken seriously, and will instead be revictimized trying to get help from the system.

There is a fear--a very realistic fear--that the person one reaches out to will not "get it," will not understand who one is. When lesbians go to therapists or other helping professionals, many of whom seem to understand, I often question whether those therapists really do understand. They understand domestic violence in heterosexual relationships, but just cannot see it in a same sex relationship. I will talk a little bit about why that might be.

I wanted to talk about some things that make the experience of LGBT folks a little different, a little unique. First of all, the differences revolve around sexuality, the expression of sexuality, and how that expression is responded to by society.

There is the issue of invisibility, which is huge when talking about the LGBT community. You are talking about people who, no matter where they fall on the spectrum of being in or totally out the closet, make decisions more or less consciously all the time about what they are going to say about themselves given whatever context they happen to be in at the moment.

There is a constant juggling act of invisibility. It is really important to understand the pressure that creates for individual in terms of the psychic energy that is going into figuring out "am I safe? Can I talk about whom I am? Can I fully be myself? Or do I have to worry? And...