(Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series in recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.)
PARK CITY – “If not for yourself, do it for your children:” Those are the words of advice Lucia (all names have been changed for privacy) has for victims of domestic violence who feel too scared to leave their partners. Lucia knows from experience it can be done; she has had to do it twice.
“Sometimes people ask me why I don’t go find a man,” she said. “I tell them it’s not worth it to spend a few hours of fun with someone I don’t know compared to the hours spent seeing my daughters happy.”
In 2007, Lucia, then a young mother of a 3-month-old daughter, fled from Mexico to Utah to escape from an abusive partner, she said. Three months later Pedro, her partner, showed up on her doorstep. Lucia did not want to go back to him, but did because without any way to support herself and her daughter Valentina, she felt she had no choice. Pedro promised things would be different, she said. However, within months, he began to berate and demean her, push her and pull her hair, she said.
When Valentina was 3 years old, Pedro took a belt to the child because she refused to take some medication, Lucia said. Horrified, Lucia confronted him, but he ignored her and the violence began to escalate, she said. For close to a year, Lucia and her daughter slept in the bathroom at night, afraid for their lives. After coming home to find him passed out on the bed drunk, with a dirty Valentina asleep on the floor in the filth, she and Pedro fought and then he left, claiming he was going to get a gun and come back and kill his wife and daughter. Lucia called the police, who arrested Pedro, she said. Three months later, he was deported.
Lucia changed apartments and tried to build a new life for herself and Valentina, but was often paralyzed by fear and plagued by nightmares. She began attending counseling provided by Peace House, an organization in Summit County that provides support services for survivors of domestic violence. Then she met Joshua and they moved in together, but before long, she found out that he was dealing drugs and storing them in their apartment, she said. Lucia took Valentina and left. A month later Joshua was arrested for drug possession, she said.
A few months later, he begged Lucia to come back to him, promising to change and to be baptized in her church, she said. Lucia said her church leaders asked her to give Joshua another chance so she returned to him and shortly after, they were married. For a while, things were good. Then, after the birth of their daughter, Nancy, Lucia developed complications and was unable to work as much. Joshua began asking her for money but she refused to give him what little she had, needing it for her daughters, she said.
Joshua also became violent, she said.
“‘I have the right to abuse you physically, emotionally and financially, and I’m going to do it,’ he told me,” Lucia said.
A short time later, he told her he would not do anything to her because of her daughters, but wished he could kill her, she said, and she knew it was time to leave. She went to Peace House, where she was assigned a case worker who helped her get into a shelter.
Since then, Lucia has divorced Joshua. She and her daughters have also been through counseling, and her case worker has taken her through the process to get immigration legal assistance. Lucia is also studying for her GED and taking an English class.
“Now I am free,” she said. “I am so happy because my daughters are happy too.”
“A lot of times we don’t want to leave violent men because we don’t want our kids to live without the other parent, but we need to understand how detrimental for your children it is to live with the violence,” she said.
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