Punch Sense

      My buddy DC has a lot of stories. Forty plus years behind bars will do that. And this week, as domestic violence was put at the forefront with casino video of an NFL player knocking his fiancée unconscious and then dragging her out of an elevator, DC’s stories again had relevance.

            He was 18 and a violent, crazed man. He also was a great boxer (the best at his weight on the east coast) and engaged to a young woman. They already had a six month-old daughter. Weekends and DC would head up I-95 for Harlem. He told Mary it was to train and workout with New York fighters. She suspected different … and she was right.

            One weekend she followed him. He ended up in a hotel on 123^rd street. It became clear to Mary that DC was a regular there. Everyone knew him. She followed him to his room and waited. A while later, she went in and found her fiancé with two other women. Not a good situation. “So Main Man, I kept guns with me at all times, three of ‘em on the dresser. Mary, she’s cryin’ and she picks one up and says ‘I can’t believe you’d treat me like this.’ She lifts the gun toward me and it goes off – I don’t think she was tryin’ to shoot me, but she did.”

            The bullet hit DC in the back of the head, at a side glance and came around by his ear.” And I’m bleeding saying ‘why you tryin’ to shoot me?’” Fast forward past the trip to Bellevue and the interview with the NYPD detectives (You’re telling us some stranger broke in your room and shot you?”) and DC is back in the Capitol City. And his fiance’s family is worried because, as I said earlier, DC has a reputation as a “bad man.” Everyone is worried but Mary. “He won’t do anything because he’s a man and a man never hits a woman.”

            A man never hits a woman. Wow, what a novel concept. At least that’s the way it appears when you turn on the TV. Every night is just another domestic violence story. And in here, I’m constantly amazed at the guys who freely admit to “smakin” their woman. “Violence,” they say, “is as American as apple pie.” In here we must be running a bakery.

            A personal side story. Early in my law practice I was asked to take a pro bono case. A young mom, two kids under age four in tow, came to my office. Her eye was puffy, her lip swollen. “He’s been hitting me and pushing me,” she told me. I slowly and methodically explained how I could walk over to the courthouse and get a restraining order. “The police will put him out. You and the kids will be able to return home. While they waited in our law office lobby, I drafted the documents. My secretary called the court and a few moments later I was walking into the Judge’s chambers. The Judge listened to my ex parte explanation and signed the order. Before I left, he’d had a copy taken to the sheriff’s department to be hand served on my client’s husband.

            I walked back to my office self-satisfied that I’d done my part to “protect” this pretty, young wife. I explained to my client that she needed to come back and see me in one week. “We need to go before the court and get the temporary order made permanent.” She leaned over and hugged me. “Thank you,” she said and I felt like being a lawyer mattered.

            The next week I’m prepped for the hearing. Only trouble is, I don’t have a client. I call the court and we delay the hearing an hour. “Where is she?” I call out to Lisa, my secretary who’s trying to her home phone over and over (this is 1985, before cellphones!) Finally, I hear Lisa talking. She hangs up and comes into my office. “Well … where is she?” I ask in frustration.

            “She’s not coming. She says they made up. He’s promised to never hit her again. She loves him and knows he means it this time.” And I’m stunned and pissed – “look at all the effort I expanded for her and for what!” I couldn’t get my hands around her mindset.

            I go back to DC’s approach – you never hit a woman. I just can’t make exceptions on that rule just like the child abuse rule. Guys who will hurt women and children are at their core messed up. But what can be done?

            First, we know violence begets violence. Show me an abused child and chances are that child will be an abuser. We live in a culture where we relish violence and then abhor it when it progresses. We scream for revenge when violence is perpetrated on us, yet we demand an “eye for an eye.”

            On any given day in here there is at least one fight, one brawl, one pummeling. And as I watch the news, I wonder if anything is really different “out there?” Life, inside and outside, has become like a thunder dome. Perhaps it’s time for all of us to focus on less violence in our words, our deeds, our responses.

            Second, a lot of time is spent questioning the victim’s motives. That has no place in any discussion. What motivates a woman go stay – like my client 30 years ago or Ray Rice’s wife today – does not justify any of the actions perpetrated against them. Violence against a woman is wrong. Period. DC’s wife had it right, “A man never hits a woman.”