August 17th 2009

I am working with Crispin Clarke, the director of Men Engaged in Non-Violence in Taos , New Mexico, we are putting everything together for our speaking engagement there. I received a email from him this morning and after reading it and finding myself sobbing uncontrollably, I emailed Crispin immediately and asked if I could post this on our blog. And after reading this, it has become completely clear to me that this journey needs to be re-titled, Women and Men Together in Crisis, Compassion and Change through Conversation. The bottom line is love and hope for those who are so desperately seeking it, and the change that can come about by creating conversations across the United States. All I can ask is that I can remain open and loving and compassionate.

http://www.nonviolentmen.org


WITNESS TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
Friday evening August 14th, driving home from the MEN office at about 6: 30 pm, I was approaching the Quail Ridge Inn area, when a blur of movement in the tall grasses on the side of the road caught my eye. I saw a man bringing his fists high into the air and bringing them down pummeling a women who was lying on her back covering her face with her arms. I braked hard and turned around, pulling out my phone and dialing 911. I could see that he was now standing up kicking her with great force. I pull up close to them and he look up. Then I thought, “What if he has a gun?” He disengaged himself from her and stumbled away across the open field of sagebrush. He started running faster.

By now, two other passers-by had stopped and I was talking to the 911 dispatcher. I got out of the car and watched as the man ran in the direction of a nondescript building. The dispatcher was asking me to keep track of him and to describe his appearance. But the man dropped to the ground and disappeared from view. I kept scanning the field but I could not see him.
I turned around to check on the woman who was now sitting in the car of one of the passers-by. She was from the Taos Pueblo and no older than 21 years old. She was sobbing, scared and saying she wanted to leave the scene. The two passers-by who had stopped were both women and were both survivors of domestic violence, not only that, both were active working professionally to prevent and intervene in domestic violence.

Meanwhile the dispatcher called back to my phone asking if the man had been seen again and let us know that the sheriff's department, the Taos Pueblo police and an ambulance were all on their way. The woman was getting more and more upset that the police were coming because she said she was already in trouble for something and thought that they were going to take away her 3 year old daughter. We could also smell alcohol very strongly on her breath. She wanted to leave but we knew that we had to keep her from leaving. We told her that she could make it through this, it was going to be a hard process but it is not right that she would be treated like this, that if it didn't stop now it could get even worse, that life could be different from this. She told us that he had beaten her several times before. She wanted to speak to her mother and so we tried to reach her mother with our cell phones.

All of a sudden, a ¼ mile down the road we see the man come out of the sagebrush and walk across the road. He had taken his shirt off and just stood still, looking up at the sky. Then we hear the sirens approaching and a police car passes him and then quickly turns around. The man in desperation throws his hand in the air and then he is arrested and put into the police car. The police car continues on to where we are and then another one arrives and then another one.

We are all waiting for the ambulance now. The man begins to make awful choking cries from inside the car and then begins to kick at the door. The officers open the door and proceed to shackle his ankles. This makes the women cry even harder. The ambulance finally arrives and the women is taken inside and cared for by the medics. They say she has a broken jaw and has bruises all over her stomach.

The man, who is also from the Taos Pueblo, himself not over 21 years old, over the next 20 minutes struggles and moans and screams. He tries to smash his head against the window of the car. The officers take him out and restrain him on the ground. He starts shouting for them to kill him, for them to finish him off, for them to run him over, for them to shoot him. He screams over and over again he wants to die. Then he screams “I’m sorry,” “I’m sorry,” “I never want to do it again.” He cries over and over, mostly inarticulate, expressing a deep terrible pain.

I will never forget this incident. The sight of this beautiful young woman’s long black hair flowing in the wind as the man threw her over and brought his fist high into the air. I will not forget the extraordinary coincidence of three passers-by all in the domestic violence field meeting at this moment. I will never forget the way the assailant turned himself in and was standing next to the road looking at the sky when the police car passed him. And I will never forget the trapped screams of this violent lost young man. These were screams for help. But in his agony, I think that he believed all help and hope had vanished. These were screams of a life that had become so out of control and so tragic. I will carry this with me as an affirmation to continue the vital mission of MEN: “to inspire, train and empower men and boys to lead lives of nonviolence.