Thank you for your questions. There's tons for me to unpack. The first thing is to be believed. Every victim wants to be believed. If there is doubt.... When the police first came to me, they would ask me questions such as, “What did you do? What happened? How did you provoke him?” Instead of asking those questions, they should believe me.
One of the things I said is that sometimes there is no sign. There are no physical signs that will prove I was hit. If that's what they're looking for, they've missed the mark. I had one incident where my husband had a gun to my head. That left no marks, but that instilled a fear that the next time the gun goes to my head, I won't be alive.
There are a lot of things that you asked in the question. I will try to remember to answer them.
The other thing we do is educate. One of the things I'm doing through my story, my books and my own experiences as a social worker is to go around not just sharing my experience, but...how we listen to the abused and how we identify the abuser. The abuser is not one who wears a sign that says “I will abuse”. The abuser, as it was mentioned earlier, is one who is really charming and very nice. He waits for you to go into the room.