Goldie Taylor talking:
here in Atlanta, I have lived here, I guess, probably 27 years now. During our first year here in Atlanta, I met who I thought was the most charming man in the world. We moved in together, started college, you know, just started to build a life with him. And not long after that is when the abuse began. He began to isolate me from my family, from my friends, began to belittle every single thing that I did. And then it became physically abusive.
I felt trapped, even though my mother lived less than 10 miles away. I was afraid to tell her what was happening, because for so many young women there is an unfortunate culture of silence, you know, that sort of places a dome around what’s happening in some of these homes. I remember a relative used to tell me back when we were younger that what happens between that man and that woman is between that man and that woman. It is probably, looking back, the most unfortunate thing that I’ve ever heard.
It ended for me the night that I was stabbed in my back. There was a horrific beating, where I was stomped and kicked, choked until I blacked out. And I ran. I took an opportunity to run. And I knew that if I didn’t run, that I was going to die that night. There is a scar on my left shoulder today from where he took a paring knife from the kitchen and caught me in the shoulder just as I broke through the door. He did not serve any jail time. It was broken down to a misdemeanor and then later dismissed.
And I look back on that today, and I understand that, you know, there have been new laws on the books since that happened, including compulsory arrest, that, you know, it is a little bit easier today to get a restraining order than maybe it used to be. There are new stalking laws on the books. And I’m grateful for all of that. But what we really have got to see is grassroots action around providing women safe haven, and then providing counseling and therapy for the men involved—and so, not only punishment, but treatment, because an abuser will abuse again. Hurt people hurt other people, and until there is some real healing.
You know, I wrote about my story because there was a young woman in the news who I kept hearing about, but I never heard her name. Her name was Kasandra Perkins, and she was the girlfriend and mother of child of Jovan Belcher. And I woke one morning to find that he had shot her nine times and killed himself. And relatives and friends will recount that the relationship was, as they called it, fraught or troublesome. The NFL team had engaged the couple in counseling. I believe a lot of people knew that it was coming, that one day he would kill her. And no one—no one did a thing. And so, I told my story, because Kassie and other young women like her aren’t here to tell theirs. Three women every day in this country are killed in domestic violence situations, whether it’s a knife, a beating or a gun. All too often, the gun makes it too easy. If there had been a gun involved in my situation, I am certain—certain—I would not be here today.
How the military trains people in terms of the use of weapons and the impact of that once they get out of the military?
One, it is the weapons training that we receive, but, two, it’s the care that we don’t receive when we come home. You know, the level of PTSD, among both the men and women who see action on the front line and those who don’t, is really at—at a level that we haven’t seen in a very long time, because we have engaged ourselves in so many wars on so many fronts. But when we come home, the treatment, the care that’s needed, simply isn’t there. You know, our nation’s VA system, you know, is largely broken. I don’t know if you’ve spent much time in a VA hospital, but it’s a very tough place to get through, to get into its system and to actually receive care. You get better care, I think, at one of your county hospitals. And so, I think it is two things. It is, one, the weapons training, but it’s, two, you know, coming home to civilian life and making that transition, you know, isn’t always as easy for some of us as it may seem.
there is something very horrific about Newtown, that there were 20 children, that there were six adults, that—well, seven adults, including his mother, because I include her. Even though she trained her son to shoot, and he had access to those guns, she was shot in her sleep. And so, I think there is something horrific about that to be set aside.
But in terms of the other 30,000-plus deaths in this country due to gun violence a year, the way that they are covered by media, the way that they are investigated, the level to which they are prosecuted, that convictions come, and even the level of sentencing, all of those things are never determined by the race of the shooter; they’re determined, as I’ve found, by the race of the victim. And so, you have African-American children, Hispanic children here in Gwinnett County, where I sit today, who are dying of gun violence, and no one’s talking about it. It’s because, as Americans, we feel as though it is isolated or contained to certain undesirable communities, and that if we just keep it away from us, then it won’t impact us. And so, you see a flash of it on the nightly news. You see a flash of it on a radio program in the morning. You know, we learned about my father’s death over a radio program. But to hear, to see the national coverage, it has to be random, and it has to be somebody who looks like us. I always said when the “that could happen to me” syndrome kicks in, that’s when there’s coverage. That’s when there is investigation and prosecution. That’s when you see more heavy sentences coming to bear. And, you know, I’m writing a piece now that is tentatively titled “The Color of Life,” because we, as a society, place differing values on differing lives according to race, gender, socioeconomic status and all of that.
– source democracynow.org