Like many other websites dedicated to victim service programs, The Make It End Here Project encourages victims of domestic violence to share their personal stories about how they helped their children survive living in a violent or abusive home. There are millions of such stories and millions more that still need to be told.
Survival stories can be both inspirational and an important way of illustrating how families can help children and teens overcome problems associated with surviving family domestic violence. We are particularly interested in hearing from Mothers who developed strategies to guide and counsel their Sons.
My personal history as a child victim of domestic violence was the primary motivating factor in my decision to create The Make It End Here Project. Our family certainly would have been less isolated in our struggle to survive if we had access to the resources offered by this project. Unfortunately, I grew up many years before domestic violence was accepted as an important social and criminal justice issue.
I believe that it is especially important to share my story because my Sister and I successfully survived our abusive home environment. It was achieved in large part because our Mother was aware of the need for early intervention and to instill in us a desire to break the intergenerational cycle of violence and abuse when we became adults.
So, I will begin this process of shedding light on one story how domestic violence preys upon the lives of families. I hope that some of our readers will be inspired to contribute their own survival stories and experiences.
Henry J. Contreras, Founder
The Make It End Here Project
PREFACE: The Make It End Here Project is dedicated to my Mother, Angelina. Indeed, the project’s name evolved from the words of a promise I made to her one day when I was struggling to cope with living in an abusive home.
As explained in more detail in the story, the promise was that I would do everything in my power to end the domestic violence I had witnessed from that day forward. Telling this story honors my Mother’s successful struggle to save her children.
HENRY’S STORY
UPDATE TO THE ORIGINAL SURVIVOR STORY (September 2010): I first began researching and writing this project in 2006 when I was working with one of California’s leading domestic violence prevention advocacy agencies. I was one of the few males working with the agency and I felt that it was important to share my core belief that witnessing domestic violence as a child can be extremely damaging to young boys because of the very nature of the mythic forging between a Father and Son of what it takes to become a man.
As I felt more comfortable in sharing my story with the advocates and survivors, they encouraged to break it out as an important issue for analysis and discussion. Eventually, I decided that creating the Make It End Here project would be my contribution.
My research began on the broader issue of how children exposed to domestic violence may become the victims or perpetrators of abuse and violence as adults. In the 1990s there had been considerable research in this arena. My heart often pounded as I read research findings about how closely the our abuser’s behavior fit within the classic profile of domestic violence. While there was some physical violence in our home, we were primarily subjected to emotional and psychological abuse at a time when domestic violence itself had no common definition.
I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I later learned that as I was writing my survival story that my Father, our abuser, was dying. Soon after I posted the wesbsite, I was contacted by a very kind woman who had been one of his childhood friends. She went to great lengths to track me down. because she knew that my Father had a son and a daughter.
Ironically, his friend used the contact information in the website to locate me because she knew that we had the same name. She had not read my survival story and said that she never understood why my Father never spoke about his former life. I later learned from his estate attorney that in his Will and Trust he declared under oath that he had “no children, living or dead.”
My reaction was a knowing laughter. I knew that what he was trying to do was to reach beyond the grave to hurt us one last time. He expected that we would some day learn that he had passed without leaving us anything and that we would regret losing the chance to apologize to him.
When my Sister and I learned of this calculated lie, we knew that the usual way to disinherit family members was to acknowledge their existence and only leave a single dollar to settle any claim to his estate. We were angered because denying we ever existed was ya twist of the knife. Yet, to us it was also an example that all of his lies eventually were uncovered.
His friend told me that he had died almost completely alone and that none of his friends or family visited during his illness or attended his funeral. He had a fiance who helped him during this time and she could not understand why no one had come by. She had reached out in desperation to this friend to beg her to to find someone, anyone to come to his funeral. He had died the week before she finally reached me.
I knew that contesting the Will was not worth the effort. In similar cases the parties most often settle, so I negotiated a small settlement based on the principle. The few assets left were given to his fiance. She had known about us and we did not want to take more from her retirement because she had to sell the home they lived in to settle the estate.
To prove that we were his children, I sent his attorney our birth certificates and two photos. The first was taken when he was dating our Mother. He was a 20 year old at the time and standing next to her at a family birthday party. Anyone who knew him in his senior years would have immediately recognized him. He was very vain about his appearance and always maintained the same fashion look.
The second photo was the one of me and my Sister taken at my First Holy Communion. It was the one I originally chose for my survival story. I knew that my resemblance to him was clear.
It was very emotionally draining to go through this once again because I thought that writing the story would be the end. Bringing the memories up again illustrated that they were still living memories. None were ever buried even as I viewed them as a middle aged man. Fortunately, it was cathartic for all of us.
The experience also reminded me that other victimized boys may also have such reminders from their own history of family domestic violence. Like me, it may remind them of their own time of lost innocence.
My family was able to take on the proverbial “closure.” Perhaps more importantly, it made my Mother’s strength in fighting him and protecting us even more poignant. It also reminds me why creating this website is so important to me.
In the end, I decided to keep most, but not all, of what I had originally written. The text is in quotation marks and it explain how my Mother saved us.
I had ended the first version by stating that we did not know, nor did we care, whether or not my Father was still alive. Now we know.
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“For many years, I have viewed this family picture as symbolizing how domestic violence insidiously steals away childhood innocence. My Sister and I are posing in front of our Grandparent’s home in Chicago on the morning of my First Holy Communion. As young children, we were unaware that a few years later our family would move to California and we would be trapped in the tangles of domestic violence.
My Father did not attend the ceremony or the party afterwards. Our Mother had left him and took us to live with our Grandparents as she pursued a legal separation. She had endured years of abuse that literally began the day after her wedding. It was the late 1950s and it was scandalous for a wife to leave her husband, but she had reached the breaking point.
The marriage was already in its death throes because of my Father’s unpredictable mood swings, betrayals, and emotional abuse. He considered himself the head of the household and he gave my Mother meager sums for expenses, while pocketing the rest as his allowance. Like most abusers, he constantly belittled and publicly criticized his wife and isolated her from family and friends. He also subjected her to what we called “the silent treatment”—long periods when he refused to speak or interact with her. In his twisted view, he believed that he was punishing her and that she would do anything he wanted to return to his favor.
My Father had custody rights and I saw him on weekends when he took me to baseball games, movies, and other fun places he had never taken me before. I liked being with this new Father and probably pressured my Mother to reconcile with him.
Obtaining a legal separation was a prolonged and difficult process, so he had ample time to try to repair the marriage. He claimed that they should get back together for the “sake of the children” and promised to change his ways.
Things did improve for a while, but the fun Father soon disappeared. He was restless and unhappy with his job and wanted to move to California to work in the booming aerospace industry. Although my Mother reluctantly agreed, she did not believe his promises and hid money to return to Chicago. Her instincts proved to be prophetic.
After renting for a couple of years, my parents bought a house in Los Angeles and my Mother worked a night shift to help pay the mortgage. While our family seemed to be on a more stable path, the move was the turning point for an escalation in domestic violence. My Sister and I soon became the victims of our own emotional abuse. Day by day, we became a dysfunctional, wounded family and we never recovered.
Once again, my Father was constantly angry, moody, and controlling. I can’t remember many times when family life was harmonious. None of us seemed capable of pleasing him or meeting his expectations. Arguments between our parents were more frequent and no longer hidden as we began a downward spiral of living with abuse.
Since our Mother worked nights, my Sister and I we were condemned to spending weekday evenings with our abuser. Without her protective presence, he exerted complete dominance and subjected us to his strange beliefs about family life.
As a girl, my Sister was also the target of my Father’s beliefs about the inherent inferiority of her gender. It was very painful to see how she was mistreated, ignored, and gradually diminished in his eyes over the years.
I certainly did not enjoy any special privileges as a male. Instead, I was involuntarily enlisted in a perpetual “boot camp” where I was trained to fit his image of an obedient Son. I had to unconditionally surrender to his authority and was forced to prove my worthiness by precisely executing punitive chores at his whim. While I excelled in school, my accomplishments were never sufficient. Even simple efforts to teach me to work on a car or play sports were under extreme pressure and an adversarial cloud.
My severest abuse came in the form of long lectures that would go on for hours at a time. I had to stand at attention and could only speak when spoken to. These lectures were both punishment and a forum for brainwashing. I was told that women were stupid and inferior and that men needed to control and discipline their family. All of his ugly prejudices and personality flaws were on display and I was expected to absorb them as my own.
Our Mother continued to be the victim of occasional physical violence and constant emotional abuse. She always fought back, but watching my Father abuse her and my Sister generated an inner rage because I knew that I was powerless to save them.
Then came that single transformative day that freed me from my destiny to mirror my Father’s abuse. I had just been dismissed from another lecture and overheard him make a cruel remark to my Sister that made her cry. This upset me even more and I ran outside to get away.
After a few minutes, my Mother came out to console me. She looked at me lovingly and carefully explained that my Father’s behavior was his fault, not mine. He was abusing us to exert power and control and to compensate for his own insecurities. She then promised to help me deal with his abuse and asked me in return to vow that I would make different choices in my life. Even today, her words echo in my mind:
“Henry, don’t let him change who you are or the way you treat other people. You can choose what kind of man you will be when you grow up. Don’t treat your wife and children the way he is treating us. Make it end here, with you. Promise me that you will make it end here.”
It was a day that my Mother gave me life for the second time. Somehow, she made an intimate connection that forever changed me. For the first time I realized that she was right. He was the one who was flawed. He was the one solely responsible for all of the family conflict. I was not condemned to living family life as he lived it.
My Father’s behavior didn’t change that day or in the following years, but I felt empowered to look at him differently and with the knowledge that everything he tried to instill in me was wrong. Gradually, I developed an ability to withstand his lectures and categorically reject everything he was saying. I viewed him as a ugly cartoon of a real Father.
Six years later I left the house to live in my college dormitory. I had finally achieved independence and rarely spoke to him in the ensuing years. His eyes betrayed his fears that he was losing control and that I was no longer bound to him. .
My Sister could not escape, but apart from angry grunts and insulting remarks, he mostly ignored her and lost interest in being part of her life. The length of his silent treatments grew longer until he eventually went five years without speaking to my Mother or Sister. After all, they were only “stupid women” in his eyes.
Eventually, my Mother filed for a divorce. Her decision shocked him and he was caught off guard when the court ordered him to leave the house while it was being sold. Without his presence, love and laughter returned for that short time.
A few years later, he made a pitiful attempt to be a part of my life again. He claimed that he accepted responsibility for the divorce, but I knew he was lying. I made it clear that I would not have any contact with him as long as my Sister was estranged. I told him that I loved her, not him, and I would not betray or hurt her by accepting his offer.
At the time, my Sister was planning her wedding, so I insisted that he apologize to her and help pay for the wedding. He was clearly uncomfortable, but said he would try. I did arrange a meeting, but he did not apologize and made unreasonable demands about the number of his invited guests. Naturally, she refused his terms and proceeded to lambaste him, telling him that he was a cruel and horrible Father and had caused her unforgivable emotional pain.
He called me right after the meeting and complained that my Sister had falsely accused him and hurt his feelings. In response, I told him that she had told the truth and that he deserved the rebuke. I also reminded him that he would be permanently expelled from our lives if he didn’t comply. Like most bullies, he chose the cowardly way out and we never heard from him again.
The year 2008 marked the 30th anniversary of that day. He has no knowledge about our lives and has no idea that he has three highly accomplished grandchildren. We do do not know where he lives or even if he is still alive. Yet, we have no regrets because the three of us bonded closer as a family and supported each other and thrived without him.
More importantly, my nephew and two nieces do not know what it is like to live in a violent or abusive home. They lived a family life my Sister and I only could have dreamed of, where unconditional love was always in abundance and “Nana” Angelina was always present to raise them and share her wisdom.
So, my story shows that Mothers can protect and empower their children through early intervention that educates them about domestic violence and teaches them how they can break the cycle of violence and abuse. It isn’t easy, and perhaps cannot be achieved for all victimized families, but it is possible and a worthwhile journey.
I hope that The Make It End Here Project helps other needy families by giving them insights, encouragement, and resources that were unavailable during our struggle. If you are a victim of domestic violence or a child victim, or if you know a family at risk, please take these important steps forward to help families cope with and survive domestic violence exposure.”