The Road From Victim to Survivor

MaryAnn Halstead
Aug 9, 2017 · 11 min read
Faces of Homelessness-Domestic Violence ©OFW Designs 2014

I made a decision today. A decision that was a long time in coming and one that I have struggled with for many years. I struggled with it because I did not want to hurt people who are still living. I finally came to the realization that I need not worry about hurting the very people who hurt me, to begin with, so here is my story.

The image above is a piece of artwork that I created to bring awareness to just one of the faces of homelessness. The face of a domestic violence victim. But that image is just the tail end of my story.

My story starts when I was only 3 years old. Our next door neighbors were a “sweet” older couple who often babysat my older brother and myself when my parents went out. That “sweet” old man was anything but. He would put me on his lap and put his hands down my pants every chance he got.

We moved when I was 5 and that abuse ended, but my brother, who is almost five years older than I am, started abusing me in other ways. He would beat up on me, commit acts of cruelty like stabbing my legs over and over with lead pencils or force me to eat bitter chocolate after convincing me that it was dog feces. He would shoot at me with his pellet gun and throw knives at me. When my mother would inquire about my injuries, he forced me to lie about what happened, with threats of even greater repercussions if I told her the truth.

During this period, my parents divorced and I think that a lot of the abuse I suffered by my brother’s hand was his way of expressing his anger over our father leaving. I do not know this for sure, as I have not spoken to him in almost 25 years, with the exception of a few brief words at our mother’s funeral 6 years ago, but that part of the story is for later.

When I was 7, my mother remarried and my brother stepped up his abuse to include sexual abuse. He physically and sexually assaulted me until he left for college 6 years later.

At the age of 12, my father’s parents flew us out to visit them and drove us from their home in Oklahoma to Arizona to see our father, who had not had any contact with us since our parent’s divorce, 7 years prior. This trip set off a chain of events that would change how I viewed myself, for many years to come. First came the realization that my father had been in contact with my brother over those past 7 years. Next was that fact that he did not want me. He told me that the only reason I had been adopted (both my brother and I were adopted, as my mother was unable to have children) was because my mother wanted a daughter and that he did not care if I lived or died. I was devastated, to say the least. The last two links in this chain happened upon our arrival home. Shortly after we came home, my step-father started sexually abusing me and I attempted suicide for the fist time, by taking a handful of pills out of my mother’s medicine cabinet. Obviously, I was unaware of what I was taking as it did nothing but make me sick to my stomach.

In my childhood home, punishment was meted out via the use of a belt on bare bottoms. Often times the buckle was used instead of just the leather. Many times my brother would do something, blame it on me and I would suffer the punishments while he would walk away scot free, often laughing at me and yelling at me to stop my crying.

At 14, my brother broke my arm. He forced me to say that I fell down the stairs and my mother, who was an RN and had worked as a surgical nurse for an orthopedic doctor, did not believe that it was broken, regardless of how much I tried to tell her it hurt. She made me use it to wash dishes, do push-ups and perform other physical activities for 3 days until it blew up like a balloon and turned black. At that point, she realized that something really was wrong and took me to the orthopedic she had worked with. He actually yelled at her for not bringing me in right away. It was the first time in my life that I had ever seen anyone put my mother in her place.

Shortly thereafter, he left for college. Now you need to understand something. Because of the early abuse, my mind started fracturing and I developed what is known today as Disassociative Identity Disorder (DID) but has historically been known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). So many of the abuses I suffered were blocked from my consciousness as each horrific act was perpetrated. I explain this now because after my brother left for college, I had no recall of the abuses he perpetrated upon me.

I did, however, still have the consciousness of what my step-father was doing to me and attempted to tell my mother. She confronted him and he told her that it had only happened one time, that he was very sorry and that it would never happen again. She chose to believe him over me and the sexual abuse continued for another 2 years, until I turned 16, had my own vehicle and was able to run away from home.

I need to backtrack for one second here because there was one more act of violence my brother perpetrated upon me the summer after his first year at college. My step-father had a handgun in one of his dresser drawers that was loaded with blank bullets. My brother found the gun, saw that it was loaded (though he did not realize it was loaded with blanks) took the gun and pointed it in my face and fired 3 times, attempting to kill me. When I ran to my mother’s workplace (less than 2 blocks away) and told her, she rushed home and he denied he had done anything, even though it was plainly obvious that there were 3 bullets missing out of the gun. Again, his word was taken over my own.

The reason I took that little backtrack is so that you have a full picture of the events leading up to my running away from home. You see, when I ran, my subconscious had effectively blocked all of those events, including that last one, and I ran to my brother. He called and had me picked up by social services, where I was held until my mother and the chief of police from my hometown could come and pick me up. After spending the summer in a juvenile facility for problem children, a restraining order was issued and my step-father was ordered to move out of the house and was not allowed any contact with me. So my mother chose to punish me by forcing me to make dinner every night for all 3 of us, so she could take dinner to him and spend every evening with him.

My step-father was a prominent business man in town and as a result, everything was swept under the rug. Very few people were aware of what happened, including my four step-siblings. No charges were officially brought against him and he carried on a number of affairs after I left home, 2 days after I graduated from High School, until my mother passed away. They were married for 35 years when she passed, and he was faithful to her for less than 5 of those years. Sadly, she was well aware of this, yet upon her death, he was the only person to benefit, even though she had told me less than 2 years before her passing that she had written a new will and that when she died, I would never have to worry about a place to live, ever again. Somehow, that will disappeared and my step-father ended up with everything. Four months after her passing, he remarried and last year, he built a brand new home and purchased a half million dollar RV with cash. All from the benefits of my mother’s estate.

I apologize for that little detour, but it does, I feel, have relevance to the story. As I stated earlier, I left home for good 2 days after I graduated from High School. I was headed west, as my brother was living in Washington state at the time. I was raised in Iowa, by the way. On my first night on the road, I ended up being raped by a truck driver whom I had approached to ask for directions. I had known many truck drivers from home and they had all been nice and helpful gentlemen, so I was naive enough to think all truck drivers were like that. After the rape, I didn’t know what to do, so I got back in my car and kept driving. I ended up in Denver, where I found a hole in the wall motel that I could afford, found a check cashing place where I could cash all of the checks I had gotten as graduation gifts, and settled in, thinking I would find a temporary job to get enough money to continue my journey.

When I got back from my scouting trip, there was a young man about my age, sitting in between my room and the room next to mine. We struck up a conversation, started drinking and six weeks later, we were married. We were married for 9 years and had 3 beautiful children. However, those were also 9 years of hell. This handsome, charismatic man that I married 6 weeks after I met, turned out to be a horrifically abusive alcoholic. He was from upstate New York and shortly after our wedding, we headed east. We landed first in his hometown, then moved to Martha’s Vineyard. I ended up pregnant with my first child, shortly thereafter.

Seven months into my pregnancy, my husband hit me for the first time. I left and headed back to Iowa. I was half way home when I stopped to call my mother. I told her what happened and she told me that I needed to turn around and go back. I had made my bed, I needed to lie in it. I was not welcome to come back home.

Over the course of the 9 years we were married, we spent much of that time homeless. My husband could not keep a job due to his alcoholism, and I had done nothing but waitressing, which didn’t generate enough income to keep us housed.

When my husband tried to kill me, I finally had enough…I sent our two oldest children off to school, took my youngest with me, called the police, had him removed from our home and filed for divorce. Unfortunately, I lost our home, again, and ended up in a homeless program for families. My middle child had undiagnosed ADHD and was acting out very badly. I could not control him so I called our social services worker, whom I thought I had a good rapport with, and told her that she needed to come get him before I killed him. I did not mean it in a literal sense, but I was at my wit’s end. Unfortunately, my words were taken at face value and all of my children were removed from my custody. In the meantime, my ex-husband got himself clean and sober and was able to exploit my mental health issues, which came to a head when my children were taken from me.

He ended up with custody of my children and promptly disappeared with them. I did not see them for 20 years. After I lost my children, I ended up on the streets for years. In the throws of my mental health issues, I sold my body for money to survive, I self-medicated with illegal drugs, and I got caught up with some pretty unsavory characters.

I got myself clean and sober 12 years ago and started cleaning my life up. My ex-husband reached out to me, wanting to make another go at it after his second wife divorced him (and managed to gain custody of our children). I got a job and was on a better track until he started to abuse me once again. This time, however, it only took once. I was out the door and off to the shelter. A staff member at the shelter, who also happened to be a friend, introduced me to someone she felt I needed to meet. He and I spent the evening talking, but I only saw him a couple of times over the course of the next three months. In those ensuing months, I returned to my ex-husband, one more time, and finally, in January of 2007, I left for good. I went to find the man my friend had introduced me to, and we talked.

Ten months later, we started a non-profit organization called Homeless not Hopeless, Inc. Against all odds, two homeless people came together and with a whole lot of faith in God and help from the church community, we were able to open two transitional homes for the homeless community of Cape Cod. The following June, we were married at the Federated Church on Main St. in Hyannis and in October of 2008, a year after we opened the houses, we left the organization in the hands of two other formerly homeless individuals, and moved south, as I physically could not handle the cold New England winters any longer.

Six years ago, as I stated earlier, my mother passed away. It was the first time I had seen my brother since he had attempted to kill me. I was civil, introducing him to my husband. He was less so, barely acknowledging me and refusing to introduce me to his wife.

I have been in contact with my middle child now for ten years. He ended up being raised by his father’s sister. Fortunately for me, she has always been on my side, as she knows her brother all too well. So when I was ready, she was 100% behind our being in contact. My youngest child, my only daughter, and I have been in contact subversively for a couple of years. She was put in an impossible position by her father and step-mother and was forced to wait until her half-sister, whom she had basically raised, turned 18 before she could have an open relationship with me. That happened this past January and I have relished every second of our open, honest relationship. I don’t know if I will ever have a relationship with my oldest child, only time and God know the answer to that question.

However, during the previous two years, she and I worked together behind everyone’s backs, and she found my biological mother. I am fortunate that my biological family has welcomed me with wide open arms and has been more supportive of me than my adoptive family ever was. I am only sorry that it took so long to find them, as is my Mother.

I spent a lot of years as a victim. I was a victim of innumerable abuses, a victim of a failed mental health system and a victim of a failed social services system. I am no longer a victim. Today, I am a strong woman who has a voice and is ready, willing and able to use that voice to help those who are victims. Today, I am a proud survivor!

(originally posted as a LinkedIn article in April, 2017)

MaryAnn Halstead

Written by

Artist, Designer, Activist, Survivor. Student,

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