why you might hypotetically care

on november 4 2009 i was arrested for assault with injury FV in travis county.  instead of going directly to jail i went to the emergency room for my injuries.  both bones in my left wrist were broken.  curiously, the person i “offended” against, my husband and the father of my child, stayed home.  i listed my daughter’s nearest family guardian over and over again to police and paramedics for no good reason because no one had any intent to arrest my husband, the man who had broken my arm.  he won.  the 911 lottery is really simple.  first caller wins in family violence in texas.  i suppose it seemed fine to my arresting officers to leave a man capable of the kind of injuries i received solely in charge of our two year old child in the middle of the night and in a rage about me …or no one in their right mind would have done that.  would they?  they did.

i told the truth.  i assumed we both would.  i did hit my husband first. not well and not hard enough, but i did hit him.  he came back at me so hard that i needed an ambulance. his actions were far above any imagination of self defense. since he had taken my phone, due to a jealous domestic verbal assault earlier,  i was unable to call 911.  he was only able to call 911 after i crawled to the door screaming to the neighbors for help.  he dragged me by my pants away from the door and as my arm kept changing color and shape he was finally motivated by fear to call for my rescue.

i was rescued, i thought.  no one told me that i was going to jail until i was discharged from the er.  no one cared that this was the second time he’d hurt me.  no one offered me any information in the hospital about safeplace or any other resource.  in fact, when they were informed that i was just another prisoner they became physically rougher with me and emotionally cold.  then the officers handcuffed my good arm to my belt loop and off i went to the travis county jail with a weak prescription for vicodin that no one bothered to allow me to have.  i got out 17 hours later in tremendous pain with my arm about to swell out of the rudimentary stint i had on.  i was only allowed 1 ice bag that lasted less than two hours.  i was still breastfeeding at the time so i had to express milk by one hand all over me since no one was allowed to bring me a breast pump.  i got out in mostly one piece and my mother dropped me off to go back with my husband.

what happened?

what would have happened to other women in my situation?

what if my husband had killed our daughter that night?  what if he lay in wait for my return from custody to kill me.  i am not alone.

i am not the only woman this has happened to.   please help me help other women.  our austin, texas police force does not seem to have a handle on primary aggressor training.  who was really hurt?  who was really scared?  who was the most motivated to lie?

women will die because of our officer discretion arrest policies.  anyone could have looked at our height and weight alone.  could i, 130 pounds of me really hurt my 190 pound  husband weaponless?  who had more reason to be afraid of who?  i was afraid of him so i told everyone the truth about what had happened.  my husband was afraid of being arrested so he lied and minimized our story.  who was more motivated to lie?  a person who admitted to hitting her husband in the first place or someone who explained away a compound fracture as a result of a fall?

the police helped minimize my situation in my arrest affidavit by enlarging my husbands scratch from 1 inch to “six inches and bleeding” and downsizing my badly broken arm that took a titanium plate and seven pins and screws to repair as, “looked dislocated.”

who deserved to be entered into bipp counseling?  me apparently, because i was forced to attend it even before i had been convicted of anything.  who could have most benefited from it?  who deserved to have a cps level two investigation?  it seems like the primary aggressor and most powerful offender should have been arrested, counseled and investigated.

my case has been dismissed because i was able to show proof of counseling i had voluntarily attended and paid for.  obviously this situation has left me in great need of counseling.

i’m alive and well though.  i just fear that many other women could be swallowed up in this mess and never fight it, if they did live to fight it.

please help me understand why this happened to me and what i can do about it.

thank you.