“Sarah”
Brooklyn, NY
SARAH: When we got home, I was packing my belongings in the luggage, and he threw me against a wall. He spit in my face. He started to tell me that I had, that I had no right to stand up for myself when it came to his mother, when it came to himself. I can’t recall everything that was said, but I do recall being slammed up against a wall. I do recall not being able to exit the room. I do recall him spitting in my face and yelling at me, and he then turned his anger out on the furniture. He started to beat the furniture. He started to beat the wall beside my head. He started to pull out his hair. Just pulling out his hair and yelling. And insisting that I had to obey him as his wife.
Manipulation
SARAH: My husband is very calculating. Most people perceive batterers as these dumb guys who just beat up on women. Some batterers are very slick, they are very intelligent and they are very calculating, and that’s the type of batterer that I was dealing with. He would orchestrate, in other words, he would do things on purpose to me so that when I would run to my rabbi to tell my rabbi what had happened, they would not believe that those things were occurring in our marriage. Because he had already presented himself as this very upright, young man.
