GUILTY OF (DV) ABUSING ME & I COUNT VICTIM’S IMPACT STATEMENT Effects of the Crime & Recommendations for Sentencing The crime for which the defendant was sentenced affected me psychologically, mentally, emotionally, and financially. The physical injuries from this event have healed, but the fear and the injuries done to me psychologically still remain. I had to leave my home in fear of the defendant killing me. He began to threaten me on a daily basis during the pandemic and made it quite evident that night of the crime that it would be soon. The event presented in court only shows a sliver of time of abuse. I was abused for seven years. It began as control statements and shaming words. Eventually, he would become violent towards objects giving me threatening looks. Violence towards me would happen within time. My world became a place of entrapment. While on the outside, he would protest that I should leave, yet he would make it nearly impossible on the inside. Smear campaigns developed out of nowhere, I had no one to confide in, and the relationships were dismantled as he threatened divorce if I spoke to some of my friends. I was constantly being gaslighted while he projected his mental health issues onto me. Sometimes running down the stairs, he would go into a rage with his eyes black, yelling at me that I was crazy. I had to leave the next day after this event immediately. The defendant had the desire and said to me at one point that he wanted to strangle me slowly and watch me die slowly and suffer slowly, and watching me die would give him so much joy. Because he was aiming for my neck with his hands more often, it was highly advised to leave. I had the help of this organization to get out of my home, a home where I lived, invested in, created and gardened. It was also home to our two dogs (officially the defendant’s). I still cry today over our dogs. I knew I would never see them again, and my heart has been torn into pieces ever since. I had to pack fast and leave. I stayed in a motel for 6 nights. Immediately after I left my home, the defendant tried to cancel my car insurance, which would have left me w/o a vehicle. The defendant also threatened to take me to court for abandonment. The smear campaigns surmounted on social media with insults, tormenting me with bullying tactics. There was only one side being presented, and given that he did this in such a calculative manner, I still had no one to confide in. These lies were insidious and incremental. Today, I still have anxiety and fear the gaslighting happening all over again. I was not like this before meeting the defendant. Eventually, I found a room to rent after bouncing from place to place. Given that I was a victim of domestic violence, my roommate did not want to be involved. I kept his name private for these reasons. Again, I had to pay out-of-pocket to leave a home that was also mine. While I endured emotional hardship, I also was paying the bills for the home I was not living in for 2-3 months while paying rent somewhere else. Living in survival mode for so long has taken its toll on me mentally and psychologically, and I am having bouts of depression with anxiety. The abuse put upon me was cruel and unbelievable. His cruelty towards me has resulted in PTSD/CPTSD and trauma bonding. For the last year before I left, the defendant would run down the stairs and start yelling at me to “DIE!” Then, he would circle around me until I was on the floor sobbing, yelling, “you don’t deserve to live, you should die, you don’t deserve to breathe, kill yourself and make the world a better place!” I am very aware of what this man is capable of doing and who is being manipulated. He was capable of premeditating a crime, covering me with blankets and hitting me with a pillow to the point it would burn so that he would not leave marks. He insidiously changed colors on me, saying green was blue, blue was green, orange was brown, and so on so that I would lose my confidence and have others validate that I was mentally unstable. He eventually started to claim left was right, right was left. I have had to go to therapy for this. He would yell at me while I was working on essays for grad school to the point that my head would go sideways while I was typing, not moving in fear of being hit. Spit would fly into my ear, and then he would yell at me because it took me so long to finish my paper. I had to type while being abused. There is so much for me to relive in this statement and so much I have endured throughout our marriage. It is not just the crime that happened on the event in question, but incremental abuse that ensnared my mind. And, how dare someone do this to another human being: To tell someone to kill themselves over and over again, to smash their spiritual belongings in front of them into the carpet, to isolate them by spreading lies, to hurl things into walls near their head, to manipulate their mind into thinking they were crazy, to physically abuse them when they refused to sleep underneath “dog sheets” while staying in an Air B&B, to make them go to the bathroom in a bucket stating “no one” needed plumbing, and to chase them out of the garage, threatening them with board with protruding rusty nails. I lived in fear of the defendant murdering me in my sleep and still wake in the middle of the night in a panic. Had I not had to leave Colorado for cancer treatment, I would have had this statement beforehand. [Text is from one of hundreds sent within a 24-hour period] It was in response to being served divorce papers after being rescued. I had barricaded myself in the bedroom the night before while he stabbed the door with a screwdriver. An organization found shelter for me the next day.
