Deviant Criminology
Dr. Richard Weaver Jr., Heather Kenney, and Rachel Czar take listeners on a journey through the world of true crime. With their unique careers in the criminal justice and academic world; they work to provide an entertaining and educational experience for listeners. This podcast examines many areas of true crime including; the formation of laws, cases that defined caselaw, and crimes that impacted the world. Please join us on this journey as we transition from professionals in criminal justice and academia to budding podcasters.
Deviant Criminology
The Death of Za'Zell Preston and Tragic Reality of Domestic Violence
Domestic violence isn't just a statistic—it’s a harsh reality that often escalates during the holiday season, affecting countless individuals and families. We explore this troubling phenomenon through the lens of Heather's extensive experience in domestic violence units. With her insights, we break down societal misconceptions, highlighting the frustration of victim-blaming and challenging stereotypes about who can fall victim to abuse. Our discussion calls for empathy and awareness, urging listeners to understand that domestic violence can affect anyone, regardless of background.
Through stories like that of William Wallace and Za'Zell Preston, we shine a light on the complexities victims face in abusive relationships, even with awareness and support systems in place. The tragic case of Za'Zell, who was training to be a domestic violence counselor, underscores the insidious nature of control and isolation that can trap victims. We share practical communication tools, such as the "asking for a friend" strategy, to help victims and supporters recognize abusive situations and provide support without direct confrontation, all while navigating the cycle of violence.
As we examine the patterns of power and control, including economic abuse and male privilege, the conversation turns to the broader implications of these dynamics. We stress the critical importance of community support and resources, noting the elevated risks victims face during pregnancy or when planning to leave. Our aim is to arm listeners with knowledge and resources, such as www.thehotline.org, to support those in need. Join us in shedding light on this leading cause of harm to women and children in the U.S., and help us spread awareness to break the cycle of violence.
Resources for domestic violence found on our website.
www.deviantcriminology.com
All right. So this is going to be our first, I guess kind of like mini episode or mini sode, but this kind of came up from multiple angles. So one recently I was at a gun violence conference in Minnesota and one of the topics that came up was violence in the home. A lot of that was talking about domestic violence specifically, and then Heather, you brought up this case and then just kind of the background of domestic violence specifically, and then, heather, you brought up this case and then just kind of the background of domestic violence. So I'll say this twice, but first this is a trigger warning that we are going to be talking about domestic violence and presenting a case that unfortunately leads to homicide because of domestic violence. So but this is an episode that we believe just needs to be done. It's an important topic and, as statistics will show here shortly believe just needs to be done. It's an important topic and, as statistics will show here shortly coming to the holiday season, this is kind of a more vulnerable time for people.
Speaker 2:So I'm Richard Weaver, I'm Heather Kenney and we are Deviant Criminology, so we will be discussing domestic violence, presenting a unique and troubling case involving domestic violence and murder. So again, please take this as a trigger warning. If this is a topic that you are sensitive to, please go ahead and turn off now and go on to our next episode. But research has shown that around the holiday season, reports of domestic violence rise on average of 20%, which there's multiple things that could lead to this. Again, causation does not lead to corralization, but some of this could be related to some of the same things we saw during COVID, where individuals are locked up more together I think locked up may be the wrong word there where individuals are inside more together because of either time off, of work, being cold outside there's less chance to get away. So and we saw that there was a spike during COVID of interpartner violence, and it was often found in combination with other things such as financial problems, mental health disorders, substance use disorders and stressors. So though we often think of domestic violence as being focused on violence just against women, the sad fact is that roughly 40% of cases of interpersonal violence are with male victims. Data also shows that roughly 1 in 15 children have some type of experience or exposure to domestic violence, and over 85% of those kids witness actual physical violence.
Speaker 2:So this is kind of again a topic that you and I have experience with me from the social work side and also just law enforcement responding to these cases and from the law enforcement perspective, these are some of the most volatile cases to go to and probably the most dangerous. So even though you're called to those situations, once you go to make an arrest, if you have to make arrests, sometimes the victims can change personality. So you know if their loved one is going to jail they may be afraid of retaliation. When they get out they may realize there could be financial repercussions. So they can be very volatile and a lot of officers have lost their lives and emergency responders, even EMTs, have lost their lives responding to these cases. And then you yourself have a long history with this as well.
Speaker 3:So real quick. I think you reversed causation and correlation when you said it. I don't know if you want to just repeat that one little bit Correlation does not equal causation. And you said, causation does not equal correlation.
Speaker 2:Well shit. Okay, so let me go back and fix that. Causation does not equal correlation.
Speaker 3:Other way around Correlation.
Speaker 2:Okay, so one more time. Correlation does not equal causation. So, just like the example of ice cream sales go up in the summer, murders. Go up in the summer does not mean eating ice cream makes you commit murder. So we're going to leave all of this in, just to show that I also can be a jackass. So, but off of that, heather, you have like a lot of experience in this area as well.
Speaker 3:So unfortunately yes, unfortunately, I do. I worked in domestic violence units for both misdemeanor level and felony level, so I've seen a lot more than most people probably should have seen or would want to have seen me. And sometimes I get like emotionally invested as far as frustration and anger, because sometimes I don't understand how other people can't understand this, but at the same time I have to try to take a step back and recognize that not everybody has had the education and exposure and training and all of the things that I've had. You know, when you see victims every single day for two years, it becomes really easy to see the problems, and when you talk to somebody else who doesn't see those problems, it gets frustrating. And you also have to keep all of those things in mind when you are talking to potential jurors.
Speaker 3:In your jury said that there was no such thing as domestic violence because a husband would never hurt or hit his wife unless she had done something wrong. As such, it was his job to have some type of family structure and enforce that family structure. And I tried to give her the example of what happens if he only gives her $50 to buy groceries and she knows it's going to cost $75 to buy the groceries for the week, and her answer was basically like, well, he wouldn't do that because no husband would do that and if something came up it basically had to be her fault. So there's a lot of things that go into DV and we'll talk about that at the end, things like victim blaming and you know why didn't they leave and how did they get themselves into this.
Speaker 3:But for right now let's go ahead and talk about this case. It caught my attention and it kept bothering me and I kept thinking about it and I think last night I kind of finally like wrapped my mind around why it had been bothering me so much, the fact that this victim it seems like she hits some of the major areas that you would think she would not have been a victim of domestic violence, and sometimes I think that also makes it difficult for people in the public to understand that this could happen to anybody. This isn't just as the movies portray, just certain groups of people or, you know, only economically depressed people or only women who have low self-esteem, or only uneducated people, like it goes across all of the demographics.
Speaker 2:And I think, like even in my experience, like I've known social workers, I've had students that came into social work or criminal justice specifically because they were either had been prior victimized or were currently being victimized, and then even police officers and lawyers that were victims actively of domestic violence. So it's, I think a lot of people think it's the most vulnerable, but it can be what we perceive as the strongest. I see it a lot also in athletes and across all those groups when the biggest thing is reporting and a lot of it is because they don't want to get somebody in trouble but also they don't see how they themselves are a victim.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I definitely agree with that see how they themselves are a victim. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And I think there's also an element when you're talking about it the whole blame, the victim thing, because it cuts across all demographics. I think we naturally have this inclination to try to figure out how can I be safe, what makes me safe? And if you look at something, whether it be a sex assault or a domestic violence case or anything else, if you think, gee, that could happen to me, it's scary. So the easiest thing to do to self-protect is to find reasons why that's not going to happen to you. And just saying I'm lucky and I rolled the dice and it didn't happen to me isn't very settling. So it's easier to say, well, it won't happen to me because I'm different than. Why will this not happen to me Because I'm different than that victim? How Well, because I won't do this, or I am not this, or I won't be that.
Speaker 2:I think another thing is victim blaming goes both ways and a lot of times victims blame themselves and we have to also work on that mentality we talked about, like making mental health more, like getting the stigma off of that. There does need to be a push also for helping victims of domestic violence not blame themselves and not see that self-shame and self-blame.
Speaker 3:I think that's a huge issue, and when I say victim blaming, I mean everybody like victims included, and I found that one of the most effective way when you're trying to talk to victims and hopefully this might be helpful for somebody listening if they have a friend or family member who they're worried about is to not talk to that person about their specific circumstances, which might sound odd, but instead of saying something like he shouldn't talk to you that way, which then they'll get defensive and say something like, yeah, but I burned dinner.
Speaker 3:Or yeah, but that's my fault because of this, or I really made him mad because of that, instead turn it into no one deserves to be talked that way, because they're going to have a hard time answering that back, because then they're going to think about well, if this was what, if this was my, you know, my sister, my friend, my cousin, if somebody talked to them that way, would it be okay? And so I think it's a lot easier to extrapolate that out to the third person and say no one should be treated this way, to extrapolate that out to the third person and say no one should be treated this way. No one should be talked to this way. People who love other people. Don't treat the people they love this way, and I think when you get those themes going, it's easier for victims to recognize. This is not okay.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I think there's also that other kind of the joke we've always said, but it actually fits in here. So asking for a friend and then kind of giving a scenario that very much kind of mirrors theirs, because it takes them out of it but makes them look at it and be like, oh, wow. So I think that it might be a throw off that we say all the time jokingly, is that asking for a friend? That can be a very good communication tool. We also use in substance use disorders, but in this as well, where you really want them to see. But even if they see, sometimes, as I know you're going to get into, even if you have the will, you may not have the ability exactly, exactly, and there's we'll also talk more about all the reasons why not to leave.
Speaker 3:But I think, as you said, that that asking for a friend if you can make it an objective evaluation instead of a subjective evaluation that it helps think through that process and decide this is not okay and I'm going to do something about it. I'm not going to just let this keep happening. But it also means that you have to have somebody who's able to talk to you and tell you that, and one of the things we'll talk about is one of the first things that an abuser will do is cordon that person off, isolate them, get all of those support people out of their life before things get bad. So then that way nobody sees those things, so nobody can say, hey, that's not okay, why are you putting up with this? Because if everybody's at arm's length and nobody sees it, nobody can call them out. So let's talk about this case and then we'll come back around to some more of the general things and we can apply it kind of in light of this case.
Speaker 3:This case tragically happened around Christmas. It's between two individual, william Wallace and Zazelle Preston, also known as ZZ. It's a case from California, orange County and at the time Wallace was 39 years old and he had served jail time for domestic violence. Prior to this incident, zz was 26 and had recently enrolled as a full-time student at Cypress College and she was studying to be a domestic violence counselor. Ironically enough, and just like you said Richie maybe it was because of this hard to say and she had been noted to be a talented dancer. According to family and friends, she also told her family that he was controlling and violent and had even threatened to kill her more than once. A relative shared an incident where they found her pregnant and curled up in the fetal position in the street after he had beat her up. So again, that goes back to she's educated or becoming educated in domestic violence. So you wouldn't think that that would make her be a victim. She has family members around, so she has support, so you would think that that would be an indication that she wouldn't be a victim. This relative shared this incident where they found her beaten up when she was pregnant. So again, you'd think, well, she's not going to be a victim because this family member knows what's going on. They'll intervene. And yet this still happened. At the time of the offense she had a seven-week-old son with the defendant and then she also had two daughters from a previous relationship, a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. So the date of offense for this incident is December 24, 2011,. And it continues into Christmas Day, december 25, 2011. And it continues into Christmas Day, december 25th 2011.
Speaker 3:And the couple had gone to a neighbor's holiday party, came home, argued loud enough that some neighbors had heard the argument. At some point, he drags her from the bedroom to the living room, puts her on the sofa, puts some sunglasses on her face and props her on the couch for Christmas morning. And she is in the room while her children are opening their gifts. And as her body is there on the couch, the defendant turns and tells the children mommy ruined Christmas, she got drunk and ruined Christmas. Mommy ruined Christmas, she got drunk and ruined Christmas. So, on top of all of the horrendous stuff that happens with this case, he brings the children into this and then also tells them that it's mom's fault that he killed her.
Speaker 3:At some point the paramedics arrive and when they get there, her body is slumped over on the couch. Police get called in. They find blood in multiple areas of the apartment. Holes are punched in walls, there's a door off the hinges, he says at some point we were drinking and during the argument I tossed her around a bit and he had said that to one of her family members. Another witness also said that they saw him with a body near an entry gate.
Speaker 3:Now the defense in this case was that she had died after falling into a glass table while she was drunk. They alleged that the oldest daughter which again, if you remember, she was eight years old saw mom trip and fall into the table, then helped pull the glass out of her mom's wounds and helped clean her up, and that at some point he was moving her body to the tub and hit her head somewhere along the way. And he told multiple people that she had fallen and had a concussion. And one of his defense team, heather Moorhead, said that Mr Wallace is being accused of something that is not his fault. You will hear about a relationship that was full of arguing and yelling, but also a lot of love.
Speaker 2:Looking at all this. They go out drinking. He comes back and says she just happens to fall through a table, hit her head a couple times and then props her up on a couch for Christmas presents because he just didn't want them to go to Christmas without mom, while and this was all accident, but yet history of multiple issues with domestic violence OK, just wanting to make sure. I'm very aware that this man is a liar.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely Right. You know there's a. There's a whole lot of love in that. Yeah, no, there was a whole lot of love, like there would have been some efforts to stop what was happening on his part. Hopefully some responsibility and some self-awareness, but obviously not. So that was the statement that Heather Moore had told to the jurors. She was part of the defense team. Um, as you all know, my name is Heather and there was also a DDA, heather Brown. In this case there's Heather's all the way around and, um, heather Brown said that the defendant did what he always did, expecting ZZ to survive, like she always did.
Speaker 3:This Christmas story does not have a happy ending and unfortunately this is not just a story. It is real life, which you know. Again. We see depictions of domestic violence on television and in movies and in stories, and I think a lot of times we don't recognize how common it is and that it's not nearly as dramatic as what you see on TV.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's a lot of little things that in and of themselves, if you look at this one little incident, it doesn't mean anything, but it's when you look at the totality of the story and all of these little incidents along the way that it makes sense. So, like as an example, you might have a restraining order case where the person has violated a restraining order and he sent her flowers on her birthday. And you look at that case on the face and you're like gee, he sent her flowers on her birthday, yes, there was a restraining order, and now all of a sudden he's going to jail for that. How ridiculous is that? But if you hear the backstory to it where he told her things like you'll never get away from me. If you ever leave me, you know I'm going to kill you. I can't stand for you to be with anybody else.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you'll hear statements like I can't go on living if I don't have you in my life, which is another huge red flag. You go through all of that and then all of a sudden, she's hiding, she's moved to a new apartment, she's got a new job. She thinks that she's passed him and he's forgotten all about her and she thinks she's on the next chapter and on her way and all of a sudden these flowers pop up. You know, happy birthday from John. You know John Smith. And you know that all that terror, all that emotion, all of that comes crashing back of the oh my God, he knows where I'm at, yeah, and I'm right back into the middle of it.
Speaker 3:So I think you need, when you're hearing about stories or you see incidents or you see something, you need to remember that context, even when you're talking about friends or family, like if you see something you might be like, oh, that one thing is not a big deal. But if you think about it in context, over time sometimes you'll see a picture that you might not ordinarily would have seen or made observations about. Another one of the quotes was from District Attorney Todd Spitzer and he said a young mother finally losing her life after years of violence at the hands of her husband is a heart-wrenching tragedy. The heartbreak is only exacerbated by the fact that her children witnessed much of the violence and were forced to celebrate Christmas in the presence of their dead mother. That is not a Christmas memory any child should be forced to have, and I think it's important to note how many children are impacted by domestic violence. When you say domestic violence, most people think of the individuals involved in the relationship, whether it be male or female. A lot of times people don't think about the children that are involved, the impact on those children, other family members, because of the isolation Sometimes people will lose their brother or their sister or their parents, and so when these things happen, it doesn't just impact we'll say her as the generic gender pronoun. It also happens to impact her mother or her father or her cousin or her best friend who she's no longer emotionally available to because he has taken her away, and sometimes that will have been taking her away emotionally or time-wise, where they're no longer part of her life.
Speaker 3:When it comes to children specifically, in my experience they know far more than most people think that they know. They hear far more than people think that they hear. A lot of times when I'm talking to victims, one of the things that push them forward to finally do something about it is their children will say something or see something, or somehow they know that their children are being impacted by it, and that's one of the things that I have seen motivate victims to get out of those situations. A lot of times they don't realize their children are hearing these things until they say something, or their kids will say something at school and the teacher will call home. There have been some studies that have shown that children who are exposed to domestic violence have the same types of learning and cognitive delays that children who are exposed to lead contamination do. So it's not just a minor thing. It's not something you can just brush off. It's something that's actually really causing problems for these children.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think another thing that we need to talk about that's not is believed children. I think there's situations, especially and we saw it during COVID, like before COVID and even after COVID once families got out that domestic violence, especially if there's stepchildren in the house, can be the targets of the initial domestic violence and the emotional abuse, and when they try to report it to the other parent, the other parent doesn't believe it Once that child's gone or once the other parent is home in the house more that the abuser can't hide it anymore.
Speaker 2:And then finally you see it, but it's either too late or you've become so desensitized to it that you just continue to go on and you become a victim as well. And I think that there's really signs that you need to listen to children and take them seriously, because you always go for the most vulnerable first. That's what I'm going to just say. That's what cowards do. They go after the weakest one first and they force people into abuse.
Speaker 3:And I would agree with that. That's often how it works. Sometimes you have the opposite, where they have connected with the victim before the kids are born and then, as the children are born and they are living through these experiences and that's all they know, their mothers kind of teach them survival skills. So we'll talk more about the cycle later. But in general, the faster you get to the point where he gets mad and gets over being mad, the safer you are, because the longer it takes for him to get to that point, the angrier he gets and the more violent the outburst will become.
Speaker 3:So a lot of times these kids will learn things in little cues like oh, dad's drinking, I need to go to my room and go to sleep tonight. Or he's yelling that dinner's burnt, now would be a good time for me to go hide someplace else. Or it's Friday night and every Friday night he goes out with his work friends and then when he comes home there's a problem. I need to ask to spend the night at my friend's house tonight. So they learn those avoidance techniques, sometimes from their mothers and watching how they are surviving, and then they in turn internalize those survival mechanisms. So, speaking of these cases impacting other family members. In this specific case, zizi's mother said he beat and tortured my daughter and at the same time mentally assassinated her children. He showed her no mercy, let's show him no mercy. So that's how you know. It impacted her mother specifically in this case and obviously her mother also was aware of the impact it had on the children in this case.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because her mother became the caregiver for her children afterwards. I believe so, and I think to me, as you're getting to the end of this case, the biggest thing to remember always is that there are three innocent children that are now without a mother.
Speaker 3:And without a father.
Speaker 2:And without a father, and there were multiple intervention points.
Speaker 3:So, procedurally on this case, the defendant was arrested, he was held on a $1 million bail and at the time he was facing 25 years to life. The trial finally began in 2021. So approximately 10 years later. The trial finally began in 2021, so approximately 10 years later. He eventually was convicted of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 15 years to life, sent up to North Kern State Prison in California. Wallace was given credit for his time served, which was over nine years at the time of his sentencing, and I wasn't able to find any information as to why it was delayed so long. My suspicion and again this is just speculation on my part is that it had something to do with the oldest daughter, because at the time of the offense, the oldest daughter would have been eight years old. Ten years later she would have been 18 years old and given the fact that they were testifying about the death of her mother, like that was the subject of it, I'm sure at the age of eight, when all of this was new, trying to have her testify would have just destroyed her. For Wallace, he got his 10 years approximately of credit for time served. Again, at that point in time, the oldest starter would have been 18. And because his defense was saying that she had seen her mother fall through the table, I'm sure that she probably was called to testify. I can't imagine her not being called to testify, and maybe they had to wait for her to be 18 before the judge would allow it. It's hard to say. In November of 2023, he did come up for parole and he was not released, thankfully, and his next parole hearing is going to be in November of 2028.
Speaker 3:So, dv in general. I'm going to turn it back over to Richie. As an officer, what types of things have you seen? And as a social worker?
Speaker 2:I think one like the first try to intervene sooner with the children that are victims of domestic violence, to try and provide them the services, not to continue that cycle. But there are um as this is kind of like one of those I don't want to say like after school specials about domestic violence that we're doing, but but I think there are things that we need to, we want to point out that are warning signs that if you're listening you yourself or as a family member for somebody, or friends, or even just as a community members are out and about, especially around the holidays when you're seeing a lot more people is signs you can look for. Is one if somebody is being hypersensitive, if they're over alert to sounds, they're very jumpy, they're skittish and you start to see them disconnecting from family, friends, co-workers. Another one is if you hear through cell phones, if you're hearing somebody talking to somebody else and you hear verbal abuse, if you're hearing controlling language from a partner. One sign can be if somebody calls you and you can tell they want to talk about something like, well, I can't talk about it right now. Or somebody's home I can't talk about it right now, let me call you when they're not home and they're very elusive about what they'll talk about. When that person's there, their tone changes, their whole behavior changes. So listening for those special verbal cues changes their whole behavior changes. So listening for those special verbal cues Controlling behaviors or actions to restrict somebody's contact with family or friends, so if somebody will only come out but their partner has to be with them, oh, I can't go to my family's holiday festivities because I have to go to all the hits, I'm not allowed to go to mine.
Speaker 2:Or you know, that's not what we're doing this year, just little things like that where they're isolating themselves more and more, canceling plans suddenly out of nowhere, and that goes to the isolation. If they're isolating themselves, if they're being isolated, if they blame their partner, if they're being blamed, so if they say, you know, it's my fault, we're having financial issues, if there's hardship in the family. That's one thing you see with a lot of abusers in domestic violence and interpartner violence issues is so they're always displacing their problems on somebody else and making them the focus of why it's happening. Again, the physical abuse if you're actually seeing physical signs grapping, holding, restricting movement, physically bruises, broken bones, things like that, or you know, if it's a coworker, you're starting to see excessive days off. They're taking a lot of days off either kind of in a scattered pattern, especially the sounds kind of goes back to what you're talking about after games and stuff. If Mondays, if they constantly have the same by calling off on Mondays or Tuesdays, or after holiday events or things like that.
Speaker 2:It's just really important to keep your eyes open, be aware and kind of like we say with a lot of things right now, you know, if you see something, say something. And, as we talked about at the beginning, it doesn't have to be direct hey, that guy's an asshole. Or hey, your partner is a shitbag that's beating you or screaming at you. You have to be a lot more tactful and use those kind of passive questionings and those example situations. But most of all, what we want to do is kind of provide resources. So did you want to talk about, before I go through that kind of like, the power and control, balance and things like that? You had talked about that and I don't want to excuse that by any means.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely. Typically there's a cycle of violence. And when I say cycle of violence it doesn't always necessarily mean violence in the things that you were talking about, like the hitting, the pushing, broken bones, black eyes, stuff like that that you think about. It can be other things too, like the emotional abuse and things of that nature, the posturing, the intimidation, little things like that, things that you don't even see on the outside. But if you're paying attention you'll see the way somebody is reacting, Like you were talking about being more jumpy or more timid or canceling plans at the last minute because they have to go do something with him. And when you're looking at that cycle, there's four different aspects to it. The first one is the building of tension, and I mentioned that earlier that as that tension increases, it's almost like the energy you have with a thunderstorm, that the more energy that increases, the more that tension comes. When the explosion happens, it's worse. And that's the next phase is the incident of abuse. When something actually happens, then there's a reconciliation, which we also call the honeymoon phase, and then you go into a calm phase. So a lot of times these things, when it's the tension building, you'll hear that walking on eggshells. I can't make him mad. He's been really stressed out, language like that. That's usually in that tension building phase. And then something will happen, Like they'll have an argument, he'll throw stuff at her, he'll say he's going to kill her. You know things like that. Or sometimes it's almost like the reverse thing of I'm going to kill myself and it'll be your fault which those are always difficult, because threatening to kill yourself isn't exactly menacing. So then you know what do you do with that case where every time there's some type of a problem, he says, well, I'm going to kill myself. Well, it's still power and control, it's still part of this cycle. But it's not the same as if he pushed her and you can say, okay, now you're under arrest for pushing her. So that always and it also is more difficult to get through to the victim when they're saying you know, I love you so much, if you leave, I'm going to kill myself to say this is abuse, you need to stop paying attention to this.
Speaker 3:And then, after you have that incident, you have the honeymoon phase, or the reconciliation phase. One of my coworkers, many, many moons ago, um, was talking about a case that he went on when he first started and when he was talking to the victim she was in that honeymoon phase and she came out and she showed him this new vacuum that the defendant had bought for her. And she was like, look, it even has a setting for shag carpet. So that tells you how old this happened. And he said he looked around and he's like, all you have is linoleum. You don't even have shag carpet. And she said, well, that's what he said He'd get me next time. So she was already so used to this cycle that she already knew it was going to come back around and next time he was going to get her carpet.
Speaker 3:And then, after that reconciliation, then you have that calm phase and so one of the difficulties when you're trying to get through to victims too is where they're at in that cycle and you talk about like going to trial and victims recanting and things like that. If you have that incident happen and by the time the case goes to trial you're into that reconciliation, honeymoon or calm phase they're going to be more inclined to not cooperate. He's better. He said he's sorry. He said I'll never do it again. We're okay now. We don't need to go forward. You know, everything's great. Just stop what you're doing and we just want to go on with our lives. We don't want you bothering us anymore. On the flip side, if the trial comes up during that tension building phase, then it's you've got to dismiss this. This is going to piss him off. We like just leave us alone, we'll figure it out, like it'll be okay. I just need you to go away, it'll, it'll be all right Like you're. You're just going to make them more stressed out. You're just going to make it worse. And then, if you happen to be going to trial right when that next incident of abuse happens, sometimes, if you're in the right timeframe, they'll be in that. I'm tired of this. This needs to end. I'm going to tell you what happened, part Some. I'm tired of this. This needs to end. I'm going to tell you what happened. Part Some of the things like we were talking about power and control and the power and control wheel.
Speaker 3:You'll see things like using intimidation, so looks, actions, gestures, smashing things. Like we were talking about the case where there were the holes in the wall, like punching holes in the wall, things like that. Abusing pets I had several cases like that where the defendant would do things to the family pets and again either say I did this because you made me mad or this is your punishment for doing what you did Using emotional abuse, putting her down, making her feel bad about herself, calling her names, trying to make her think that she's crazy. That didn't happen that way. I don't know what you're talking about. That didn't happen. That never happened. That gaslighting, playing mind games, humiliating her, especially like in front of her friends, because then that aids in the isolation aspect of it, making her feel guilty about it. This is your fault. Look what you made me do Again the using isolation. And when you're using isolation, that can be controlling what she does or who she sees, who she talks to. I've seen defendants who wouldn't let their wives or girlfriends work, minimizing, denying and blaming. Those are things that you'll see Making light of it I was just joking, that didn't really happen Saying that she caused it, using their children in the mix, making her feel guilty about the children, saying things like oh, you're going to break up our family, our kids are going to grow up without a dad or they'll threaten to take the children away.
Speaker 3:I've seen that many times where they'll say I have more money than you. Everybody thinks you're crazy, you're a bad mother, we're going to get divorced and I'm going to just take the kids with me. Using the whole male privilege thing, you were making her feel like she's a servant, making all the decisions and cutting her out of those big decisions. Acting like, you know, the master of the castle, he also would potentially define what his role is versus hers. Again, I'm using those his her terms generically, not specifically.
Speaker 3:Sometimes you'll see things on the economic side of it and economic abuse and male privilege to me kind of go hand in hand, because most of the time men in this country get paid more than women in this country do when they both do the same jobs. So, you know, I've heard things like I make more money than you, so for you to make up for the fact that you don't make as much money as I do, you need to do the laundry and the dishes, because that's contributing your fair share to this relationship. If you made more money, then we would redistribute these tasks. Or when you start making more money than I do, then I'll do the laundry, or then I'll do the dishes. And then, of course, with the economic abuse, she, you know, would prevent her from getting a job or keeping a job, because then that would give her independence if she had her own money. Making her ask for money or putting her on an allowance, taking money I've seen that before where she'll go out and work and he'll literally take all the money and stick it in the bank account and it's his and she only gets like a certain allowance back. I've seen that work the opposite too, where you know a woman has demanded that the entire paycheck be put under her domain and she would give him a certain amount of cash and that was his cash for the week, um things like that.
Speaker 3:And then there's also like using coercion and threats. So you know, making threats, carrying out threats, saying that they're going to hurt her or threaten to leave her or commit suicide, sometimes calling children's services that's another one that's come up Forcing her to dismiss charges or fail to cooperate with prosecution, or making her do illegal things, which that one's always a double whammy, because if you get her to do something illegal, then if she's ever like I'm going to call the police because you hit me, that's fine, go ahead and call the police and I'm going to tell them about that time that you sold drugs to that person down the street when I told you to go do it. Things like that. So those are the different aspects of power and control. So if you see those things or suspect those things are happening to a friend or family member, you can hopefully recognize some of those tactics and maybe find a counter to it. Like we were talking about before, nobody deserves to be hit. Nobody should be put on an allowance. Everybody should be allowed to have a job if they want one. Things like that Again it's important to reiterate this can happen to anybody. This cuts across all the demographics. It doesn't matter, you know, race, education, religion, education. It cuts across every single section that we have.
Speaker 3:As these things go on, there's escalation, and when I say escalation, the incidents of abuse typically get worse as things go on. So you know, today he punches the wall and says I'm so mad at you, I could punch you in the face. Then, you know, today he punches the wall and says I'm so mad at you, I could punch you in the face. Then, you know, the next time it's he pushed her into the wall and said I'm so mad I can't see straight. And then finally he punches her in the face. That type of thing.
Speaker 3:Also, when it comes to escalation, that cycle to go through starts getting shorter. So maybe it used to be that it took six months to go through that cycle, where there'd be the tension building, then the incident of abuse, the honeymoon phase and the calm. So then it was well, he only hits me once every six months. It's not that bad. But then as that time shortens, then all of a sudden it's we're getting into a fight every month, or now it's every week. So as those times shorten it changes the dynamic of the relationship also. And again, it's one of those things that in the beginning it's easy to rationalize and say well, he doesn't do that that often, but then as it becomes more frequent it gets harder and harder to ignore. So you might say why don't you leave, do you? If you had to try to help any victims leave, like in your line of work, I don't know how much you've had to deal with that.
Speaker 2:No, I mean our job was never to help them leave. I mean you try to give them resources and even in social work you try to get them access to resources. Let them know, like, where I work, the Center for Women and Families like is a big one, but you can't. I mean obviously you can't force somebody to do something. But you can't. I mean obviously you can't force somebody to do something. All you can do is educate them and hope for the best.
Speaker 2:I mean that's unfortunately the reality. I mean I've seen evacuation vehicles where you know you call them, they will come at two o'clock in the morning, pick you, your family, and get you out of there and take you to a safe house. And they really are safe houses like there's. I was talking to a couple individuals a couple months ago that they were working with Google to basically remove safe houses from Google Maps and they're doing things to try and protect domestic violence victims and stuff by hiding facilities and things like that. So you can't even Google them. You can try things like that, but in the end it really comes down to just trying to give as much support and resources and sadly pray.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. The bigger thing for us as to the why they don't leave is trying to explain it to jurors and that's why, for us, we really needed to try to understand why they don't leave, not necessarily to try to convince them that they need to leave, but always making sure that they know if they want help we could help them with that. But more of trying to explain why they didn't, because a lot of times juries would come back and say, well, it wasn't that bad, because if it was, she would have left, called the police sooner, gone to her mother's house, fill in whatever blank you want, and so you know why don't they leave. Sometimes it's denial. As far as it's not that bad. He's a really good guy. He's a good father. Victim blaming it's my fault. He did this. I made him upset. I know he has a temper. I pushed him too much. Economics they don't have the money to leave. You know we're living together in this house. I tried to find an apartment. I don't have a job. I can't get an apartment on my own. I have no place else to go, so they just stay with him.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's a history. You've been together for so long, you're just kind of together. All of your friends are your friends as a group, as a couple, not your friends as an individual. And you get that history and after a while you don't want to give up that ability to talk about. Oh, this one time this thing happened, wasn't that funny? Or do you remember that Christmas when such and such happened? So sometimes it's just things like that having somebody to connect with, or it can also be lack of connections. If he's cut off all of her family and friends and she no longer has anybody to talk to, nowhere to go. If they have kids together, nobody wants to be the one to break up the family. Nobody wants to make it so that the kids don't have dad coming home every night after work. Or the kids will cry like I want dad to come home. That's really hard on mom to say you can't come home because last time you were here you got drunk and you hit me when your kids are crying, saying I want dad, I want dad.
Speaker 3:Also, another thing to consider is the increased danger of leaving, and the two most dangerous times for women are when they're pregnant and when they try to leave, because when they're pregnant there's a imminent threat that's going to disrupt their lives. And a lot of times when a woman will have a child, all of a sudden her focus shifts from her partner to her child, which is naturally what should occur. This child needs you. You need to take care of your baby.
Speaker 3:But a lot of times, when it comes to these controlling men, they don't like to see that shift, because now they're not the center of the universe anymore. Somebody else is infringing on their territory and their time. So a lot of times when you know somebody's pregnant, you know that whole they fell down the stairs thing you'll see things like that, uh. Or when they're trying to leave, because if she's actually going to leave, then that's the ultimate of losing control. And for some men that's not something that they can tolerate. And if they just can't get past that, unfortunately that's sometimes when you have situations like this where you end up with a fatality because you can't just let her walk away and back away from the situation.
Speaker 2:And the sad thing is, with some of the cases and it's rare I mean I don't want to scare people from trying to leave by any means or trying to give people help, but sometimes time does not heal all wounds and sometimes you can see instances 10, 20 years later where they've been split up for 10, 20 years and an incident happens in one of their lives and they go back to that other partner and commit violence or, unfortunately, homicide. Like love does strange things and I don't consider this love by any means, but I do think that one thing we need to give out is there are resources. One thing we need to give out is there are resources. One for if you're the victim or know somebody that is the victim, you have wwwthehotlineorg, which is a domestic violence resource website for individuals who are experiencing domestic violence. One thing to remember is that your Google and your Internet search histories are not private. Either your phone calls. So if you are worried that somebody is tracking your phone or is observing your stuff, trying to use a friend's phone, a work computer or something like that, you can also call 800-799-SAFE or 800-799-7233. Or you can text START, that's S-T-A-R-T to 88788.
Speaker 2:Those are all resources for victims of domestic violence, domestic violence. There's also the option if you are listening to this or if somebody's brought you to this and you are somebody who has a background of abuse, it comes from a family that you witnessed abuse or you yourself are actively abusing somebody else look for the Center for Prevention of Abuse. They have resources for individuals. They are there to try and help abusers get therapy and help themselves and to try and overcome the problems that are leading to them victimizing other people. So again, this is a really heavy topic. We were hoping for it to be 20 minutes, but obviously you can tell from both of us our passion, the seriousness of this topic. I would rather take 20 hours to try and get all the resources and facts out there. Because of all the things in the United States we see, this is probably one of the leading causes of violence amongst individuals, and women and children specifically.
Speaker 3:So thank you so much for listening and hopefully we have given you some good information.
Speaker 2:I want to thank you all so much for listening to our little podcast. This is created with love and passion for criminal justice and true crime. So if you're enjoying the podcast, please follow us, like or rate us on whatever system you're listening to us on, subscribe to our podcast and download episodes. Downloads are important for our growth, as is growing our listeners. So if you wouldn't mind, take the time to ask your friends, family, co-workers, tell them about us through word of mouth, social media I don't care if you even scream at strangers on the streets to help us kind of get out there who we are.
Speaker 2:If you're interested in learning more, you could visit our website at wwwdeviantcriminologycom. There you'll find some stuff about our backgrounds, references, show notes for each episode. You can also follow us on our Facebook page at Deviant Criminology. We also have an Instagram page, which is Deviant underscore Criminology, or find me at Dr Richard Weaver on Instagram, and as we grow, we hope to develop a community that will grow with us. So again, thank you for taking the time to listen and have a good week.
