If you didn't read Part 1 of this mini-series, I recommend you do so. You will find it here.
This is the story of a fellow Kossack, as told to me in a series of recent emails. The words in blockquotes are mostly hers - I edited solely to expunge any potentially identifying detail. The rest of the diary is mine.
When I changed identities, I did so in a state that has a law that keeps my identity change sealed for 50 years. I'll be in my 80s when it's opened up, and that's long enough, I think.
The way it worked for me at the time: I filed the request with the circuit court, and asked for it to be placed under seal. I provided copies of my restraining order, and affidavits regarding the threats he made. I also got a witness statement: the friend who warned me about the interstate stalking actually knew the girl my abuser had bragged to about the credit report header. He actually waved it in her face and she read it clear as a bell -- my name, my SSN, and my address at the time. Once she had gotten away from him and someplace safe, she called my friend and begged her to warn me. She was more than happy to write out a statement, notarize it and send it to my lawyer. Thank god I had just moved a couple of days beforehand! But it was still scary as hell.
The state name change is the easy part. It's changing your Social Security number that's hard, and without it, your name change is thin protection. The feds do not like doing SSN changes, and I am lucky I did mine before 9/11. I cannot even begin to imagine how difficult they make it for people now, unless the victim has a major law enforcement agency assisting. If you have any sort of criminal record, you will not get the SSN change. They just won't do it. The state name change only took about a month. The SSN change took a year, and they kept dropping the ball. Like I said, they don't like doing this, but what with the computer systems now, it's really easy for them to cross-reference. I quizzed them extensively about who could get access to those files, because my geek friends warned me to ask about security on their systems. These files are flagged, and it takes someone with a particular authorization to pull up the previous identity, but they can do it. State did it when I got the new passport. I sweated that one.
Amazingly enough, the Social Security Administration actually has a page on their web site that provides information on identity change for victims of stalking and domestic violence. I can't speak to whether or not it's now easier than when this woman went through it, but at least they've made the information available.
An identity change is obviously an extreme solution to an extreme problem. There are interim steps; restraining orders being the most obvious, and also most if not all states have an address confidentiality program. How that works is that the victim registers with the state and is given a PO box address – in Washington, that address is in Olympia, the state capital. Mail received at the PO box is then forwarded to the victim’s actual address by a state agent.
Searching Google for information on identity change in DV/stalking cases produced quite a bit of information – the SSA page above, and a number of pages of state-based information. What I found somewhat troubling was that every site I looked at was silent on the subject of identity change for children. Perhaps there is simply an assumption that the same options are available for children as for their mothers, but my question – do the father’s parental rights have to be terminated in order for his children to be able to change identities and disappear with their mother? – went unanswered everywhere I looked, so I called the National DV Hotline and asked them. The answer I got was, basically, that it’s a state-based issue. Most DV agencies do have legal advocates on staff, so if someone reading this needs or wants to find out more, I’d suggest contacting your local DV agency and asking to speak to a legal advocate.
The credit issues were harder, though. It took nearly seven years to rebuild it, just as if I were a kid just starting out with no one to co-sign anything. I can't tell you how awful it was when the old clunker car finally broke down -- the engine died (the car had 100,000+ miles on it), and the hatch wouldn't latch and lock reliably, and the transmission was becoming ragged. I had no choice but to fix it, because I couldn't get a loan.
Employment was a trick, too. I had no job references, of course. I did some freelance crafts work, signed up with a temp agency, and just ate like a poor person. There were a couple of things I felt I had to have: a phone, and a big dog. I had one cat left, so I had to feed the critters first, and the phone, and rent, and anything left went to electric and then food. I ate a lot of rice, beans, eggs and oatmeal in those years.
Along the way I gradually lost my faith. I became intensely wary of anyone who said to me that they had the one true way in anything, be it work, love, or religion. It just set off warning signals in my head. I trust very little in this life, and I need to see good faith actions before I'll give even a modicum of trust anymore, even if it's family.
But that's the easy stuff compared to the family issues. My mother never completely accepted what I'd had to do. And giving up my dad's last name was hideously hard -- it felt like repudiation, even though I know he would have understood. Anything having to do with family finances, such as wills and trusts, have become extremely tricky, because of the way the documents are written, and because I desperately need for both these names to NOT be linked in any accessible public records.
I went home very rarely, often unannounced, a quick stealth visit, and then gone. I would never go anywhere, because I constantly looked over my shoulder. I didn't dare contact my old friends. There were relatives who couldn't be told about the new identity. A few were untrustworthy, and that's a whole other ugly story. Several were cousins with young families, and I just felt it was better for them not to know. I disappeared, and they were hurt, felt personally betrayed because I wasn't part of their lives. A couple of years ago I finally told them what had happened, and they understood and all was well. One was an aunt who is a perpetual worry-wart, and I just could not bear for her to fret and stew. The hardest was my niece and nephew -- I could not be part of their lives. It’s really hard, not being able to be there for my family when I’m needed, especially for my mother, who died after I changed identities. I couldn’t be there for her without putting myself in danger – and I feared putting my family in danger as well.
I am still struggling with this. My family still needs me, and I’ve been struggling over the decision of whether or not to go back. It scares the holy hell out of me. Going "home" is a huge risk, because my abuser/stalker still lives a couple of counties away from my hometown, and it's not a long drive by interstate. Oh, some say that he's probably moved on, but I remember how he talked about getting back at previous girlfriends left behind long before. He kept calling friends of mine long after I disappeared, and some of them engaged him in conversation to try to get a read on whether or not I’d be safe if I went home. They all felt I would not be.
I keep trying to think of ways to be closer and not be vulnerable, but I haven't been able to reconcile these two competing needs. I've thought about going to a different part of the state, and that may be a decent option. The bald truth is, no matter what we do to protect ourselves, our families have a way of dragging us back into vulnerable positions. You can't shut off your heart, no matter how hard you try, no matter that you know it will make your life easier, safer, and probably longer.
Affective ties, if you can bear to make them, are often your salvation -- you have to make new connections in order to survive this. It's like being an orphan stranded on a distant foreign shore, where nothing is anything like home. Even within your own country, it's like being a stranger in a strange land, an immigrant, because your entire frame of reference is so surreal. I know I became a cultural chameleon eventually, all in an attempt to just blend in, be invisible while feeling on the inside like a glaringly obvious exotic. You learn that your identity is incredibly malleable, not just your surface identity, but your inner one as well. Your entire perspective on everything in life changes radically. That's one reason why I didn't buy the fear-mongering spewed by the Bushies after 9/11 -- I had long before accepted the fact that I would never be 100% safe. I had gone through the paralyzing fear stage (it lasted for a few years, to be honest), and knew that this would get us nowhere. I felt very out of step in my own country, among our own people, because I had this point of view that was utterly incomprehensible to everybody. The entire country wanted to kick somebody's ass -- I just wanted us to learn from it, adjust and survive.
I remain acutely aware of how lucky I was and am, and I try very hard to not push it. I have my twitches to this day -- breaking glass will make me completely freeze and spike my blood pressure. My husband has learned to not come up behind me so quietly that I don't know he's there. I don't like going anywhere after dark alone, and do so only when absolutely necessary. I don't tolerate being touched in certain places and in certain ways to this day. I screen the phone constantly, and do not like answering it even at a job. And in a previous marriage, I damn near kicked out my then-spouse's knee when he took "No" for "Maybe" in bed. My fight-or-flight reaction kicks in pretty hard to this day. At least I stopped having the nightmares a few years ago.
I still wonder if I would have had a better "creep alert" if Dad had lived. I know I wouldn't have experienced the emotional starvation that made me so vulnerable to smooth-talking charmers without conscience, morals or scruples. I can count on one hand the number of nice guys I've been involved with, and I'm married to one of them.
So that's the story. I'm one of the really lucky ones. I still have the psychological scars, but at least I'm in one piece and relatively sane. I've survived thus far, and I aim to die peacefully in my own bed of disease or old age, not because I've been cut to pieces.
The whole thing has made me stronger, but it has also been isolating, and the loneliness can be breathtaking. I know no one else who has had to do this, and the sense of separateness from the experience of everyone around me is absolutely alienating. In a way, by forcing a woman to do this, the abuser/stalker wins a petty victory. The silver lining is, he doesn't get to enjoy the fruits of his labor. There has not been a year since I left that I have not been homesick for my home state. The experience blows a huge hole right through you, and the damage is life-long.
I take issue with this: In a way, by forcing a woman to do this, the abuser/stalker wins a petty victory.
It's a huge victory for him. He stole her life from her, and he did it with the help of our legal system.
As I read this woman's story, my mind kept going back to one thing: she, the victim, was forced in order to protect herself, to flee everything. Her family. Her life. Her home. Her own name. What greater victory could any abuser have?
He, on the other hand, stayed put. His life went on. He didn't have to abandon home, family, job, friends. Sure, there were restraining order violations, and in this particular case the guy even did some jail time -- not for what he'd done to this woman, but for a different crime. What he did to this woman wasn't enough to land him in jail.
She lost everything. I can't even start to fully comprehend what she's gone through. And yet, not only does she consider herself lucky (because she's alive, although still living in fear even after changing her identity) -- my bet is that most of the people who read her story also felt that she was lucky.
Bullshit.
This sucks in so many different dimensions that even Einstein couldn't come up with a theory to explain it. The entire system does a craptastic job of "protecting the victims", as anyone who pays attention to DV-related homicides already knows. Why isn't this guy, and everyone like him, serving a life sentence in prison? Domestic violence and stalking are crimes, are they not? Violating restraining orders is a crime, isn't it? He's a danger to society, isn't he? Or doesn't it count just because he's only a danger to one woman?
Actually, he's probably not just a danger to one woman. There was a murder-suicide in my area just a few months ago -- abusive boyfriend murders girlfriend, then kills himself. It was one of at least four such murders that have happened here in the past 6-8 months that I'm aware of. But in this case, after the story of the murder-suicide got into the news, there was a postscript to it. A woman who'd been in hiding from him for eight years was able to come out of hiding and resume -- or try to resume -- her life. That little detail didn't get so much media attention.
How can anyone think it's okay for a woman to have to abandon everything she holds dear in order to preserve her physical safety, while the man who threatens her goes on about his life as if nothing had happened?
What kind of a sick society allows this?
Ours does.