That's never something you want to hear. When someone says this, often in an interview, it usually means that something terrible happened. You can't help but think that if someone had been paying attention, maybe the something terrible could have been prevented. Of course, we can't know for sure, because the something terrible definitely did happen.
So it is with Darren Vann. In 2004, he was an abuser of women. In this photo, credited to the Chicago Sun-Times and printed by CBSChicago, he's seen holding a woman in a choke hold and holding a gasoline can. He doused her with gasoline and threatened to set her on fire. This earned him a one year sentence in Indiana.
At some point after his release, Vann moved to Texas. He was convicted of rape in 2009. According to several news reports, a woman was at his apartment and he knocked her down and started to strangle her. He hit her in the face several times and he told her that he could kill her.
In both the Indiana and the Texas case, according to AOL news, the sentences were reduced to plea bargains. And in Texas? Well, they deemed him a low risk for violence. You'll have to ask them why they felt that a man who would and could do these things was a low risk for violence.
Earlier today, Vann admitted to killing seven women in Gary, Indiana, and leaving them in abandoned buildings. As an aside, there are over 10,000 abandoned buildings in Gary and officials can only demolish 300 a year. Why? Lack of funding. Vann apparently figured out a use for them since they'll be there for many more years.
Maybe it's because it's late at night. Maybe it's because I'm a woman. Maybe it's because I've heard this story in one variation or another too many times. I feel incredulous, angry and self-righteous.
Why was this man thought not to be a violent threat? Why did he get a plea bargain after soaking his girlfriend with gasoline? If nothing else is clear to me, this is: he was not a healthy individual that should have been out in the world!
Why are do we accept that our court system allows defense attorneys to blame the victim in such cases - from rape to domestic violence? Why is Marissa Alexander facing 60 years in jail for discharging a gun to scare off her boyfriend who was attacking her?
Why do we read story after story, year after year, and feel as if nothing has changed? Why is the conviction rate so abysmally low? Why do all of these discussions about such things have the back plot of the movie Groundhog Day?
Why do we, as women, choose to go back after that first threat, the first backhand, the first time he tells us that he had to hurt us for our own good? Why do the men who are violent toward women do it in the first place? And, what are we doing about it? (Besides likely cutting funding for any programs that might help.)
I know that there are pesky details - few things are cut and dry, black and white. Many of these situations are complex. Many rely on her word against his. What woman wants to go through all of this and put themselves on trial, for example. I imagine I would not.
Mostly, I want to know what we have to do so that we rarely, if ever, again hear the words, "Looking back, the signs were there," only to see a trail of missed opportunities that would have prevented another women from being raped, abused, or killed.