You need to leave him now. I’m not talking about the Occupant (although you should do that, too). I’m talking about Rob Porter.
Various accounts I’ve seen say that you are dating him. I normally do not link to right-wing gossip rags like the Daily Mail, but there’s this. And this:
Today, I read that you actually helped craft the official statement defending him:
This was, of course, wildly inappropriate, but with this Pr*sidency, we’re sadly used to that. We are, sadly, also used to this from you. But I was horrified on another level. This told me that you have bought in to whatever lies this serial abuser has told you. They always have them. They tell you that their ex-wives or ex-girlfriends are liars. They tell you some story about how the black-eye happened — it was never their fault. It never is, in their minds. She said something, they had a fight, it was only one time, they didn’t mean it, she exaggerated everything, she’s crazy, she has a borderline personality disorder, they took the picture, she used it for blackmail to get more of their money, she’s a bitch. Whatever. There’s always a story. Their stories are lies.
I know all of this because I know these men. And you need to leave him. Seriously. NOW.
I’m sure you knew about the allegations against him. You work in the White House, how could you have not known?
And I’m sure, also, that he has told you various lies about the circumstances of the allegations against him. Because they all do. Trust me, I know.
Men like Rob Porter keep getting away with what they have done — and I’m talking about what they have done to their former wives and girlfriends — because they are skilled at lying. They are also immensely skilled at making themselves into the victims. They are beguiling. If they were not, they would not keep trapping women into getting involved with them. Trust me, I know.
This man is 40. Two women have divorced him. Both have said that he was physically and verbally abusive. One took out a restraining order against him. Get away from him now.
Porter’s two ex-wives, Jennifer Willoughby and Colbie Holderness, told DailyMail.com in a report published Tuesday that Porter was physically and verbally abusive to them during their marriages. Willoughby said the abuse started on their honeymoon and that she filed a restraining order against Porter in June 2010 after he punched the glass on a door to their home and refused to leave, violating a separation agreement.
NBC NEWS
In a statement announcing his departure Wednesday, Porter said, "These outrageous allegations are simply false.”
NBC NEWS
No, they are not.
They entrance you. They “listen” to you. They figure out your vulnerabilities and play on them. Then you move in with them or marry them. That’s where they want you. At that moment, they turn what they’ve learned about your vulnerabilities against you. The abuse begins after the ring is on your finger:
It began on the night we came home from our honeymoon. We flew into a distant airport, and rather than getting a taxi, he insisted that I carry my suitcase up a flight of stairs to a train and then to another train and then to a subway and then, finally, to a cab. When I had suggested at the airport that a cab might be easier, and that I wanted to get home to the children, and that it was, after all, the end of our honeymoon and that I was wearing heels, he told me I was a "whiny bitch" and said that he hoped that wasn’t a portent of things to come. A piece of my heart shaved off then and there.
My Story.
Hope Hicks, your privilege will not shield you from his abuse. I, too, grew up privileged. I saw an article in Town & Country magazine about your sister’s wedding in Bermuda. I got married in the same church. The wedding was lovely. The tented reception on the terrace overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, the music from the local steel band, the horse carriage — all lovely. I also have a BA from a top liberal arts college and a JD from a top law school. None of this matters. You need to get out now.
In the ensuing year, the verbal abuse became more frequent, as did his drinking, as did the financial problems caused by the failure of his practice. On my 40th birthday, he hired a limousine to take me and my best friend and her husband to a fancy restaurant for dinner. He was rude and insulting to them, and, as I later found out, had charged the whole thing to one of my credit cards. It took me months to pay off the bill.
My story.
Rob Porter was a Rhodes Scholar. He went to Harvard. This does not matter. My ex-husband was a doctor. This does not matter. There is something wrong with these men that education does not and cannot cure.
Some of them are recklessly profligate spenders, filling the hole in which their souls and hearts should live with reckless spending on things they think make them look successful and powerful to those who are not in the marriage:
I began looking for a less expensive house; he rejected all of them. The bills piled up; but nothing stopped his spending. So when the day came that we had to refinance, as a result of the terms of his divorce agreement from his ex-wife, all the equity got eaten up by his bills from ski vacations and other extravagent and unnecessary over-spending; and the terms of the new mortgage were horrifying. It was clear to me that there was no way we could pay what we had agreed to pay, which was approximately 70 percent of our combined net incomes.
And so, over his objections (this was all my fault, it seemed), we put the house on the market and planned a move. He told me that he had a terrific job offer in Texas; he told his patients (one of whom turned out to be the best friend of my sister-in-law’s cousin, so it got back to me) that he had married "an heiress" and would never have to work again. This was news to me.
But this was apparently was he planned to do. Once in Texas, he insisted on buying another house, although the money we had left over from the sale of everything and the sale of the house could have kept us going for a year or more. None of that mattered. He had to have a house. The night we moved into it, he screamed at me for hours ~ I was the ruination of his life, the person who had dragged him to this hell-hole, the root of all evil. I won’t use the words he used, because they are words I would never use. And he said all of them in front of the children.
He never had any intention of working, as it turned out, although he disappeared for hours at a time saying he was doing exactly that. All the money from all the sales ran out in October. I began substitute teaching for $75.00 a day. And my dear parents, with increasing reluctance, paid all the bills.
In November, my car broke down, and I had to call my parents to get a credit card number so that I could get back home. Later that month, my husband, while drunk, attempted to get my stepson in the car with him, and when I attempted to get my stepson out of the car (terrified that he would be killed or injured), my husband slammed the car door on my hand. When I brought my stepson back into the house, my husband waited until he had entered and then slammed the door in my face. That night, he threw things at me in our bedroom, and when I retreated to a sofa upstairs to get some sleep, dragged me back down the stairs.
My story.
Your parents’ financial wherewithal will not shield you from this. Consider yourself lucky for having them. Listen to them. Appreciate them. Get out now.
He will not change.
If you don’t get out, something like this will happen. Because it always does.
Six months later, after the required residency, I filed for divorce. A week before the time was up, my husband forced me into a car when he was drunk and nearly killed me. When we got home that night, he threatened to kill himself, and pulled knives from the kitchen drawer; he followed me around the house with the knives, screaming, until he passed out. I hid all the car keys and secreted myself in the basement with Madison. At 3 am, he came lurching down the stairs, demanding that I, as his wife, accompany him to bed.
I left, with armed protection (paid for by my parents), the next day.
My Story.
Or you will end up in a hospital. Or worse.
I don’t know you. I don’t agree with your politics. I cannot fathom why you are working for a man I consider not just unqualified but uniquely dangerous to our democracy. But I do know what it is like to be sucked into an abusive relationship and I understand the lasting damage it does. Please, get out now.
