Many readers are sharing their stories of abuse:
From the perspective of someone who as a kid was in a somewhat similar position to the beating victim in the "Texas Domestic Justice" video, perhaps the worst part was the relentless yelling and swearing that accompanies the attack. I'm doing OK and am generally happy thanks to great friends and relatives and a lucky wealth of internal resilience. But more than 30 years after the last parental attack, the screaming, swearing and verbal assaults still echo. I've long since forgotten the relatively minor physical pain I felt from being hit, but in my low moments, I still hear those words and feel completely substandard.
I'm sure I drive my kind, gentle and loving partner nuts because the legacy of hearing those "you are worthless" words has me blaming myself for everything that goes wrong. I don't mean to play the victim card here, because I've truly come a long way and have become a relatively successful and competent adult. But let's hope the counseling the young woman and others receive addresses the terrible words she heard from her father. The cliche, "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me" is a lie.
Another writes:
I watched that video in mouth-covered horror. At the end, my first calm thought was: damn I wish I had had a video camera when I was young. And that's what's so striking about the video to someone who lived through that sort of violence. It's SO commonplace. A scene like that could have been recorded any day – though not every day – of my childhood. The swirling feeling of incipient violence and helplessness. The awareness that your life is under the control of a man who can turn into a beast.
Yeah, my specifics are different. My mom didn't play that weird game of semi-protective, semi-enforcer participation. She played a game of "get as far away from it as possible and try to pretend it wasn't so bad." Dad's favorite weapon wasn't a belt; it was a hammer handle or a length of PVC pipe. By the time we were 16, the physical violence had more or less stopped.
So many of the fragments are so heart-rendingly familiar. The unpredictability of the man's rage-fueled violence, spiking and subsiding as he channels it. The first time I watched that video, it was terrifying because you just don't know how far it's going to go. You think it's over, then it's not. You keep wondering if it could get worse. The fact that the girl knew to tape it tells you how regular this was. The way she recovered from sobbing so quickly tells you how used to it she was. I know, because I recovered that fast too. There's no doubt in my mind that this was not the most severe beating she ever took from him.
If you see his statements yesterday, he's still blaming her. When I was 23, Dad was still blaming me for why he hit me so much. (It was always my fault that he hit me. Everyone in the family told me so – if I hadn't made him so angry, none of it would have happened.) Her mother left after 22 years of marriage, as my mother did, and sacrifices the "family secret"of his "addiction" being the source and cause of this rage.
The daughter expresses some regret for exposing him. She wants people NOT to blame her mother. She says she didn't show this video for 7 years because he still controlled her life, and she was afraid of being hurt in his inevitable backlash. All of those statements could have been made by me at the age of 23. Because my father was a fine upstanding community pillar who clearly loved his children, no one would believe the "spankings" I reported were abuse. Because no one saw it, no one heard his raging or our screaming. Any teacher or coach I tried to tell thought I was exaggerating and told me that my father loved me. If anything, I didn't have the bravery or language or distance to express anything close to what it was. And it occurred before the laws that require reporting.
So yeah, I wish I had had a video camera. And the fact that this girl did have one, and published this, is so empowering to all of us abused kids who had no voice, no proof that the Dr. Jekyl they called Dad was a Mr. Hyde when the doors were shut.
Another:
I can't finish watching that video. I made it to the 1:58 mark before hitting "pause." The summoning of the belt, the quiet wait before the beating, the first blow, the swearing and yelling, the urging for a fallen victim to "stand up" and take some more – the content is too disturbing, too ugly, too familiar. Growing up, I was routinely belted by my own father for infractions that ranged from quarreling with my siblings to doing poorly in school. My mother, too, also employed corporal punishment.
My parents stopped beating me when I was a teenager. One evening, after my father readied to unleash another belting, I also went for a belt to fend him off. Months later, after my mother swatted me, I turned around and slugged her in the stomach.
Violence imposes physical domination. Watching and hearing this girl be thrashed, it is clear her attacker enjoyed physically dominating her. It can be a thrill to dominate someone like this. The thrill is a rush, and the violence is repeated. After receiving years of beating from my parents, I, too, wanted some of that thrill. I, too, wanted to dominate others. So I, too, started beating up fellow classmates in my elementary school. They were always smaller and weaker in stature. Bullies don't want fair fights. The point is to dominate someone, not risk a bloody nose or humiliation.
I hope to never unleash that wrath on a child. I know that thrill of domination. I know that hate lurks within me. I know what the penalty for swearing, losing popcorn money, or breaking a window can lead to. I know that I am just as capable of assaulting a minor as I am to watch the evening news. Knowing what I know about myself, I hope to never father a child. I wish others knew themselves, too.
The Dish 