Victims are People, Too

Your Honor,

I would like to address the court and Mr. St. John so they know what has happened to me — not only the crime that has taken place, but the lingering effects and residuals that continue to haunt and live inside me. By making this statement, I am hoping to transfer some of the pain and suffering out of me and reduce some of the effects it has caused, in living my day-to-day life.

Once a crime like this has taken place, it changes a person. It never, ever is the same for that person after that. The safeness most people feel when inside their house at night has been stolen from me like a horse in the night. Mr. St. John’s actions have prevented me from normalcy. When I make this statement, I mean life as I had known it. I have never slept the whole night again without waking up with a terrified feeling of anguish and angst. There is a sickness that overcomes me and keeps me frozen and jailed like a deer in headlights. I still hear your voice which echo’s and consumes me, eating away at me, engulfing my confidence. And this continues to overwhelm and crush me in a vengeance, like a tornado tossing my mind and my soul pilfering my very existence to the core. The pain inside me has dulled some, but the court proceedings poke and prod me like the incidents that I have been dragged through over and over in the confinement and jail sentence you have put me through not only physically but mentally since the final incident on July 18, 2016.

Your continued claims and arrogance like you are running this show and calling the shots when I am the victim and you are the perpetrator shows me that you still do not understand the impact this has impounded on me. I feel like a wounded antelope of a heard, completely alone and vulnerable unable to fend for herself and your attitude shows me that you do not have any remorse or concern for me or any other human being. Your demands to lessen your plea astound and alarm me, because of your contemptuous little challenges urging that you call the shots when you are the felon here. You are the one who committed this crime and your continued efforts to discredit me continue to rape me of my rights as a human being to live a normal and happy existence. The violations of the restraining order prove that you do not respect me or the law and therefore I believe a jail sentence would be much more appropriate than house arrest or probation. I am in fear that your demands for no probation would allow you to continue to harass and indulge in the insanity that I have already allowed you too much homage in my lifetime.

I continue to suffer from PTSD. I have sleep disturbances, night terrors, anxiety, depression, amongst other problems. I cannot fathom a romantic relationship and suffer from humiliation and shame. I am terrified when I pass the area of town we resided in and make a great effort not to drive in that area. I get flashes of incidents that my brain had detached and pocketed in order to survive which keep popping up and reminding me of the prison walls of fear that surrounded me then, and the jail bars that still encompass me today.

I remember many incidents but the one that regularly revisits me is the day you cut me off and clipped the tire on my bicycle, forcefully threw my head against the wall, hit me with closed fists, stomped me with steel toe boots and called me insulting derogatory names that leave scars not only physically but internally forever in my soul. I had fallen on my ankle and crushed it but you screamed and demanded I get up and help you with your taxes. You told me I would never leave and would die there. You stated you will kill me and yourself before you would ever go back to jail again. These behaviors are like water continually running downstream across a rock wearing on it until it forms a lasting impression. The rock resembles the wear and tear from the daily stream of continual sanding and grinding. Even a rock can be broken and so was I.

All the empty promises you made to help never surfaced. I lost my apartment, my belongings and physical custody of my daughter. The saddest part of all this is that I believed all your lies then. There are parts of me that believe that someday you will seek revenge for turning you in for the horrible things you have done to me and my family.

The hardest part about this whole thing is your sentence will end and mine will go on forever!