Friday, February 6, 2009

Been a while

I've been a slacker blogger lately and for that I apologize. But, since this has been the home of all sicknesses (cold/cough, pink eye, and one bout of 24 hour throwing up bug) I've been a bit busy. We are doing better and since one of my resolutions is to complain less, I'll leave it at that. Last night Gabe and I had our weekly date night and the plan was for us each to go to our prospective meetings and then out to dinner. Well, as we left the house we came to a stop light and I noticed a man at a bus stop who had just pushed (possible punched) a woman in the face. At first I wasn't sure about what I'd seen, but as the light continued to be red, he continued to yell, scream and invade the woman's personal space. We called 911. The officer promised to send someone ASAP but I told Gabe we should park and watch because if they left or something worse happened I wanted to be able to tell the police. They left the bus stop and started walking towards a shopping center where we followed them and watched as the man attacked her from behind. He hit her in the head and Gabe got out of the car and yelled for me to call the police again. I did and they were there in a few minutes. I was yelling for Gabe to get back in the car (this man he wanted to approach was obviously a maniac). I had seen on TV that instead of getting into an altercation with the aggressor, you should simply offer the victim a ride or a way to get out of the situation. As I was preparing to do that, the cops got there. We drove away, too late for our meetings to go and headed to dinner. The cops called me and said that the couple was saying that nothing happened and that they are totally fine and in love. I have to say that I'm not surprised that happened. I've heard/learned/read about the fact that often if the man is in trouble for domestic violence the woman won't testify/agree about the violence because once he gets out of jail the abuse she'll suffer will be 100 x's worse. What an awful way to live. It hurt me to watch someone being so abused-right on a public street no less. It's hard for me to understand that kind of relationship and also for me to understand why people can be so harmful to one another. I told Gabe that this is too urban of an environment for me. I'm not naive; I know that crime, domestic disputes, etc. happen in every community, but it was a lot to take in. I still believe it was the right thing to do to call the police. I don't think anyone should ever stand by and think that it's not their business, etc. It's left me with a sour taste in my mouth, but at the same time I think we did the right thing. Opinions?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow thats crazy! to bad they didn't testify to the police. well I'm glad you are all feeling better from being sick and hope to talk to you soon!
Love Gi

Unknown said...

That was the exactly correct thing to do! It is so sad that woman get trapped in abusive relationships, and can't find a way out...at that point they can only help themselves.

Anonymous said...

This is interesting because my sister just had a similar story. She was driving through an intersection and noticed a car at a red light and the man was yelling and hitting the woman in the front seat and their kids were in the back. She said she drove by too fast and wasn't able to get any description otherwise she would have called the police for sure. It's really discusting that people do such horrible things. I feel so badly for those women...
Kirstie

SARAH said...

It is really hard to see that this stuff happens in the world. It makes/made me question a lot of things but then I remember that everything isn't for us to understand. I know that we did the right thing but you it's like I/you all said, You can't make someone want to change or get out of a bad relationship; they have to decide for themselves. Hopefully I don't have to see anything like that again though.