View the original publication at Sarasota Magazine
*Some names have been changed or omitted in order to protect the confidentiality of those who spoke with Sarasota Magazine for this story.
One evening last fall, at around 9 p.m., Cristina pulled up in front of the Sarasota house she had once shared with her husband, Derek, and sat behind the wheel, staring at the front door. For the past few days, she had been living in a shelter run by Sarasota’s Safe Place and Rape Crisis Center, known as SPARCC. Derek had been arrested twice for domestic battery, and Cristina’s daughters were removed from their house by the Florida Department of Children and Families. As she sat outside in her car, Cristina, a petite Peruvian-American in her mid-30s, blamed herself for the “nightmare” her life had become.
Cristina and Derek had been married for nearly a decade. At first, he was charming, Cristina says, and she thought he would make a “tremendous father” for her older daughter, who was from a previous relationship. (The other daughter was born in 2012.) But over the years, he became controlling and abusive. He shoved Cristina and her children to the floor, grabbed their hair and pushed them into walls, according to Cristina. She says he also pressured her to have an abortion, belittled her, prevented her from working, dictated whom she could be friends with and forced her to dress conservatively.
Cristina felt paralyzed. Her first marriage had ended in divorce. Raised as a Catholic, she dreaded admitting to another failed relationship and fretted over the judgment of her parents. She worried, too, that, as an immigrant from South America, law enforcement would be more inclined to believe Derek, a white American, rather than her. Above all, she worried that leaving meant she would lose custody of her youngest child, since Derek was the father. “I didn’t know where to go or who to talk to,” Cristina says. “I was trapped.”
Cristina’s tale has become a familiar one in the last year as sexual and domestic violence and the use of intimidation by powerful men have dominated the news. Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Roger Ailes, Matt Lauer and a galaxy of other celebrities have been exposed for their decades of sexual exploitation. Even the president of the United States has bragged about assaulting women. As women—and men—have recognized themselves in the victims, the #MeToo movement and its fury have swept across the country and the world, shocking many people about how widespread these experiences are.
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