The Shadow Pandemic

The Covid Crisis has been trying America’s patience, and testing our ability to make reasoned, evidence-based decisions, for more than a year now. We know that the lockdowns have exacted a toll on the economy, closed small businesses while billionaires and multinational corporations have raked in record-breaking, jaw-dropping profits; sometimes, an article about the emotional toll of increased isolation comes across our social media feed. Women living with abusers, as usual, have to wait and hope someone takes notice before it’s too late. 

There are more than twice the number of animal shelters as domestic violence/battered women’s shelters in the U.S., and the DV shelters that do exist have been notoriously under-resourced and underfunded. Since the first lockdown orders, various sources … have pointed to a surge in both the frequency and severity of domestic violence cases …. The U.N. has called the worldwide rise in violence against women “The Shadow Pandemic.” I can already imagine readers’ eyes glazing over (and a certain defensive look male acquaintances get, as they struggle not to interrupt, that I’ve come to think of as “not-all-men-face”), but buckle in, here come a few quick numbers: One in three American women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime. For Black women, the number is more than 40%. Even before the pandemic, 25% of all emergency room visits by women in Illinois were a result of domestic violence. According to a recent Violence Policy Center Analysis, the rate of women murdered by men in single victim/single offender incidents had already risen by 11 percent between 2014 and 2016. In 2017, the overall number of domestic homicide victims had risen 19 percent …  In  2018 …, of the nearly 2,000 women who were murdered by men in single victim/single perpetrator crimes, 92% were killed by men they knew. Black women were nearly two and a half times more likely to be murdered than white women. There’s an overall trend here; violent crime had been decreasing overall since the 1990s, but there’s been a stark uptick of gendered violence against women: The Bureau of Justice Satistics … registered almost double the rates of rape and sexual assault victimization in 2018 as 2017.

But violence against women is boring. It’s been done, we’re tired of hearing about it. Isn’t it really only a certain type of old, un-hip, hairy-legged and unsexy feminazi (or, more recently, irritating “Karen”), who insists on droning on about it? What about male victims? Isn’t it actually pretty sexist to just paint females as the helpless prey of males  (the “women-are-just-as-bad” face, twin of “women-in-the-West-are-not-oppressed” face)? The U.S. has one of the highest rates of rape in the world.. 83% of girls aged 12 to 16 have experienced sexual harassment at school. About 0.7% of rapes result in felony convictions … (and, by the way, “false allegations” are extremely rare). Nearly 91% of the victims of rape and sexual assault are female, however, almost 98% of the offenders are male. 94 percent of victims of murder-suicides are female, while  3.9 percent of male homicide victims were murdered by a domestic partner … The average prison sentence for men who kill their female partners is 2 to 6 years. Women who kill their partners are sentenced to an average of 15 years. This, despite the fact that 86 percent of female offenders kill in self-defense, while males are most likely to kill out of possessiveness (82%), abuse (75%), and during  arguments (63%). Very often, a history of domestic battery is deemed inadmissible in court when a woman stands trial for killing her abuser. It’s almost as though nothing excuses a woman killing her husband; but a man killing his wife is seen as understandable, natural, an unfortunate inevitability. An act of God.

The Specific Violence Black Women Suffer

In January 2017,  the writer and Black Feminist activist Ree Walker published a scathing essay in the Daily Kos,  “The Black Woman’s ‘Women’s March’ Problem: It Ain’t Just White Folks.” She minced no words, outlining the blatant omission of “the rampant amount of victimization that black women suffer… They conveniently left out issues of rape, sexual molestation, sexual violence, child molestation, child support, familial neglect, abuse, domestic violence, neighborhood shootings, physical, emotional and psychological harm in relationships, female genital mutilation…” She didn’t hesitate to call out what she’s named the “OBP” (Oppressive Black Patriarchy) that she saw on display, rebranded as a new etiquette handed down from on high, from the Left half of the ruling class, the same old oppressive structures with  a glossy new veneer. She excoriated the Black male leaders who spoke of Black women as “our women,” and as “our greatest resource,” denounced the uncritical acceptance of male supremacist religions, and lambasted the pushers of the myth of “empowering sex work” while countless Black girls and women are coerced and trafficked into soul-crushing sexual slavery; in the U.S., one of the top three nations of origin for victims of sex trafficking, 40% of victims are Black women and girls, their traffickers mostly black men. The last straw for Ms. Walker was when a chant of “say her name” struggled to come up with more than five Black women killed by police violence and a man, Jidenna, demanded that they say the names of Black men instead, transforming the chant into “say his name.” 

 So. What happens when the sum total of our interest in the specific oppression of Black women is the occasional recitation of statistics? What happens when we uncritically accept that Black women are a “resource”? Is it only misogyny when it’s perpetrated by (straight, ‘cis’, able-bodied, neurotypical, rich, etc., etc.) white men? What happens when we’re cowards? What happens is we push Black women under the bus for the sake of appearances. What happens is what happened in mid-January of 2021 in the Detroit Detention Center, the latest chapter in a brutally painful, and disturbingly common, story.

Tracy’s Story

Tracy Neal sat in a cell at the DDC, thinking about the long road that had brought her to that place and wishing for it all to finally just end. The woman next to her sobbed and shivered as the breast milk soaked her shirt, unable to feed her infant. When she asked the guard for a blanket or a dry shirt, he denied her even that, angrily barking that she was not to knock on the window of the “bull pen.” Tracy knew that feeling well, that feeling of sitting on cold concrete, surrounded by steel, as her body ached to feed her newborn, because that was what she’d been feeling the last time she’d been here 25 years ago, just 21 years old, terrified and alone, charged with a terrible crime she did not commit. (Black women are 1.7 times more likely to be imprisoned than white women. The U.S. female prison population is growing even faster than the male, despite women being only 14 percent of violent offenders.)

Tracy had felt terrified and alone for so much of her life. She was raised in a small town in the Arkansas foothills, in a family who were strict followers of the teachings of the Nation of Islam, a fundamentalist belief system which she’s since come to view as “a cult.” Her stepfather terrorized her mother, and they both abused Tracy. She grew up hearing how “bad” and “worthless” she was, with frequent corporal punishment to drive the message home. She just could never be good or obedient enough. She learned that no matter what she was accused of, protesting her innocence would only prolong the punishment. Best just to confess quickly. Finally, at age 11, her mother sent her to live with her birth father. (A 2017 report from the National Centers for Victims of Crime found that 53.8% of Black women …  had experienced psychological abuse, and 41.2% had experienced physical abuse)

Things did not get better for Tracy at her father’s. She left behind a household of strict religiosity for one of abusive alcoholism. Her dad didn’t have many kind words or gestures of affection to show her when he was sober, but when he drank, he became a sadist. The slightest infraction instantly became an excuse to turn whatever was at hand into a weapon to beat his daughter with. When she had her first menstrual period, he punished her by tying her to a chair and taking her innocence. Tracy doesn’t say much about that time, her eyes get distant and her speech formal. I’m not about to pry. Her Dad sent her back to her mom after less than a year.

Back in Arkansas

In her early teens, back in Arkansas, she became close friends with another young girl, T-. She was grateful for the companionship, it was wonderful to finally have a close girlfriend to share secrets, giggle about the grownups, and dream about what life could be like when they got older and left their small town. But T- had a cousin, a boy a few years older than them, who looked at Tracy and saw prey. She remembers walking home from school one day, fear slowly building in her gut as she realized there was a pickup truck inching along behind her. And then, suddenly, before she could think, Tracy froze in terror as the cousin got out, grabbed her, and drove away. He raped her that day. She recounts what became a pattern of her friend’s cousin following her, chasing her down, often in broad daylight and in full view of bystanders as she struggled and screamed and tried to run away. No one did a thing. Some of them laughed. Some of the men offered her money to let them have “a turn.” By then, she knew there was nowhere to go for help, no safety to be found, but she didn’t take those men’s money; she turned and ran as fast as she could, fast as she could make her legs push the ground away. Many years later, after moving to Michigan, she reconnected with her old friend T- over the phone. They talked about what had happened in their lives, what had changed, who had gone where. Her old childhood friend casually brought up that her cousin was now in prison, for aggravated rape. “I remember how he used to get you,” she said. Get you. Everyone knew. Everyone knew and did nothing. (The National Center on Violence Against Women in the Black Community reports that 40 to 60 percent of black women and girls report some form of coercive sexual contact by the time they turn 18. For every black woman who reports a rape, 15 do not report. Though exact, reliable numbers on juvenile sex trafficking are difficult to obtain, it’s an understood fact among service and support providers that girls aged 12 to 14, from vulnerable backgrounds, particularly survivors of sexual abuse, are the most common targets …. Black girls are disproportionately preyed upon, especially around urban areas, their traffickers black men from their own communities, who sell them to a largely white, affluent male client base …)

Move to Michigan and Tragic Death of Tracy’s Daughter

As soon as she was old enough, Tracy got as far away from Arkansas as she could. She knew there was a strong Muslim community in Dearborn, Michigan, and though she wasn’t incredibly devout, the pull of fellowship was irresistible. She moved to Detroit in 1986. Once there, Tracy quickly got involved with the local Mosque, participating in gardening clubs and day-care. She struck up a friendship with K -, a kind, generous and caring older lady. They had frequent, long chats over tea or while working in the garden, and K often had Tracy over to her house for meals or just to spend time. Eventually, the subject of marriage came up. The Muslim community was more conservative in the late 1980s than it is now, Tracy tells me, and as a single young woman, living alone in an unfamiliar city, the only appropriate thing for her to do would be to find a man and settle down, and quickly. K introduced her to an acquaintance of hers, a man who was a bit older than her but seemed like a decent enough guy. Tracy had never  had a boyfriend before. Never even kissed a boy she liked and who liked her back. She had no knowledge of love or relationships, only trauma so deep, it was like an underground river running through her unconscious; quiet, ever-present. So, when a woman she trusted said she should get married, and that this was a good man, she believed her. She did marry him. And he was decent. He didn’t mistreat her, but he made it very clear what was expected of her in her new wife role. She kept house, she cleaned, she took care of his children from a previous marriage, and she got pregnant. By the time she was 21, she had a toddler and a newborn. But her step children could be a handful at times. The three-year-old little girl, T-, in particular was a difficult child to understand. Sometimes, she was loving and affectionate, other times, she would throw frightening, violent, tantrums, becoming filled with inconsolable rage. There was one particularly frightening incident, when Tracy had to wrest a knife away from T-, she was pointing it at her brother, Tracy’s toddler. But all in all, Tracy enjoyed caring for the children. She felt a sense of belonging, of providing these babies with the home she never got to have. Until one terrible night.

She woke with a start in the early hours of the morning. She didn’t know what had awoken her, but she suddenly felt vigilant and alert, alone in her bed. She decided to go downstairs for a drink of water. Her body tensed when she saw a small shape in the moonlit kitchen, like a stuffed animal left on the floor. But she knew this wasn’t a toy left by the children. She turned on the light, and her mind recoiled from what her eyes saw. T-’s tiny body lay there with a plastic bag over her head. She heard herself make despondent, sobbing noises as she quickly took it off, clutching the shred of hope that maybe, the little girl could still be revived. But T was lifeless. Gone. Tracy called 911.

Tracy’s friend, A-, came with her to the hospital and waited as she was barraged with questions. No, she didn’t know how this had happened. No, she’d never seen the little girl put a plastic bag on her head before. No, she hadn’t heard any strange noises. Yes, she was the only adult in the house at the time. Later, A- relayed to Tracy that she had overheard one of the cops say to the other, “yeah, she did it.” No need to investigate, open-and-shut. That night, Tracy was arrested. (A 2004 study  … found that, for children four and younger, black children are over four times more likely to be killed than white. A Canadian study … found that more fathers than mothers were accused of filicide, a difference that appeared to be increasing. Biological parents were far more likely than step parents to be accused of child murder, of those step parents who were accused, 9 out of 10 were step fathers. Mothers are more likely … to kill their children during a psychotic episode … – PubMed, while fathers who kill their children are more likely to have a history of domestic and family violence; they are more likely to kill … out of revenge towards a partner or former partner in the context of family separation. In the U.S., a meta-analysis of 32 years of filicide arrests also found that fathers are more likely to kill their children than mothers, and stepmothers comprised just 0.3% of filicides).

0.3 percent of children who are murdered are killed by a stepmother. 0.3. Given such a minutely small likelihood, one immediately wonders what informed the Detroit police handling of this investigation? How much did they know about family violence and its patterns? Were they at all aware of how differently murder of children manifests in women and men? Or were they guided by their “gut,” that famed police “spidey sense” that’s well-known to be shaped by unconscious biases and stereotypes. Stereotypes like the “mad black woman,” that mythical creature haunting the American collective unconscious, driven by base desires, an unhinged ego. They questioned her over a period of 12 hours, taunting, threatening, intimidating; ignoring her repeated requests for a lawyer. She begged them to give her a lie detector test. They refused. Finally, her world shattered, her body crying out to be reunited with her infant, she relented to a coerced confession. It was like she was a child again, pleading her innocence, desperate to be believed, knowing deep down that she won’t be. Despite police mishandling of the investigation- most notably denying her right to counsel, but also completely neglecting to pursue any other avenues of inquiry- Tracy was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to prison in 1988.

(According to a study published by the Vera Institute of Justice, 86 percent of women in jail are survivors of sexual violence, and 77 percent are victims of intimate partner violence. In the year 2000, black women were incarcerated at six times the rate of white women- a disparity that decreased by 53 percent by 2009, with an influx of new prisoners provided by the “war on drugs”. A recent report from Texas … found that more than half of incarcerated women had a yearly income of less than $10,000, and 80 percent earned under $30,000. About 80 percent of women behind bars are mothers. )

Tracy’s Experiences in Prison

She spent eight years at the Women’s Huron Valley institution, Michigan’s only female correctional facility. Like most people, she’d seen the way women’s prisons are depicted in the media: a “lady” version of the men’s “big house,” with all the drug smuggling, gang activity, and shanks. What she found instead was a mass of women society had decided did not matter, with deep, unacknowledged trauma, who had been hurt, used, and then thrown away. Prison only offered them more of the same. With a female population almost completely unable to defend themselves, corrections officers abused their power. They invented infractions to charge them with, adding time to their sentences. Eye contact could be written up as “insolence,” self-harm as “destruction of government property.” And worse. Male guards could- and did- take advantage of their ability to sexually abuse female prisoners. In 1996, Tracy was part of a class action lawsuit, with five other women, against the Michigan Department of Corrections, alleging systematic sexual misconduct by male officers. After years of litigation, during which the MDOC claimed the Civil Rights Act doesn’t apply to prisoners, the Michigan Supreme Court … ruled for the plaintiffs and awarded them sizable damages. It was a landmark lawsuit, a turning point which inspired the passing of PREA, the Prison Rape Elimination Act, but advocates say the Act can do little to combat the culture of misogyny in women’s prisons which props up rampant abuse, silencing, and retalition against some of the most vulnerable women in America.

(Women commit just 14 percent  of violent offenses, more than half of which are simple assaults. But they are subjected to harsher discipline than male prisoners. A 2020 … Federal report found that women inmates receive harsher punishments for minor infractions than male inmates.  In 1997, Amnesty International  issued a document of the abuses suffered by women in American prisons, outlining a culture of “powerlessness and humiliation,” “retaliation and fear,” and “impunity” for corrections officers, 70% of whom were male. In 2020, the DOJ issued a report on New Jersey’s Federal correctional facility for women, concluding that the risk of sexual harm was so high, it reached constitutional proportions and violated inmates’ Eighth Amendment rights. The report recounted stories of women raped, forced to perform oral sex, or made to serve as a lookout while other inmates were assaulted. This follows similar findings against a women’s correctional facility in Alabama, in 2014, where women were called “bitches,” “ho’s,” and forced to perform oral sex on male guards, under threat of disciplinary action if they didn’t comply. In Missouri, in 2019, five federal lawsuits were filed against the Chillicothe Correctional Center for women, where nine women say they were abused by a prison therapist for years. Also in 2019, another of a series of lawsuits was filed against the Coffee Creek women’s corrections facility in Oregon, alleging that a male kitchen coordinator systematically isolated, harassed, and assaulted female inmates, and that their reports were met with threats, retaliation, and punishment for “filing a false report’; this follows eight lawsuits at the same facility, in the same year, against a male nurse, who inmates say abused, raped, or sodomized at least 15 women in the seven years he worked there. Also in 2019, 12 officers have been accused of sexual misconduct at the Chittenden women’s facility in Vermont. Again in 2019, a female inmate’s complaints of multiple sexual assaults in a Connecticut women’s prison led to firings and arrests. And again in 2019, female former inmates of the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Florida allege systematic, rampant abuse …, and orchestrated cover-ups; they say male guards would locate “blind spots” in surveillance, isolate, intimidate, harass and assault prisoners, pull up photos of their family homes as threats and boast that no one would believe them, transfer them to solitary confinement or to local jails when they made complaints. In 2018, a third lawsuit, involving at least 16 women victims and 10 perpetrators,  was added to the roster of Pennsylvania women’s prison system’s sexual misconduct scandal. As reported by the The Daily Beast …, wardens “let guards rape women in cells,” for years. In Kansas, nine female inmates of Topeka women’s prison … began making written complaints alleging sexual abuse by their male dental lab instructor in 2013, but weren’t acknowledged until four years later, when the Topeka Capital-Journal discovered and intervened, and even this was only after the instructor was fired for harassing a female co-worker. In 2016, California’s Prison Law Office, published a report on their women’s prisons, documenting an institutional culture that “permits, condones, and covers up abuse; that allows staff to retaliate against prisoners seeking assistance; and that prevents prisoners from seeking help from entities outside the institution” a “corrosive atmosphere of fear and violence.” Incarcerated women are 30 times more likely to be raped than free women. Even though women account for 10 percent of inmates, theirs comprise three quarters of rapes of incarcerated people reported.)

 Moving on from Women’s Prison to the Prison of  a relationship with “Mister”

In 1996, Tracy was released from prison and placed in a halfway house. She was traumatized and vulnerable, but she believed she could move on with her life, move forward and leave what had happened behind her. As so often happens to women with a history of abuse, who were never allowed to learn how to assert and defend their personal boundaries, a man moved into her life. She wasn’t looking to get involved, but he was kind and doting at first, befriended her on her daily jogs, exercising with her while he regaled her with his ambitious plans. When he kissed her, she didn’t question whether it was what she really wanted, all she’d ever known was that men get what they want, and he wanted her. She had already used some of her lawsuit money to help a woman who was short paying rent, maybe he noticed her generous nature. He outlined his plan for starting a business, and said all the right things about building generational wealth in the Black community, the importance of raising kids with positive role models. When she found out she was pregnant- a staffer at the halfway house had noticed her vulnerability and quickly took advantage- he convinced her to keep the pregnancy, that they would raise the child together. And like that, the man Tracy refers to as ”Mister” had her.

She knew he was already married, but it was just so natural to follow his lead, to let him call the shots, she never questioned him when he said the marriage was over in every way but officially. His wife had supported him through his incarceration, worked when he didn’t, she must have assumed that this young, pregnant woman was just some fling. But Mister  and Tracy moved in together almost immediately. He convinced her to transfer all of her money into a joint account, which he used to start a landscaping business. He maintained total control of their finances, she had to ask him for everything from grocery money to feminine hygiene products. (According to the Canadian Center for Women’s Empowerment,, 95% of women who experience domestic violence are also victimized by economic abuse; an under-studied form of abuse which encompasses restricting someone’s access to finances, education, and employment. This, combined with pervasive stereotyping of “strong black women,” and pressure from their communities not to involve law enforcement or the courts, presents a significant additional barrier to black women seeking, and receiving, help when they are abused.)

The first time Mister was physically violent with Tracy was also the first time she stood up to him and verbally defended herself. He had been bombarding her with insults for a while already, whenever he was tired, stressed, or insecure, he would focus his disdain and contempt on her, calling her any name that came to mind. This time, when he said, “f- you,” she said it back. She was sitting on the floor, holding their baby son. She saw his face crumple with rage, but she didn’t see this coming; he crossed the floor and kicked her, in the back, with such force that the toddler was actually knocked from her grasp. The next day, she had a huge bruise and a mounting sense of shame. But she stayed, Where would she go?

(Domestic violence often escalates when a woman is pregnant and breastfeeding. Pregnant black women … are 11 times more likely to die due to domestic violence than pregnant white women)

She kept the house, cooked and cleaned, and worked at the landscaping business. Whatever Mister needed help with, Tracy did. She mowed grass, pulled weeds, and had three more children, a boy and two girls. When her younger son was diagnosed with a mental illness, she started homeschooling him, all while walking on eggshells, trying not to provoke Mister’s  wrath. His control of their finances was complete. Anything she or the kids needed was seen as frivolous, so she had to plead even for basics. One day, after she managed to convince him to let her take the children for a bike ride to the Detroit zoo, he gave her $5 to spend for all of them, for the entire day. Sometimes, he didn’t even leave her enough money for food, she had to rely on an older woman, a neighbor, to help her get by. Finally, when her youngest was four, Mister went too far. 

It was early summer, Tracy was outside gardening while Mister  and the kids were home eating breakfast. Suddenly, she heard a high, terrified scream and her smallest child, her little daughter, came running out of the house towards her, shrieking and crying. Apparently, Daddy had gotten mad about the way she was eating her cereal. Tracy went inside and saw broken glass, bits of milk-soaked cereal stuck to the ceiling. She recognized the fear on the little girl’s face. Mister was completely unrepentant, blaming the child, blaming Tracy, seeing nothing wrong with a grown man terrorizing a four year old into hysterics. She called the police. But when they came, Mister  did what he always had – this wasn’t the first time Tracy had called the cops in a desperate bid for safety – his demeanor changed completely, becoming cool, calm, and charming. He took on an air of strained patience and joked and bonded with the men over Tracy’s supposed “over-reaction.” She says he had an especially easy time convincing Black male officers that she was ”crazy”, that she was just fabricating things to be manipulative. As usual, they didn’t arrest Mister that day, but she knew she had to get out. She had to keep her children safe.

(The stereotype  of the “angry black woman” continues to be pervasive across society, including in social services and criminal justice. In addition, the justice system and public perception are often stacked … against victims of domestic violence, further discouraging them from seeking help out of fear of being disbelieved. Abusers often use the courts … to  harass their victims, leveraging their superior financial resources to protract litigation, banking on stereotypes of “irrational,” unhinged women to reverse victim and offender in the minds of juries and judges.)

Escape to a Domestic Violence Shelter in Ann Arbor

Tracy was able to find a domestic violence shelter that could help her and her kids an hour from Detroit, in Ann Arbor, and she packed up what she could, as fast as she could. Once there, she was finally able to receive counseling and a supportive environment. She began to learn about the psychology of abusers, the ways they maintain power and control. But, not long after her arrival, a visiting Child Services worker delivered a shock: The police would not be charging Mister with any crime, but if she returned to him, CPS would take her kids away for having them in “an abusive environment”. He wouldn’t be held accountable for his actions, but she would be held accountable for exposing the kids to his actions. So. Tracy stayed in Ann Arbor. But she could only remain at the shelter for so long. Even in Ann Arbor, resources were stretched thin and there was always more need than available beds. She found an affordable apartment close to downtown, with a park nearby for her children to play in. All the while, she looked for work. She met a professor at the University of Michigan, who helped her get a part-time modeling job at the School of Art and Design, but it wasn’t enough to pay her bills. Everywhere she looked, she was turned away. So many vegetarian restaurants, organic health food stores, new age book shops; not one would employ her for even the most menial of jobs, washing dishes or stocking shelves. In addition, her children were constantly broadcasting their unhappiness to her; they missed their friends, the boys wanted to see their dad, they missed their old neighborhood where everything was familiar. Eventually, Tracy didn’t see any choice other than returning to Detroit.

(Despite being much less likely to be violent, women felons face even more barriers to employment than men. Compared to an unemployment rate of 6.4% among the general Black female population, unemployment among formerly incarcerated Black women is a stagerring  43.6%, the highest discrepancy of any formerly incarcerated population studied. Research shows that assistance with employment is a high priority for battered women, and intimate partner violence victimization has a devastating long term impact … on women’s ability to maintain a career and support themselves.)

Return to Detroit and the Personal becomes Political

Back in Detroit, CPS did not make good on their threats, and Tracy hoped that the knowledge she had gained at the battered women’s shelter would help her protect herself. She compiled all of the evidence she had of Mister’s behavior, and wrote down police report numbers. She continued educating herself, reading groundbreaking feminist and womanist works by authors like Patricia Hill-Collins, (“When it comes to other important issues concerning the sexual politics of black womanhood… black feminists have found it almost impossible to say what has happened to black women.”), The Combahee River Collective (“If black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free, since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”), Bell Hooks (“All too often, women believe it is a sign of commitment, an expression of love, to endure unkindness or cruelty, to forgive and forget. In actuality, when we love rightly, we know that the healthy, loving response to cruelty and abuse is putting ourselves out of harm’s way.”), Mary Daly (“It is impossible to Name and Act against oppression if there are no Nameable oppressors.”), Andrea Dworkin (“Men often react to women’s words- speaking and writing- as if they were acts of violence; sometimes men react to women’s words with violence. So we lower our voices. Women whisper. Women apologize. Women shut up. Women trivialize what we know. Women shrink. Women pull back. Most women have experienced enough dominance from men- control, violence, insult, contempt- that no threat seems empty.”)

She learned the true meaning of that misunderstood second-wave feminist slogan, “the personal is political,” contextualizing her lifetime of being disregarded and maligned, disdained, made a vessel for every cruel impulse and then blamed. She was gaining class consciousness. She read the pioneering book on the social and psychological roots of male violence against women “Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men,” by the domestic violence counselor Lundy Bancroft, in which he outlined the patriarchal beliefs of abusive men, and debunked the pervasive cultural myths many people still hold about them. Bancroft, whose insights come from working with “angry and controlling men for fifteen years as a counsellor, evaluator, and investigator,”  had “accumulated a wealth of knowledge from the two thousand or more cases” with which he had been involved. He wrote that, contrary to popular beliefs that abusive male behavior is caused by mental or emotional disorders, a difficult childhood, or drugs and alcohol,  “The abuser’s problem lies above all in his belief that controlling or abusing his female partner is justifiable… Possessiveness is at the core of the abuser’s mind-set, the spring from which all the other streams spout, on some level he feels that he owns you and therefore has the right to treat you as he sees fit.”

On recent attempts to paint domestic abuse as a de-gendered social problem, which happens in equal measure between all types of intimate partners, he emphatically disagreed: “Do we see men whose progress in school or in their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters in fear for their lives? How about the ones who try to get to a phone to call for help, but the women block their way or cut the line? The reason we don’t generally see these men is simple: They’re rare.” He gave numerous examples of male abusers manipulating individual therapists and social workers into accepting their worldview and cosigning their blame of their partner (often without ever speaking to her), saying that “Abusiveness is not a product of a man’s emotional injuries or of deficits in his skills. In reality, abuse springs from a man’s early cultural training, his key male role models, and his peer influences. In other words, abuse is a problem of values, not of psychology… The mythology of abusive men that runs through modern culture has been created largely by abusers themselves. Abusive men concoct explanations for their actions which they give to their partners, therapists, clergy people, relatives, and social researchers. But it is a serious error to allow abusers to analyze and account for their own problems. Would we ask an active alcoholic to tell us why he or she drinks, and then accept the explanation unquestioningly?” 

So, armed with this knowledge, Tracy did what made sense. She tried her best to break the cycle of abuse, despite being trapped in financial dependence on Mister. She had spent her adult life supporting him, giving him all of her money to start his business(es); working as an unpaid employee mowing lawns, raking, digging, pruning, clearing. She had cooked and kept the house clean, done 100% of the childcare, and even managed to get her massage therapy license. But Mister was quick to cut her off from this small source of potential independence, too. Even though she accepted only female clients (for reasons which will be obvious to anyone familiar with the experiences of female massage therapists who do not have this policy), Mister would come home and throw “a fit” when Tracy was giving someone a massage. After the second client grabbed her clothes and fled in terror, Tracy realized that she wouldn’t be able to continue. In short, she didn’t have the resources to make a clean break from this man, whose hostility only increased in proportion to her recognition of who and what he was. 

Recognizing his bullying for what it was only gave him more words to verbally attack her. She wasn’t just a “dumb bitch” anymore, but now she was a “dumb feminist bitch,” too. As Bancroft writes, “most abusers verbally attack their partners in degrading, revolting ways. They reach for the words that they know are most disturbing to women, such as bitch, whore, and cunt, often preceded by the word fat. These words assault her humanity, reducing her to… a non-living object, or a degraded sexual body part.” But she did try to teach her children differently. She read to them from the books that had opened her eyes, she refused to accept her sons emulating their father’s behavior towards her daughters, or towards herself, she set clear boundaries and expected them to contribute to daily chores. But, to her dismay, they seemed to be identifying with the abuser. As is so often the case, her younger son started to reproduce in attitude and word how he had watched his father treat his mother, sometimes verbatim; she was a “man-hating feminist,” when she asked him to wash his own dishes or pick his clothes up off the floor. Her older daughter would dismissively roll her eyes when Tracy tried to point out his clear attempt to avoid accountability. “Abusers externalize responsibility for their actions… everything is someone else’s fault, and ‘someone else’ is usually her… a large part of his abusiveness comes in the form of punishments used to retaliate against you for resisting his control.”

(Research from Michigan State University found that 88% of women victims of intimate partner violence reported that their assailants had used their children against them in varying ways. The Massachusetts Department of Social Services Domestic Violence Unit reports “Children can be made into “accomplices” in the man’s strategy of coercive control of the victim: abusers sometimes encourage children to disrespect their mothers, (psychological abuse) or to assault them (physical abuse). … It is important to acknowledge that in traditional child protection practice, there is a strong tendency to focus strongly on women and place responsibility for change disproportionately on them.”)

Nonetheless, Tracy kept trying to make things work. She worked in her garden, with trellised rose bushes, bunches of marigolds and tulips, and a small bed of vegetables and herbs. She taught the kids about planning and making healthy meals with their limited SNAP food stamp benefits, incorporating some of their fresh garden produce. Every once in a while, a homeless animal would end up in their yard, sometimes with pitiful injuries, and she ended up caring for two cats and two dogs. Their house isn’t huge, but it’s a two story four bedroom with a yard, so taking in the animals was manageable. In 2018, her next-door neighbor died, the older woman who had had helped her out with canned goods when Mister was withholding money or childcare when he was on one of his tirades. Knowing Tracy’s interest in gardening, she bequeathed her an empty lot adjoining her yard in her will. Right away, Tracy applied for a government grant to build a greenhouse.

Forged Signature for Grant Money

In 2018, Tracy was going through a stack of documents in her home, when something caught her eye. There was her signature, clearly forged, next to her deceased friend’s on an order for a  USDA agricultural grant. She notified the Inspector General that her signature had been falsified, that she in fact was the owner of the property the grant was for, and Mister’s  application was denied. When she went to the police to find out what recourse she had in the matter of the forgery, bringing with her the documents he had cut, copied, and pasted- and if there was anything else in her name which she may not know about- they casually dismissed her, stating, “oh, that’s a civil matter.” Mister tried to force Tracy to put in writing that she had lied, that her signature on the document was in fact real. She refused and, enraged by her defiance, he was quick to ramp up his abuse. He threatened, and then attempted, to have her children taken away. A few months later, he contacted the Social Security Administration, claiming that she was misusing their children’s SSA benefits, saying she “would not cook beans,” buying them nothing but junk food to eat. Luckily, the administrator he contacted had the sense to pick up on the strangeness of his complaint and contacted Tracy out of concern for her safety. A few months after that, she was finally granted a Personal Protection Order against him but, in a bizarre omission, the Order did not require him to vacate their home, so she chose not to serve him with it, out of an understandable fear that it would only enrage him into causing her serious physical harm. Mister continued pressuring her to write to the Office of the Inspector General and the Natural Resources Center of Ann Arbor and say the forged documents were real, promising her that she would regret it if she refused. But she did refuse. 

Mister Accuses Tracy of Assault

In January of 2020, he made a report to the Detroit police department that she had “fits of rage,” and had “assaulted” their 18-year old son (a complete reversal of the facts. Mister has frequent, frightening fits of rage, their son had, on numerous occasions, shoved and pushed his mother). He also claimed that she was “an animal hoarder” and that their house was “covered in feces” (four animals can hardly be considered “hoarding,” and whenever I’ve visited, the animals are clean and well cared for, with no signs of animal waste in either the home or the yard. Even if one of them had had an “accident” inside, there’s certainly nothing stopping Mister from picking it up. It can’t be all that bad if he refuses to leave, right?) Also in January of 2020, Tracy was alarmed to find Mister. escorting four CPS workers into the house, where they questioned her and investigated the premises. Presumably, they found nothing amiss, she never heard back from them and none of her calls regarding the case were returned. A few days later, Mister  came into Tracy’s bedroom, screaming that “You better call those white people and tell them you lied on me about forging your signature! I’ll go to CPS again, this time I’ll tell them you’re using that money to buy crack and that you’re a baby killer!” As someone who has had much experience with numerous people with substance issues, including crack cocaine, I can assure the reader that this is laughable. In fact, Tracy is one of the most sober people I know. She’s not even a social drinker, just never liked the taste of alcohol. He’s clearly trying to utilize, again, stereotypes about  Black mothers in poor and working class neighborhoods of Detroit, and it’s really pretty disgusting. But his threat was at least partially effective. Tracy steadfastly refuses to concede to Mister’s  jealous and vindictive attempt to steal for himself her little bit of land, but she didn’t call the police to report his threat. She has never stopped maintaining her innocence in that tragic, long-ago case, but she’s been shamed and stigmatized for so long, its invocation provokes an automatic response in her. There’s nothing quite like being branded a “baby killer” when you’re not one. 

Over the next few months, Mister continued his threatening and intimidating behavior: yelling his insults, slamming doors or almost tearing them off their hinges when they won’t be opened for him, screaming and kicking at the dogs and cats. Finally, in September of 2020, he purchased a house right up the street from where they lived. As he’d done with vehicles and properties in the past, he paid for it in cash and put it in one of the older children’s names to avoid taxes and child support, as well as to continue receiving government support. Despite having moved out, he refused to let his name be removed from the lease on Tracy’s house and continued to come and go as he pleased, showing up at all hours of the day or night, telling Tracy where she can and can’t sleep, barging in on her when she’s in the shower or using the bathroom to frighten and humiliate her. 

In December, she finally called the police. As usual he was trying to get in, but this time she attempted to block him from entering. He immediately started screaming and threatening her; when he raised his fist to hit her, she quickly closed the screen door, which he ended up breaking instead of her ribs. Upon arrival, the police stated, to Mister’s gloating satisfaction, that he can vandalize the home or break the door down to get inside, because “this address is on his driver’s license.” Two days later, he came into the house again, while Tracy was showering, and refused to leave. As she stood there, dripping and trying to cover herself with a towel, he told her she doesn’t have any right to privacy because she is “poor” and that he will get her thrown out of “his house.” Humiliated, with the last police encounter fresh in her mind, she did not call the cops. Ten days later, Mister and their 19-year old son came into her bedroom and commenced slamming her furniture around, again threatening to have her thrown out. This time, she did call the police after the two returned to Mister’s home up the street, the cops went to “speak to him,” but Tracy followed up by filing for a PPO, having little faith that anything would come of this conversation, if it happened at all. The next day, the incident that ended with Tracy in jail happened.

I’ve seen footage from Tracy’s cell phone of the beginning of the altercation, and it couldn’t be more clear that the intent was to intimidate and maybe even provoke her. He comes to the door and, not waiting for it to be answered, barges in like a (very large) man on a mission. Exasperated and scared, Tracy says “what are you doing here!?” “Get out!” as Mr. and their son proceed to haphazardly move her furniture around, picking up and dropping chairs, side tables, her sewing machine, her son standing with his cell phone camera and filming her as she gets more upset. And, to be clear, she is upset. She’s upset because two men, both considerably larger than her, are in her space again, making clear to her that she has no rights, no boundaries they can’t trample.  At no point does she threaten them or physically retaliate. She just tries to get her stuff back after they’ve moved it. She rushes over to protect her cherished sewing machine, when he lunges over to tear it from her grasp, he presses against her from behind. She later told me that in this moment, she could feel his erection. Her anguish and distress were turning him on. She calls the cops. This is where Tracy’s footage ends, but she recounted to me – and her younger daughter, the only one who could actually see what he was doing, later corroborated- that after hearing her on the phone with the police, Mister walked into the hallway and threw himself to the floor. A moment or two later,  she came out of her bedroom and found him lying there, her first thought was that maybe he’s had a heart attack. He was still lying there when the cops arrived. He told them that she pushed him. They arrested her. She spent three days in jail, hopeless, alone, despairing, after countless instances of “it’s your word against his,” broken doors, broken dishes, nothing was sufficient to have Mister arrested, but a single accusation from him was enough to have her in jail, charged with assault.

When she finally got released, she found out that the only person who witnessed Mister falling was her 13-year old daughter. She said that he fell suddenly, when he thought no one was looking, but their son has now embellished the story even more, claiming that she not only pushed Mister, but kicked him in the head and torso while he was down. Funnily, he was filming the whole time but didn’t manage to catch this “attack.” The same day all this happened, the judge granted Tracy’s PPO, within hours, in fact, but this has proven not to help her at all. I served it to him myself, after 24 hours of trying to figure out where he was, with the distinct feeling that he somehow knew and was avoiding me.

No sooner was he served with the Order than he commenced to violate it. The very next day, he parked outside Tracy’s house and sat there for two hours, calling the police and claiming Tracy was violating the conditions of her release by being in her house with her daughters. He then sent her older, 18-year old daughter to threaten her, but the police said the threat wasn’t legitimate because it was made through an intermediary. This pattern continued for weeks: Mister shows up at Tracy’s house, sitting in the driveway in his car, peering through the windows, she calls the police, they don’t arrest him. One of the officers claimed the PPO wasn’t valid because Mister had never been served, a falsehood to which I can personally attest. Finally, in February, Tracy reported to Detroit’s 12th precinct in person, showing them a copy of the PPO, and time-stamped pictures of Mr. violating it, explaining to the desk officer that she is afraid for herself, her children, and her animals. Hearing her case and seeing the evidence, a Detective Randolph said that a warrant for aggravated stalking would be typed up and sent to the prosecutor’s office. If this ever happened, it certainly hasn’t led to an arrest. If anything, Mister uses the police to back up and strengthen his threats, the prosecutor’s office sees nothing criminal in his behavior, and the judge who granted Tracy’s PPO hasn’t responded to her complaints about its violation. Mister is smart enough not to cause injuries that require a hospital visit, uses cash for all of his purchases and business transactions, and he counts on Tracy not having the resources to fight back. He has his own house, but can’t stand the thought of Tracy having one of her own. By staying in his children’s lives, he’s provided them a role model of male power and female helplessness. His word is law, which everyone must serve, and his is the power to mete out punishment as he sees fit. 

Looking Towards the Future

What kinds of relationships will the girls grow up to have? How will the boys interact with their future girlfriends and wives, when they’ve grown up identifying with a man like this? And what good is a court system whose pretense of impartiality and “sex blindness” only serves to validate the abuser’s justifications and lies? In what world does it make sense to treat a 6’4”, 300 pound man breaking down a door as though it’s no more threatening than a 5’6” woman screaming “don’t touch me! Get out of my house!”? The truth is, “intimate partner violence” is not equally distributed among the members of society; those who grow up in a world where their half of humanity is the one who is seen as the natural leaders, whose voices are logical and credible, whose violence is justifiable, whose aggression deserves empathy and compassion, that half of society will continue to abuse the half which is seen as over-emotional, naturally irrational and best suited to serving others. Men, even men who are oppressed on one or more of our culture’s many hierarchies of social capital, still have women to shore up their egos by abusing. Another Black History Month has come and gone without mention of the misogyny faced by black women, Women’s History Month has been met with threats and violence where it hasn’t devolved into self-parody, and Tracy Neal is still disregarded and ignored; a little girl was abused, violated, blamed and forgotten, a woman is insulted, despised, intimidated, her protests falling on deaf ears. The police, the last line of defense for a woman dealing with male violence, have proven themselves worse than useless, over and over. But there’s no reason to think churches or social workers are a feasible alternative. They’re so often quick to buy the abusive male’s narrative of his own victimhood, demanding that the woman self-sacrifice, “make it work,” put the needs of others first. Decades of social science have shown that real accountability, such as the threat of incarceration, is the only thing that can break a man’s cycles of violence and aggression. It may feel like the good, the kind, the liberal thing to do; to look for the wounded child inside the batterer, to keep repeating to ourselves that “hurt people hurt people,” but the stark, undeniable fact remains that men abuse women because they think it is their right, even their duty, to “put her in her place.” It’s time we put our compassion where it is deserved. Tracy has been left to fight alone for far, far too long.

If you can, please contribute to the long legal battle she has ahead of her here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-tracy-defend-herself?qid=3d1ee3d135e578d7c83d3f5db908b60c

You can also contact the Detroit Free Press at:

https://static.freep.com/lettertoeditor/

Or the Detroit News at:

(313)496-5400

https://apps.detroitnews.com/submissions/letters/

To let their editorial team know about the Detroit police and court system’s long history of mishandling Tracy’s case. If you’d like more info, or you’d like help getting in touch with Tracy, you can email me at [email protected]

Agnes Wade is an artist and writer living in the American Midwest. She was first introduced to radical feminist politics through the writing of Andrea Dworkin and categorically rejects any normalization of the sex industry. After many years of being intimately acquainted with the dark underbelly of patriarchy, Agnes believes that the system of male dominance must be completely dismantled for the continuation of life on Earth.

Ms. Wade has a piece coming up in Elizabeth Miller’s new Feminist Anthology, Spinning and Weaving.