(¼) “I met Donald when I was twenty-six. He...

(¼) “I met Donald when I was twenty-six. He pursued me relentlessly. He’d call me every day. He’d invite me to come to the Bahamas with him. He’d buy me all kinds of things. He would even loan me his vintage corvette for the weekend. I was just starting out in life. I wasn’t used to all that attention. He had his own landscaping company– with his own building and everything. He wooed my whole family. Even my mother liked him, and she isn’t easily persuaded. So I fell for him. The abuse didn’t start until I was pregnant with our first child. We were lying in bed one night and he asked me to get him a glass of water. When I told him ‘no,’ he punched me in the face. He said: ‘When I ask you to do something, I expect you to do it.’ I tried to leave right away. I ran back to my family in New York. But he followed me and begged me to forgive him. He said he didn’t want our child to grow up without a father.”


(Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn)