He minimized the abuse he’d perpetrated on his former partner, telling me that yes, while he had choked her until she nearly lost consciousness, he had only done it once, after she’d come at him and scratched him. His view was that they were both responsible for the violence done to each other, but only he was having to pay the price for it. He failed to see that scratches didn’t carry the lethality of strangulation and so he saw his behavior as simply quid pro quo.
