Domestic Violence Survivor On Pandemic Spike: 'You Are Drowning'

SOUTHAMPTON, NY— More than two decades have passed since Nicole Behrens stood on her front lawn in Southampton, her then-three-year-old clutched in her arms, shaking violently as her husband stood on the front steps, a shotgun in his hands — not knowing if the moment would be her last.

More than 20 years, and when she tells the story, the images she evokes are as vivid as if it was only yesterday that she was living in terror with a man who, she said, wore away at her spirit with bursts of explosive anger, fury that could come at any moment, for any reason.

In the years after her experience, Behrens has volunteered with The Retreat in East Hampton to help other women who are walking the ever-shifting road of domestic violence, a road marked by terror in the night and a mounting dread for weekends and holidays, when simmering anger can explode.

Over the past year, an uptick in domestic violence was evidenced as women were trapped in their homes with their abusers during pandemic lockdown.

New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently announced initiatives to combat domestic violence and gender-based violence as part of the 2021 State of the State. The package includes a proposal allowing courts to require abusers to pay for damages to the housing unit, moving expenses, and other housing costs related to domestic violence, as well as a proposal to require that the Office of Court Administration report domestic violence felony statistics to the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services monthly.

Also, Cuomo has called for reforms in regard to abusers' ability to own guns: Currently, in order to disqualify individuals found guilty of serious misdemeanors from obtaining a New York gun license, they must be found to have committed the crime against someone with whom they were in a domestic relationship after a separate hearing. However, he said, many domestic violence misdemeanors are not "labeled" properly because the process to label state-disqualifying DV misdemeanors is cumbersome — meaning that some convicted of serious misdemeanors have still been allowed to purchase a gun.

Cuomo proposed the creation of a domestic violence misdemeanor label to close the domestic violence gun-purchasing loophole.

"One of the most horrific results of this pandemic has been the stark rise in cases of domestic and gender-based violence," Cuomo said.

For Behrens, the legislation is a long time coming.

Behrens, who left her husband in 2000 on Easter Sunday, said it was the sight of the shotgun that set the wheels in motion for her escape. "It was terrifying," she said.

She had asked for a divorce before, and because they continued to live in the same house, the situation escalated, always worse during the holidays, she said. "The holidays bring out the worst in abusers," she said. "It is unbelievable."

Her husband drank during those years, Behrens said, although she added that he is now remarried and sober.

Recalling those dark days, Behrens said there was cursing and arguing, as well as being pushed out of a slow-moving car one day because he didn't want her to drive. "It was one of the most humiliating incidents because I had to walk to someone's house I didn't know," she said. "He left me on the street."

The verbal and emotional abuse left Behrens living in a state of constant stress, she said. The anger, the rage, was sparked by everything, anything, she added. "He'd fight with me about the sky being blue. One time I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich but I used the wrong jelly. He called me a selfish piece of garbage. I was tortured for hours over that jelly. This is what goes on."

Despite the daily degradation, Behrens held on, buoyed by her husband's promise to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and his pleas to stay together, she said.

But then came Easter. It began with her husband going outside and breaking a plastic deck chair over their dog, she said. It was so cold, the chair "was like glass," she said. "It shattered."

He went into a back bedroom where he'd always kept a shotgun, but did not realize she'd given it to a friend to hide, she said. "This is where the insanity comes in, when you are asking friends to do things like this and you think it's normal," Behrens said.

Her husband came back inside to find the gun missing and was enraged, she said. He ran to the basement and came back with another shotgun, she said. So terrified she could barely move her feet beyond a shuffle, Behrens saw that he was loading the gun in a back bedroom, she remembered.

"I said to him, 'Are you going to kill me?' He said 'no.' Then I asked if he was going to kill himself and he said he didn't know what he was going to do," she said.

Having learned not to move too quickly — fast motion could trigger a chase, and had in the past, many times — Behrens grabbed her daughter and tried to get outside to the car without making a sound, she said.

"All of a sudden, I heard the front door. He was in the doorway with the gun in his hand, and I was thinking, 'He's going to shoot me on the front lawn of my house, and I'm holding my baby.' This is the stuff you see on 'Oprah.' This is not happening'."

Next, he got into the car and drove away, and Behrens said she went back inside the house. Normal behavior in the life she was living, she said, when she, like so many women, learned to disassociate to survive. "You have a new normal," she said. "After 10 years of small chipping away, of these kinds of incidents, you start to learn your boundaries, start to accept behavior you wouldn't normally accept, just to get through the day. You don't know what's right or what's wrong. There's a wearing down of belief in yourself. You no longer trust yourself."

And although, for many who have not experienced abuse, the situation seems extraordinary, Behrens was not alone: According to the CDC one in four women and nearly one in 10 men "have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime and reported some form of IPV-related impact."

And, the CDC said, more than 43 million women and 38 million men have also endured "psychological aggression" by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

But at the time, Behrens felt all alone, and when her husband returned home, the terror mounted. "I thought, 'I'm dead,'" she said.

Her husband had headed out to a detached garage. "I thought he was either going to kill me or kill himself in the garage," she said.

She called her father on Easter Sunday, terrified, and could barely get out the words: "He has a gun," she said.

Her father called the police, who called Behrens but said they could not do anything unless she called for help herself, which she did.

By the time police arrived, her husband had once again driven away; he was found and the gun, retrieved, but no arrest was made and no charges were filed, she said.

Behrens went to live with her parents while her husband lived in the house. It was when she went for an order of protection that Behrens had a surreal experience. "I thought, 'I don't belong here. I'm not one of these people. I have a career. I have a car. I have a dog. I am not them.' But I was."

And, she said, "I thought, 'How did I get here?'"

Behrens, who has a very close, loving family, was living in Southampton, and at the time, her family lived in Port Washington, although they have since moved to the East End.

Ashamed and embarrassed to talk about what was happening, Behrens had lived alone with her reality for years. Until she met a legal advocate for The Retreat that day at court, and finally, found a lifeline.

"I said, 'I don't care where you come from, I found you and I am not letting go,'" Behrens said.

In the next months, her husband, while never arrested, was removed from the home due to the order of protection.

Ultimately, it was her daughter that gave her the strength to file for divorce and move forward, Behrens said.

Today, her daughter is studying for her masters at Columbia University; Behrens herself is a financial adviser for Merrill Lynch. Both she and her ex-husband are remarried.

But the memories echo. And Behrens tells her story, again and again, to help others who feel helpless and alone.

"People need to unlearn what they've lived through," she said. "The minute my advocate told me, 'No, Nicole, this isn't normal,' I knew I wasn't going back. Because in the past, it had been easier to go back. It's familiar."

For many women, there is no recourse but to go back. With no jobs or family, many are literally trapped in homes with their abusers, especially during the pandemic, she said. "If they have three children sleeping upstairs, they can't escape. They can't go," she said. "They don't want to leave their children."

Others do not want to leave their animals behind "with monsters and bullies," she said.

The pandemic only made matters worse for many, Behrens said. "If the abuser has lost his job and he doesn't feel manly or can't provide, if he feels out of control in his life, the one thing he can control is his partner," she said.

A woman at home with her abusive partner and children during the pandemic is faced with unthinkable choices, she said. "This is the worst time for these situations," she said. "You think the walls are closing in on you, in an abusive relationship? When you literally can't get away, when there is no sense of normalcy or access to the outside world to balance the insanity, you are just drowning."

Children who have to go back to abusive homes on weekends and holidays act out, Behrens said.

Behrens said, of Cuomo's proposed gun reform, "I can't believe we're still fighting for that. It's a no-brainer."

She believes that the real change must start with education.

Still, the light shining on domestic violence statewide is a step forward, Behrens said.

"With the tragic increase in this heinous acts spurred on by the pandemic, we are doubling-down on those efforts," said Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor and chair of the New York State Council on Women and Girls. "This disgusting behavior must end."

A nightmare in East Hampton

In East Hampton, the horror of the night that changed her life and the lives of her children is always just a heartbeat away for East Hampton resident Noemi Sanchez, who was beaten, stabbed and then shot in the head with an air rifle by her estranged boyfriend in 2011.

Nine years later, Sanchez spoke to Patch to help other women hiding in the shadows of their homes, where, behind closed doors, officials say domestic abuse in Suffolk County is on the rise as the number of deaths related to the new coronavirus continues to skyrocket.

Women who find themselves in the home with their abuser, with no jobs to go to and no schools open, will feel "even more scared" than they normally would be in the house, Sanchez said. "It will be even more awful. You'll have more trauma than you had already. For those women, it's very difficult right now. They have nowhere to go."

Abusive partners, she said, "could become even more aggressive. All the anger they have about the situation, when they hear the news, or about possibly losing their jobs, they will take out on you." Abuse can mean a barrage of verbal intimidation, she said, or being threatened. The words she screamed on the night that changed her life still echo, Sanchez said: "Call the police. Daddy's trying to kill me!"

Uptick in domestic violence in Suffolk County

In the month since the first case of coronavirus was reported in Suffolk County, domestic violence incidents rose about 8 percent, according to Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart.

According to Loretta K. Davis, executive director of the Retreat, the past year has been a "trying time" for domestic violence agencies and for survivors. Still there have been successes: Due to new, virtual counseling sessions online, women's cancellation rate for those sessions dropped by 50 percent. And in addition, advocates had a 90 percent rate in obtaining orders of protection, more than any borough in New York City, she said.

"We know that there is an increase in domestic violence here on the East End," Davis said in the spring. "We know because calls are increasing from churches, community groups, employers, friends reaching out on behalf of a victim, and police reports. The district attorney's office says more than half of all their cases right now are domestic violence-related."

The Retreat, Davis said, is focused on direct services as well as the current needs of victims, and those are more about survival. Calls for help involve finding resources at the community level for families in need, including food, rental assistance or relief, and how to access unemployment, she said.

Coronavirus poses deadly domestic violence threat

Domestic violence cases increased initially during the coronavirus pandemic because of the logistics of the stay at home mandate, Davis said.

"There was an increase because victims were trapped at home with the abuser," she said. "The abuser may limit access to information or access to phones, computers, family, friends. The abuser may also provide inaccurate information about what services are available."

In addition, she said, there may be job loss, financial abuse, the feeling of isolation and despair, as well as stress from uncertain circumstances. The reduced access to health services, an inability to leave, and the exposure and vulnerability of children in the household are factors that also contribute to a tense and volatile situation, she said.

"It's a tinderbox, with a high potential for violence"

"Imagine being forced to remain in a household with an abuser for weeks on end. There is no escape by going to work. There is no escape by shopping or going to a medical appointment. Plus, confined spaces are making everyone edgy," said Kim Nichols, the Retreat's development director. "It's a tinderbox, with high potential for violence. But how can you reach out for help when your abuser is literally right next to you? That's the challenge many victims are facing right now; they can't reach out directly."

Today, Sanchez has gained her strength — and seeks to empower other women, victims of domestic violence struggling and suffering in silence.

She's found advocacy, solace and resources at the Retreat — and is involved with SEPA Mujer, an organization that works to support immigrant women on Long Island, speaking out against injustice, providing access to opportunities and services, taking a stand against domestic violence and other abuses, and advocating for social change.

"He made me feel like I was nothing. He made me feel like garbage"

"I'm not scared anymore," Sanchez said. She said, though, that she's worried about the trauma her daughters endured, watching the abuse unfold. The abuse began with verbal intimidation, she said.

That's why, she said, stronger legislation for those who have committed domestic violence in front of children is critical.

Before the night when he attacked her, he'd hit her maybe once or twice, but the verbal battering was a constant.

"He made me feel like I was nothing, not important," she said. "He made me feel like garbage."

Today, she said, "I'm strong. And now I want to help another woman, who's in a situation like I was, become empowered."

To other women currently struggling, Behrens said: "There is hope. But you cannot do it alone. You must reach out and there is no shame in doing that."

Behrens texts with women who are in the same situation, a voice at the other end of the dark tunnel. "We are all sisters," she said. "We all have exactly the same story. But this is still such a taboo. Until we break through that, we can't put an end to it."