Yesterday, I posted about the Mother who was murdered along with her daughter, and her son, by the grace of God, survived. Well, below is more to the story. I want to post more about this for the simple fact that many women go through abusive relationships, and I hope that anyone that reads this that may go through this realizes it’s not going to get better! Don’t read this story and say, “that will never happen to me.”
I am not preaching to anyone, I have been there, I was in a horrible relationship, and the night there was a screwdriver that was heading for my neck, was the last night. I went through a lot to get out of that relationship, and I learned a lot from it…. please learn from other’s mistakes.
Enduring abuse can be a fatal mistake
Enduring abuse can be a fatal mistake | by Laurie Roberts – Jun. 6, 2009 06:35 AM
The Arizona Republic
On April 28, a Glendale judge dismissed misdemeanor charges against Michael Brian Miller.
Miller, who had been accused of hitting his wife, had just completed 36 group counseling sessions and was once again off the hook.
His wife wouldn’t testify against him.
Note to women (or men) who, like Adriana Miller, perhaps feel too fearful or too faithful to testify or to just get the heck out: Do it. Please do it.
Adriana, I’m told, was a soft-spoken, kind-hearted 28-year-old woman who valued her privacy, loved her children and believed in making her marriage work. Even if it got violent. Twice her husband was brought up on charges — in 2004 and 2008 — and twice she declined to testify.
Adriana, a pharmacy technician, often talked with a friend at work about what she endured. She also talked about leaving. “She kept going back and forth,” Joshua Sheinin told me. “He was battling addictions and mental illnesses, and she just believed he would get better.”
If only she had also talked to Danielle, another co-worker, who had no idea what Adriana was going through until this week. Danielle says she used to endure an abusive relationship but finally got out. Danielle would have told Adriana that things would not get better.
“This only ends one way,” she told me. “It may take a couple of months or it may take two years but it only ends one way. Either they’re going to seriously injure you or kill you and/or your children or at least put your family in danger. No one deserves to live that way.”
It was about 9p.m. on Jan.27, 2008, when then-9-year-old Valerie Miller, huddled in a bedroom of their Glendale home with her 3-year-old brother, called 911. The child told police that her father was drunk and angry at her mother for disturbing him while he was listening to music. So he allegedly did what apparently came naturally: He slapped her in the face and knocked her to the ground. The child told police that it wasn’t the first time.
Miller was arrested that night but instead of being prosecuted, he was sent to counseling. Adriana wouldn’t testify.
I don’t understand that. But then, I’ve been blessed with a guy who doesn’t use his fists, so I asked Elizabeth Ditlevson over at the Arizona Coalition Against Domestic Violence to explain it.
“There are lots of reasons that women aren’t able to participate in the prosecution of their partners and former partners,” she told me. “I think that love and fear play a huge role and also coercion on the part of a batterer.”
Ditlevson said it’s important that police and prosecutors collect enough evidence to be able to proceed without the victim’s help, if need be.
In Miller’s case, they didn’t have it.
After his 2008 arrest, Miller got counseling through Justice Services, a company Glendale pays to run its diversion programs. The company claims a recidivism rate of only 2 percent after their domestic-violence counselors are done.
Miller was obviously not their poster boy.
Court records indicate that he went through the program both in 2004 and after his arrest last year. He completed his 36 sessions this spring and charges were dismissed on April 28.
Thirty-two days later, about dawn last Saturday, police say Miller, 29, grabbed a butcher knife from the kitchen of his home and repeatedly stabbed Adriana during an argument over his not being able to sleep. Police say that as he was stabbing his wife, his 10-year-old daughter entered the dining room, so he grabbed her by the hair and began stabbing her in the chest. Finally, police say, he went for his son, who is just 4, punching him in the face and stabbing him.
“(Miller) told me that he stabbed the child the most,” a Glendale officer wrote. “When asked why, (he) said because he loved him the most.” Adriana and Valerie died there on the dining-room floor. Their son, whose name I’m not using, was found with the knife still embedded in his shoulder. He survived by some miracle, though who knows what monsters will forever haunt him.
The number for the National Domestic Violence Hotline, by the way, is 1-800-799-SAFE. Someone will answer 24 hours a day.
RIP Adrianna and Valerie, I did not know you, but you are in my heart.
Please pray for the little boy, his scars will be hard to overcome, and hopefully his mom and sister will be his guarrdian angels and help him to get through this.
