This personal essay reflects upon the flaws in the Texas court system. For a professional sample of my blog writing, please check out my other articles. This article intends to bring awareness to a serious flaw in the Texas judicial system. 

I haven’t often talked about what happened to me because I don’t want to be “the person who.” You know, the person who got beaten. I don’t want people to apologize to me or feel pity or shame or disbelief. I don’t want to have my identity inextricably wrapped around one of the lowest moments of my life. However, in light of the recent political failures in Texas and the shocking and devastating outcomes of failed lawmaking, I feel the need to bring this to light. I am no longer afraid of being “the person who,” because I accept that I am. I was beaten, as many women and men sadly are. This is how the court system in Texas failed me and how I received some form of justice.

Note: the image used is my artistic representation of how I felt during my relationship. 

SOMETIMES it takes someone telling you that you are going to die for you to make a change. When my ex-boyfriend Anwar* told me during my sophomore year in college that he wanted to kill me and detailed how he planned to kill me, it was enough to make me run. However, I returned later that night (and faced the consequences of running). But when his roommate at the time, Colin, sat me down and told me that he was afraid one day he would turn on the TV and see that I had been murdered by Anwar, I finally started to see things in a different light. Did I love Anwar at the time? Yes. But I wasn’t convinced that I would be willing to die for this love.

Not long after Colin expressed his concerns to me (in private, so that Anwar could not try to intervene), I finally had enough. After over a year of being beaten, I finally snapped. Anwar was driving my car late one night when he hit me in the face for the last time. When he parked the car and got out, I promptly locked the doors and called the police to report domestic violence. Anwar pleaded with me through the locked car to calm down, but when he saw that I was dialing 911, he quickly called a friend to pick him up. Anwar attempted to flee the scene via vehicle, but the police tracked him down and he was arrested.

In this instance, the police were on my side during a domestic dispute. (However, I know from experience that this isn’t always the case.) The officer saw signs that I had been hit and Anwar was arrested. When I asked the police for a ride back to campus, they declined. It was late at night and I was very shaken. Having previously had something to drink, I didn’t want to drive back to my college campus. The police advised me to drive myself even after I told them I didn’t feel safe doing so. I ended up calling a friend, Avi, to pick me up.

People who have not experienced domestic violence often blame the victims for not standing up for themselves or leaving the situation earlier. I had been beaten for over a year- kicked, punched, choked, bitten, pushed. I had been threatened with knives, threatened with death. I even had the life of my cat (whom Anwar bought for me so that I wouldn’t leave him) threatened. Multiple roommates and neighbors of Anwar had called the cops to report hearing me being beaten, and I lied to the officers to protect Anwar. So to many people, I was at fault for continuing to be beaten and for lying about not being abused.

What people don’t tell you is how difficult it is to walk away from an abuser. Abusers are often intelligent and manipulative people who suck you into their world and make it very difficult emotionally, socially, and financially to extricate yourself from them. It isn’t as simple as just walking away, and even just walking away can feel like trying to crawl out of quicksand when you have the unfortunate affliction of being in love with your abuser. I attempted to seek justice for myself in the form of a restraining order and was shocked to discover the chilling lack of support I received from the Texas court system.

Colin and Avi had both lived with Anwar. So had their friend David. All three men testified in court about the abuse they witnessed, as did Colin’s girlfriend at the time. I sat down at the courthouse and detailed six instances of abuse (they didn’t want to detail all of them) that were backed up with photo evidence. I shared a threatening voicemail and text messages from Anwar. And I had four witnesses who shared their firsthand accounts of hearing me being beaten and seeing the marks on my body. In turn, I asked for a protective order against Anwar.

It seems like a pretty open-and-shut case, yeah? I forgot to tell you that Anwar was rich. I was represented by a court-appointed free attorney who didn’t even seem to familiarize herself with the case. I had the truth on my side coupled with evidence and witnesses. Anwar had an expensive lawyer and the purgery of his fraternity brothers. While the person who picked Anwar up that night failed to testify on behalf of what happened, Anwar’s fraternity brothers in his lineage (both his “big” and his “little”) gave testimonies in court that supported Anwar. These were two people who had not witnessed abuse, were not there the night of the abuse, and who had not lived with Anwar or me. These were people in Anwar’s fraternity who backed Anwar’s claims that he had never hurt me and was even only in a casual relationship with me.

There are a lot of details about this hellish trial that I could share with you, but perhaps I will save that for another time. I will tell you this- I was in Anwar’s Facebook profile picture at the time of the trial and my name was tattooed across his back while he declared our relationship a minor distraction and insisted I was lying about everything that happened. I told this to the judge when my court-appointed attorney failed to do anything to help my case. I begged in my testimony for the truth to be heard.

Here is what the conclusion was. The judge (a man) looked me in the eyes and told me that he believed me. He said that he believed every story of abuse and believed that Anwar had beaten me on every occasion detailed. He also said that he believed Anwar and his friends lied about what happened. However, he told me that in order to receive a protective order in the state of Texas I needed to prove two things- I needed to detail not just that the abuse had occurred, but that I was in danger of the abuse occurring again. The judge told me that since I had broken up with Anwar, he did not think I was in danger of being beaten again.

The judge told me that the next time Anwar hit me, I would receive a restraining order. However, I couldn’t receive it until I had been hit one more time to prove that Anwar was still a threat. 

The judge even told me that he fully believed that Anwar would continue to beat women and it was my decision to choose if that would be me or someone else.

I sat there in court and watched Anwar and his expensive lawyer celebrate what they viewed as a victory. I collapsed in grief and anger supported by the people who had stood by me, even though I would soon discover that many people did not, in fact, support me.

My time on campus during and after the trial was surreal. Anwar was accompanied by a campus police escort while my college did their own investigation. Though he wasn’t technically allowed on campus without his escort, he frequently attended parties. I was actually thrown out of a party because I had made a legal accusation against Anwar, who was part of a fraternity. I was also told many things including that I had lied about being hit, that I hadn’t been hit enough to warrant calling the police, that I was a disloyal girlfriend for ratting Anwar out, and that I deserved to be hit.

I was advised to walk with an escort at all times for my safety. Nobody associated with the college really wanted to be my professional escort, so they were relieved when Avi (a fellow student) made it his responsibility to make sure I was safe by accompanying me at all times. In one instance when I was hanging out with Avi and several men, we called campus police because we thought Anwar was outside. The campus police did not see evidence of Anwar (I believe I was paranoid at the time), but they pulled me aside and advised me to just get in bed with one of the several men I was hanging out with for safety.

Fortunately, I do have some good news. My college did decide to do something to help me after I broke down to a teacher and told him how I wasn’t receiving support. The teacher contacted the school president and she chose to get involved after Anwar made a religious slur to Avi. (The school president shared the same religion as Avi). This led to an HR investigation that saw the collection of evidence and a trial held at my school. I did not testify at this trial after being absolutely crushed by my court case. However, my witnesses showed up and a miracle happened. Anwar, with all of his father’s money and hefty donations, was expelled. I graduated two years later with a near-perfect GPA and full honors and Anwar was forced out of the school. However, I will always wear the internal scars of what happened to me. “Happy endings” aren’t pretty.

The Texas court system left me so crushed that I dropped my domestic violence case against Anwar and refused to testify after being put through hell during my protective order case. However, the state chose to persecute Anwar despite my refusal to testify. I was called by the courts that summer after sophomore year and asked what punishment I thought would be fair for Anwar. I told the court that Anwar needed to have a record, but that I wanted it to be concealed. I said that I wanted him to have the chance at a new life, but that if he ever hurt a woman again, I wanted what happened to be evidence that she wasn’t lying.

After not receiving my protective order, I have spoken to Anwar since everything happened. He told me that having a domestic violence charge means nothing to him because most men think it’s cool to have slapped around a woman. He told me that he doesn’t want to “tap” other women (he never admitted to beating me), but if he had “tapped” me, it was because I had deserved it by provoking him. I don’t know if Anwar has hit a woman since me, but I want to say being arrested and being charged and having to reap the consequences of his actions for once might have scared him into not harming women if only for selfish reasons. However, I also won’t be surprised if he is still beating women.

What did I learn from this ordeal? I learned that some people fail you and some don’t. I wouldn’t have gotten through this without the support of Avi, Colin, and a select few people who weren’t afraid to stand by my side and support me when I did something that is in many ways considered a social taboo- reporting domestic violence. I learned that the court system can shockingly fail you (as in my failed protective order ), but that it can also surprisingly have my back (as in the state trying my domestic violence case.)

How I feel about my school is mixed. I think the HR man who complied the evidence and used it to get Anwar expelled from school is a real hero. However, the chief of campus police personally advised me to not start a case with my school since he had seen a former student do the same thing before which resulted in her losing and essentially having her life on campus ruined. I’m also not convinced that the school would have helped me if a religious slur had not been involved. Many students shocked and sickened me with their responses, though a handful of people showed me love and support that will stay with me for life.

I choose to speak about this now because a lot of what I am seeing in Texas makes me sick. There are no regulations on the number of firearm purchases, but there is actually a law that prohibits having more than six sex toys. Lawmakers are trying to strip away a woman’s right to choose what happens to her own body and people are trying to make it illegal for parents of trans children to help their kids feel comfortable in their own bodies. Children are dying so that people can protect their constitutional right to wield weapons of mass destruction that are as convenient and easy to acquire as it is to buy a Coca-Cola from a gas station.

I am not a victim of what happened to me. I am a survivor who shares a very similar story to many men and women. What happened to me isn’t unique, which is infuriating. Texas is not structured to help victims of domestic violence. It is not structured to protect the safety of children. It is not structured to protect women’s rights. It is not structured to protect the rights of trans individuals. But it is structured to protect the rights of people to bear arms. This appears to be the right that is most championed and valued.

I share my story today not because I am brave, but because I am angry. For a long time, I have been afraid to publicly stand by what happened to me, but in the face of so much injustice, I find it essential to speak the truth. Thank you for listening to my story and thank you to everyone who has supported me.

Please reach out if you would like to discuss domestic violence or if you would like any advice or to vent about your own experience. I promise you are not alone even if it feels like it.

*For legal reasons, all names in this article have been changed. This is MY account of what happened. I am not seeking to name names or institutions.