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[Editor's note: The following story LEXAPRO FOR SALE, originally appeared in the L.A. Times. It is reprinted here today at the request of the survivor, Laura Cowan, and with the written permission of its author, David Kelly. Where can i cheapest LEXAPRO online, Laura is a reader of Violence UnSilenced and she wanted to join the community here; please leave your words of support in the comment section below.]
Inside a stuffy Cleveland classroom, Tim Boehnlein explained the mechanics of domestic violence and then posed a question.
“So why do women stay?” he asked his class of would-be counselors.
Ignorance, low self-esteem, lack of education, they speculated, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. No one really knew.
Except maybe the silent woman in back — the one fidgeting and looking at the floor.
“I thought if I said something, it might frighten other people, LEXAPRO from canadian pharmacy,” she explained later. “You don’t just blurt out, ‘was held hostage in a garage’ on the first day of class.”
It’s taken more than a decade for Laura Cowan to come up with an answer to the seemingly simple question of why women stay: “They are just trying to survive.”
Cowan, now 53, survived one of the most notorious abuse cases in recent California history. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, Her encounter with the twisted logic of abuse began in 1995 outside a motel room in Riverside. Buy LEXAPRO from canada, That’s when a spate of bad luck led her into a bizarre, four-year odyssey of polygamy, torture and psychological trauma.
The case, involving 19 victims, made national headlines, earning the abuser seven life terms in prison, after LEXAPRO. As outrageous as it was, her story fits a typical pattern. It’s a story of fear so intense it strips victims of everything but the will to survive.
Now a speaker, counselor and forceful advocate for abused women, Cowan still deals with the fallout of her ordeal, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. A warm, easy-going woman who can energize any crowd, Buy LEXAPRO without a prescription, she lapses into awkward silences when pressed about her own past. “I don’t think I will ever get over it,” she said.
Cowan went to that motel room to find help. Her husband had gone to prison, his San Bernardino restaurant had failed and she was broke and alone with two children, Ahmed, is LEXAPRO safe, 3, and Maryam, 7 months. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, “I was totally desperate and afraid, not knowing what was going to become of me and the kids,” she said, telling the story from her living room in Avon, Ohio.
A few weeks before she went to the motel, a casual acquaintance from her mosque had begun coming around. Order LEXAPRO no prescription, Mansa Musa Muhummed, an eccentric, charismatic figure who favored robes and turbans, made Cowan an offer — why not move in with his family until she could get on her feet. He invited her to the motel where he was living with his wife and 12 children.
It was quiet when she arrived, so she opened the door, LEXAPRO maximum dosage.
“They were all sitting on their knees staring at the wall,” she said, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. “They were like little robots.”
Her instincts told her to run, but her legs didn’t move.
“When you are in a dependent situation, you will overlook anything,” she says now. LEXAPRO wiki, Muhummed’s kindness was a ruse. He was following the abuser’s well-worn script of manipulation and control. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, He was born Richard Boddie Jr. near Norfolk, Va. After converting to Islam, he dubbed himself Mansa Musa Muhummed. He home-schooled his children and required his wife and daughters to wear veils, generic LEXAPRO.
At first Cowan thought he was a good father who employed unorthodox methods to create a disciplined, religious family. Soon he asked her to be his second wife, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. “He told me I couldn’t just live with him.... I would be looked down on as a lewd woman,” she said. LEXAPRO long term, He began isolating her from her children. “He told me that Ahmed shouldn’t be sleeping in my room, so he put him in another room. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, My son’s entire demeanor changed. He no longer smiled and just stared at his shoes,” she said.
There is a favored illustration among those who counsel abused women known as the Domestic Violence Wheel. Its spokes contain phrases like: using coercion and threats, LEXAPRO schedule, using isolation, using children and using intimidation. The spokes are arrayed around a central hub called ‘power and control.’
Cowan had begun her lonely sojourn around the wheel. “The cycle often begins when someone starts yelling, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. Then there is a push or shove,” said Linda Johanek, LEXAPRO duration, chief executive of the Domestic Violence & Child Advocacy Center of Cleveland, where Cowan volunteers. “Pretty soon .... they allow you to do things rather than you wanting to do things.”
The family moved around the Inland Empire. Wherever they went, they kept the curtains drawn and rooms dark. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, Beatings were meted out for the slightest infractions. Sleeping through morning prayers earned a bucket of water in the face, LEXAPRO street price.
A dark curtain had fallen over Cowan’s life, a sequence of mind-numbing boredom punctuated by sudden, disconcerting terror.
Muhummed screamed at Ahmed so much that the mere sound of his voice caused the boy to soil himself. Cowan tried to make sense of it. Perhaps her son needed to be “toughened up.”
Now, she sees her distorted thinking as a sign of how much Muhummed had manipulated her perceptions, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. LEXAPRO forum, “You start thinking you are wrong and he is right,” Cowan said. “Between fear and guilt, fear is the more powerful of the two.”
Muhummed showed flashes of kindness. and Cowan hoped his abuse would stop if she didn’t make trouble. “Victims are always thinking, ‘How can I not get hurt today, LEXAPRO interactions,’ ” Johanek said. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, “They are proactively working round-the-clock to keep him happy. The problem is the rules change every day.”
Muhummed’s abuse grew more severe and frequent. He used food as a weapon, padlocking the refrigerator and handing out half hot dogs for daily meals. The children stashed bits of bread behind ceiling tiles. LEXAPRO dosage, Ahmed was a particular target of beatings. Cowan begged Muhummed to stop but was ignored, LEXAPRO FOR SALE.
The family lived on about $4,000 a month in welfare and Social Security benefits, which Muhummed spent mostly on himself. Once, Cowan stashed a chicken leg under a pillow for Ahmed. “I opened the pillow later and found the leg covered in ants, what is LEXAPRO. That was one of the worst days of my life,” she said. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, When she asked to leave, Muhummed delivered a vicious backhand that nearly knocked her out. In the months ahead, he would threaten her with a gun, hit her in the head with a VCR and stab her. LEXAPRO brand name, When she tried to stop Muhummed from beating her son, he dropped her with a punch to the face.
When Cowan gave birth to a daughter, Muhummed gave the baby to his first wife.
To keep Cowan from running away, Muhummed usually kept one of her children with him. And if she did get out “he promised he would kill me and bury me in the backyard,” she said, LEXAPRO FOR SALE.
Cowan’s prison was now complete — she was afraid to stay and afraid to leave, no prescription LEXAPRO online.
Sensing her “disloyalty,” Muhummed enlisted his children to spy on her. The home felt like a concentration camp, with smuggled food, beatings and informants ratting each other out for better treatment. Japan, craiglist, ebay, overseas, paypal, Muhummed escalated his abuse of Ahmed, forcing him to stand naked in a bucket of water for hours. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, “I saw my son standing in the corner of a room shivering, cold, lonely and full of fear,” Cowan said. “Something snapped.”
She began secretly audio-taping the beatings and writing a letter to police. It grew to 26 pages. “Please send help,” she wrote. “Ask to look in both garages and see me alone.”
She had no stamps, LEXAPRO trusted pharmacy reviews, no way to get to a mailbox. If she was caught, death was a distinct possibility, LEXAPRO FOR SALE.
“I knew I had to become stronger, stronger than I have probably been my whole life,” she said.
The family had settled in an isolated house in rural Aguanga, LEXAPRO alternatives, east of Temecula. Muhummed kept Cowan inside a dark garage with her son and nailed the door shut. They slept on thin mattresses and urinated in plastic jugs. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, But Cowan had one advantage: She was articulate and Muhummed had her conduct business for him. Filling out paperwork for monthly benefits, she found a postage paid envelope addressed to the county welfare department. She crammed in her letter and waited.
One morning, my LEXAPRO experience, Muhummed took her to the tiny Aguanga Post Office and struck up a conversation with someone in line. “I reached up under my garment and slipped the letter to the clerk,” she said. Just then, Muhummed called her, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. “I nearly jumped out of my skin,” she said. Ordering LEXAPRO online, Three days later on April 6, 1999, there was a knock on the front door. Riverside County Sheriff’s Deputy Dennis Fogle stood outside holding the letter. Within minutes, deputies were swarming the place. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, By that time, Muhummed had collected three wives and 16 emaciated children. The details made for lurid news coverage: Children hung upside down, LEXAPRO without prescription, victims forced to beat each other. Muhummed spent 10 years delaying trial with a stream of motions but was convicted in 2009 thanks largely to Cowan’s tapes. He remains in Kern Valley State Prison in Delano.
His victims scattered. Many never seemed to recover, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. At least two of the older daughters and one wife became involved in polygamous marriages again. LEXAPRO steet value, At a shelter in Palm Desert, Cowan and her children began intensive counseling. She learned “how to take care of myself ... how to stop rescuing” others, she said. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, Her husband died suddenly upon leaving prison, and she returned to her native Cleveland and found a job at the local housing authority. She met Johanek, who invited her to give talks about her experience, online buying LEXAPRO, and Boehnlein, who trained her to be a domestic violence counselor.
Cowan is now a force of nature, albeit a gentle one. Helping victims in Cleveland and beyond, Buy LEXAPRO no prescription, she gives speeches and attends rallies. She has become a confidant to scores of battered women, including Raj Roberson, now a partner in advocacy work.
“People make you feel ashamed,” Roberson said, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. “They think you are weak for putting up with this, but you can’t be weak and survive what we survived.”
Cowan’s advice to victims is brutally realistic. She doesn’t tell them to improve their self-esteem, LEXAPRO mg. She tells them to get an escape plan.
“Stash some clothes and start separating yourself from him. LEXAPRO FOR SALE, Get some money together. You get out slowly, gradually,” she said. “You don’t make a scene and say, ‘I’m leaving!’ That’s when bad things happen, when killings happen.”
She sees now, clearly, the way she was “continually being programmed with fear” from that first meeting at the motel.
Even when her abuser was handcuffed in the back of a squad car, she had to summon the courage to press charges. But now the fear is finally lifting. Her daughters barely remember their days with Muhummed, LEXAPRO FOR SALE. Ahmed suffered severe depression, but today, at 19, is attending Cabrillo College in Aptos near Santa Cruz.
Cowan no longer hears Muhummed’s voice in the dark. The nightmares are gone. She rises early each morning, sits on her porch and listens to the birds.
“I savor every moment now,” she said, smiling. “I’m just happy to be alive.”
###
Laura C. Cowan tweets as @DVSurvivor1 and keeps a blog here.
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Comments
Hi DaniJackson, thank you so much for the kind words. I do appreciate it. God is good, that's how I survived. Please keep in touch. Here is my website, and you can contact me on the contact page.
God bless
Laura Cowan
Laura, I wept profusely after hearing your story. I am so very proud of you and the courage God gave you to escape and find your life again. I attend Northern Illinois University and I am 63 years old. I am the oldest of my mother's 13 children. She was abused for more than 20 years before she got out. We would love to have you as a speaker at our University on the topic of domestic abuse. Please email me at rochard1949@gmail.com if in the near future you will be available. I am sure we can find the funds to sponsor your visit.
what a frightening story. I'm so glad you escaped.
Thank you xxlylmousexx. I have been reading some of the stories of what other women have been through and found the one of the counselor working for a women shelter, Michelle B. She had a BA in psychology and even she was abused. Now I will admit they are not an easy read and I have to read them in private so that no one can see my face. I have learned as you said its not about being weak its about survival and I understand a lot more now. I will look for that book and also print off some of the stories for Veronica.
She does deserve to be happy and I keep telling her that but she doesn't think that she does because she didn't leave him and the CAS has taken her kids because they don't think that she can protect them and she thought she was protecting them by staying. She is going to fight hard as soon as she is out to get them back though.
Is there any documents/reports that might help her in her fight?
Keith79 Hi, this is Laura Cowan, and thank you for the inquiry. Please check out my website: http://lauracowanstory.com/
also the LA Times did a multimedia piece on my story as well;http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/10/laura-cowan/
keep in touch
Hey Keith79, I am not a professional, and I have only read a few books about abuse. One that was pretty good about explaining was "Getting away with murder, weapons for the war against domestic violence". I found it at the city library. To be honest, really strong women can be trapped and abused by the control the abuser uses. I myself managed large companies, I was the perfect example of success. College grad, Mother of amazing kids, worked for the School District, ran my own business etc. Its not about being weak. Its about survival. The imminent promise of harm to myself or my children kept me there. It was not that I could not leave. I did five times. The first four times he found me and trapped me again. Taking my children, my income, anything he could use to keep me. The weirdness is that I could not see that him moving a block away from me, or him making me a cake and bringing me flowers, saying he was just my friend was the first steps of him getting me back under his control. The abuser is charming, creative, loving, amazing, sexy etc..... until the day they need to lash out on someone, then they are a different person. Some how it is easier to think they can get better, they need counseling, they love you but can not seem to shake the demons of their own past.
Its the toilet paper you forgot to buy, the fact that you were 30 minutes late from a ballet, or you just talked at the wrong moment that trips them out. To be honest, I would ask her to think about what he did that made her happy. Because the abusers I have seen play both sides. Then show her that a healthy man behaves in a different way. See healthy men may not be a party all the time. They may only bring flowers every couple of months, or shave your legs on your birthday, or take you to expensive restaurants for Valentines. Where the abuser has to make up for breaking your nose, your favorite china, the child's arm. So they have honeymoon periods more often. Then help her see that it feels good to be calm, loved, consistent and safe. That is what I had to see. That the beautiful man that loved me is the one that held that gun to my head, sometimes loaded sometimes not. Either way, always lethal, physically, mentally, emotionally. I would have done anything for him. It took him hurting my child that made me get stubborn.
I have now met someone who like you is new to the world of abuse. I did not know there were guys out there like that. I was lucky after over 30 years of being abused in one way or another. He is calm, patient, listens, lets me cry, helps me work through the fear, the worry, the working through the pain. I think sometimes he cries "shhhhh" when he hears the stories because he hurts for myself and my children. He deals with the concern for my life on a daily basis. It has not been an easy journey for sure. Each day that goes by and he stands by my side as my partner in healing is another day that my heart heals and grows to be his more. I was single for awhile when I left the abuser. I was afraid to trust. The key was just be there. Some how even the strongest of us just need time and a shoulder.
I do hope that she can pull through this and live the life she really should have. One we all deserve. huggles, mouse
Hello, I am a close friend to Veronica West who is incarcerated and she is getting counseling as she was in a relationship with a guy for 7 years that never hit her but emotionally abused her. I have been finding things that will help her and I send somethings into her and add others to her facebook so that she will have them when she gets out. Now this is all new to me also so I am learning as we go. She is trying to figure out why she stayed and why she did something criminal for him. She portrays her self as strong so everyone is having a hard time as to why she stayed and committed a crime. Is there anything that I could get for her to read to help her figure things out so that she won't be in the same situation in the future? Is there any ebooks that i can print? I have ordered books from amazon but I can't get them to her, but she will be out is a few weeks.
Hi guys, thank you for all your comments, Please don't forget my story, and do pass it on to others, maybe someone out there will be helped. You should really check out the video that the LA Times did on my story. There is one on me and the other on my son:
http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/10/laura-cowan/
http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/09/ahmed-shabazz/
Keep in touch.
Laura
Laura thank you for being brave and surviving for yourself and your children. The plan is a great idea. It took me five times to figure out how to escape. I am so happy now. I know what you mean when you say you are happy to be alive! Huggles mouse
xxlylmousexx Thanks so much, yes, I'm happy to be alive!!!, you should really check out the video that the LA Times did on my story. There is one on me and the other on my son: http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/10/laura-cowan/ http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/09/ahmed-shabazz/
"They are just trying to survive" may be the most succinct and direct responses to "Why do women stay?" that I have ever heard, and I will not forget it.
Laura, yours is an incredible story of survival. Thank you for allowing it to be re-posted here. Thank you for speaking out. Stay strong.
Sending peace to you and your family.
SarahPMiller Thanks Sarah, please don't forget if ever asked, "Why do women stay".
You should really check out the video that the LA Times did on my story. There is one on me and the other on my son: http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/10/laura-cowan/ http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/09/ahmed-shabazz/
WOW! This is one of those stories that stays with you forever and you know it will help others.
AnissaMayhew Thanks AnissaMayhew, Please don't forget my story, and do pass it on to others, maybe someone out there will be helped. You should really check out the video that the LA Times did on my story. There is one on me and the other on my son: http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/10/laura-cowan/ http://framework.latimes.com/2011/11/09/ahmed-shabazz/
Keep in touch.
Laura
Keep speaking. I am reposting this so that the advice reaches as many as possible.
Conversation from Twitter
@VUnSilenced Thank U. The LA Times did the video too One on me and the other on my son: http://t.co/b8WMquMK http://t.co/jMxYub4f
@LunkenDrush It really is, isn't it? I do love how the author points out that regardless of how extreme her story is, patterns are the same.
@VUnSilenced that's something everyone should be aware of too. I hope more people read her story.
I am watching you on Anderson you are one outstanding Woman may God continue to Bless you beyond I totally uplift you in praise for your courage to be One Strong Black Woman!!!
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