Think he’ll stop drinking? Think again!

By Lois Carol Wheatley

With all the compassion that properly should be accorded to an alcoholic, it truly is a chronic disease that only a rare few ever beat.

I put my husband into five (count ‘em- five) in-patient rehab programs. It worked according to the law of diminishing returns. After the first stay, he was sober for two years, a fabulous two years, probably the best of my life. After his second stay, he was sober for about two months. Following his third stay, he behaved himself for maybe two weeks, and the fourth stay won me about two days.

His fifth stint was in one of the best programs I’d seen, in a non-hospital setting with family counseling and a scenic countryside. When he got home, it took him about two hours to unpack, shower, change, and find the car keys. Somehow he must have known this was my cue to get on down the road, because he made it impossible for me to do otherwise. He slept by day while I worked and, when I came home, conducted all-night rituals of screamings, beatings, rapings, chasing me around the house with a gun.

I dialed 911 and reported being raped. When you file rape charges, there is a physical exam requirement for forensic evidence, which involves a full pelvic exam and, my favorite, the plucking of about 10 or so pubic hairs, which I could just imagine a judge in chambers examining closely for signs of consent. I knew a restraining order would not be worth the paper it was printed on, and he would have plans for that gun collection of his.

While he was in jail, I rented a trailer and packed up my two-year-old daughter. We headed out from our Northern Virginia home to the suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia, a journey of nearly a thousand miles, and that simply wasn’t far enough. I stayed with an old friend from high school until I could find a job and a place to live.

The rape case was dropped for lack of a witness and he tracked me down in no time flat. Trouble was, I wasn’t home when he figured out where I lived, so he had to break in. And since the original goal was to inflict damage on me in any way possible, he picked up some cash and a few minor possessions, perhaps just covering expenses.

Again I dialed 911. This time I was dealing with the Georgia police, and they told me about an interesting law in the state of Georgia. A woman who is still legally married is her husband’s chattel, and her home is his home. Her cash and minor possessions are his cash and minor possessions. The man was within his rights.

“Go for nonsupport,” they said. “We take a dim view of nonsupport here in these parts. But you’ll need a custody and support order first.”

I hired an attorney who threw back his head and howled when I told him of my meager efforts to conceal my whereabouts, which amounted to little more than the glasses-nose-and-moustache disguise. He told me that even a bad detective can find you if you have a phone and utilities in your name.
In retrospect, I have no idea what I could have done differently with that. Move in with a roommate, I guess.

My lawyer made no headway whatsoever in negotiations with my husband, who threw a pitched battle when and if he deemed fit to address the issue at all. Contested divorces usually cost at least twice the money in legal fees, and take about three to four times as long.

My lawyer suggested a sneaky, underhanded method of dealing with the situation, some jargon that boiled down to notification by publication. He took out a notice in a legal publication that circulated in northern Georgia. It ran for three consecutive months and he followed that up with a petition for divorce that claimed, truthfully, that my husband had been notified of the proceedings via registered mail. My husband responded to that registered letter about six months later, and it was a done deal by that time.

I had the divorce decree in hand for the next assault he would launch. The ironic twist to this whole story is that the next assault never happened. The next thing I heard was from his parents, begging me to go to the hospital where he was in the critical care ward. Kidney, liver, stomach—it was like a sidewalk sale. Everything must go. The doctors gave him zero odds.

I went and took our daughter, at this point age six. He was full of big plans for all the things he was going to do when he got out of the hospital, and he died a week or so after that, at the ripe old age of 38. He never even knew he was divorced, because there was absolutely no point in telling him.