By: Shanda
After pulling a full 9 hours day of work, I finally reached my gate and I saw “her” car, a white Ford Escape. When I say “her” car; I am speaking of a woman by the name of Shantell . A woman whom I loved and had a prior intimate relationship with. Everyone I knew, knew her as a part of me.
She stepped out of her Ford Escape and stood in the driveway next to my opened car door. Her voice persisted as she demanded the answers to what had become of our demise.
Shantel and I had dated on and off for many years and at one point we lived together, but at this particular point…. It was already a relationship that I had tried to end for years.
Her voice got louder “Tell me…. well? What was it.. LISTEN to me!”
Still talking she followed me inside. Standing in the kitchen I recall saying “Just leave! I have nothing more to say.” I walked away. Seconds later, my hearing went out. Everything seemed slow and there was blood.
A lot of blood.
She stepped out of her Ford Escape and stood in the driveway next to my opened car door. Her voice persisted as she demanded the answers to what had become of our demise.
Shantel and I had dated on and off for many years and at one point we lived together, but at this particular point…. It was already a relationship that I had tried to end for years.
Her voice got louder “Tell me…. well? What was it.. LISTEN to me!”
Still talking she followed me inside. Standing in the kitchen I recall saying “Just leave! I have nothing more to say.” I walked away. Seconds later, my hearing went out. Everything seemed slow and there was blood.
A lot of blood.
Red painted the sleeve of my white sweatshirt, and coated my hands…My arm suspended, paralyzed, unable to move.
I had been stabbed. I don’t remember the knife piercing through my skin.
Image is powerful. But as much as it is powerful, it can also be superficial… Many see the shiny boots, pressed and pleated fatigues. A layer beneath, a physique of muscularity and tattoos… I looked nothing like a “victim” and maybe that was why I wasn’t perceived as one.
Women can be violent and can be victimized by women. We know this, but we often don’t believe it. We are bound by social stigmas regarding men as aggressors, men overpowering women and that victims are vulnerable, weak and fragile. I’ve been a security guard for 8 years, and I see how Belizean police deal with same-sex violence. Two men, “Well, that’s just a battery” break them up and send them on their way. Two women, “That’s just a cat fight”. Those are the assumptions made, I see it all the time. We minimize accountability, hostility and we minimize intentional criminal behaviors because of the stigma that women are viewed as the softer gentler gender. I was stabbed by the hand of a woman, this was clearly aggressive domestic violence. Whether we look strong or we look weak should have no bearing on our likelihood or ability to be or be viewed as offenders or as victims.
Within months of meeting we were inseparable, there was a certain need for each other. She was much older than I was, and there was a mysteriousness in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before and it drew me in. I knew from the beginning something in my veins told me to question the beginning of “us”. But I had ignored it. I found myself reciting her better qualities in a mere manner of self-convincement. She was successful, independent and was the kind of woman that could start and put out her own fires! I was drawn to her.
After living together for several months, I saw a different side, or better yet the only side. Her “Friday night side”. I didn’t always see her drinking, but the smell of alcohol on her breath, and on her lips seemed incessant. I would find half drunk or empty vodka bottles in her glove box, under the back veranda, and hidden in dog food bags. I don’t know if she hid those bottles or just drank so much that she had forgotten where she left them.
I didn’t consider Shantel a very violent person, certainly not the type of person who would stab someone. But maybe just being a security personnel and with my exposure to personal and professional trauma and violence my threshold was just that low, and my boundaries just that skewed.
After being stabbed, I underwent extensive surgery for an injury medically termed as Brachial Plexus. Brachial Plexus Neuropathy (BPN), refers to damage to a single nerve or a set of nerves, specifically where nerves from the spinal cord branch into the arm nerves. What the doctors waited to tell me was the damage to my nervous system would be permanent; and due to the inability to fully use my right arm or hand I likely could never be a soldier again.
By the time I got home from the hospital most of the blood had been cleaned up in the kitchen, but my eyes like mini-black lights seem to find its trace. In between the crevices of the hardwood flooring, in the decorative patterns of the cabinet knobs, resting in the scratches of the stainless-steel sink and embedded in the porous granite stone countertops. Blood was all around me and if any of you have ever been exposed to large amounts of blood, well…you can smell it.
I didn’t hear from the security company. No phone calls, No get well cards, Nothing. It was like nothing happened but it wasn’t long before the incident hit the paper and the local media. I can't begin to tell you how messed up the incident had sounded when the media got a hold of it. Was I embarrassed? Absolutely. Why was the word lesbian used to target an audience? The word lesbian was used to exploit my sexuality and make the seriousness of the shooting sound like a circus act.
I didn’t understand why the stabbing wasn’t addressed initially. A transparency. Instead, an internal investigation ensued into allegations against me for “not living an exemplary lifestyle” and “bringing ill-repute” to the company. I was in excruciating pain, a victim of domestic violence, yet I was being accused of this….Why? I didn’t want to believe that she could get away with stabbing me, or that society didn’t view this as serious as a heterosexual act of domestic violence. But it appeared so.
While further reviewing police reports I learned she admitted to getting the knife while standing in my driveway, then shoving it in her waist band while waiting for me to get home. She told officers she knew I wouldn’t want to talk to her and then told 2 inconsistent stories as to how she ended up stabbing me. “I was just trying to scare her,” “She stabbed herself accidentally”.
The investigating officers did not view the crime as domestic violence as there was no proof of a relationship. They also said they could not prove she had the ‘intent to commit a crime” therefore it must have been an accident. They blew it off entirely. How was it that our criminal justice system completely disregarded such violence. Was it because she was a woman? Because we were both women? Or maybe because she didn’t look “masculine or butch enough?” Or because she didn’t have a criminal history, because she was a middle aged woman with a professional career; or maybe it was because I didn’t look like a feminine, vulnerable, victim. After all I was a security officer and I guess that alone makes me unable to be victimized.
There was no direct emulation or imitation of a heterosexual relationship, therefore they couldn’t visualize what this violence was. This contributed to lessening Shantel’s criminality and allowing my victimology to become almost non-existent.
The complaint as it was prepared, never indicated that I was purposefully stabbed or injured. This lack of justice was absolutely sickening, and devastating.
I filed a grievance and won, and was cleared from the internal investigation and placed on administrative leave pending medical discharge to full duty. I taught myself to use my left arm defensively and tactic- fully.
Almost 6 months later, against all odds, I was medically released from my doctor and their doctor to return to full duty. I remember receiving that doctor's note saying, “Cleared for Duty”. I was so proud of myself, but my employer rejected it. They claimed there was no way I could still physically do the job. I had to see specialist after specialist, fighting their resistance to return and fighting for my career, something that was going so well and then stolen from me twice, once by her and then by them.
Often I would stare into the hole of my wound and search for these answers.
I rebuilt my career and I eventually left that security company and transferred to another.
Intimate partner violence seems to be occurring in Belize more or less at about the same rate in heterosexual relationships; however, police aren’t recognizing victims in the LGBT community and that needs to change!
Although I despised the lack of efforts from law enforcement, I didn’t give up on the efforts of our criminal justice system. Instead I came back stronger and with a mission to increase awareness and improve police recognition and response to IPV in same-sex relationships. Police officers need to be aware of the family dynamic differences in same-sex couples in order to identify intimate partner violence. It is only when the criminal justice system understands the victimology and marginalities of same-sex intimate partner violence can this cultural shift can begin.
Being fearless is being honest and so I am able to speak this truth from a unique perspective; a lens of “within” and “against” a criminal justice system. I speak through my scars...the ones I wear, and the ones I won’t forget. I still remind myself I am lucky.
Red painted the sleeve of my white sweatshirt, and coated my hands…My arm suspended, paralyzed, unable to move.
I had been stabbed. I don’t remember the knife piercing through my skin.
Image is powerful. But as much as it is powerful, it can also be superficial… Many see the shiny boots, pressed and pleated fatigues. A layer beneath, a physique of muscularity and tattoos… I looked nothing like a “victim” and maybe that was why I wasn’t perceived as one.
Women can be violent and can be victimized by women. We know this, but we often don’t believe it. We are bound by social stigmas regarding men as aggressors, men overpowering women and that victims are vulnerable, weak and fragile. I’ve been a security guard for 8 years, and I see how Belizean police deal with same-sex violence. Two men, “Well, that’s just a battery” break them up and send them on their way. Two women, “That’s just a cat fight”. Those are the assumptions made, I see it all the time. We minimize accountability, hostility and we minimize intentional criminal behaviors because of the stigma that women are viewed as the softer gentler gender. I was stabbed by the hand of a woman, this was clearly aggressive domestic violence. Whether we look strong or we look weak should have no bearing on our likelihood or ability to be or be viewed as offenders or as victims.
Within months of meeting we were inseparable, there was a certain need for each other. She was much older than I was, and there was a mysteriousness in her eyes that I hadn’t seen before and it drew me in. I knew from the beginning something in my veins told me to question the beginning of “us”. But I had ignored it. I found myself reciting her better qualities in a mere manner of self-convincement. She was successful, independent and was the kind of woman that could start and put out her own fires! I was drawn to her.
After living together for several months, I saw a different side, or better yet the only side. Her “Friday night side”. I didn’t always see her drinking, but the smell of alcohol on her breath, and on her lips seemed incessant. I would find half drunk or empty vodka bottles in her glove box, under the back veranda, and hidden in dog food bags. I don’t know if she hid those bottles or just drank so much that she had forgotten where she left them.
I didn’t consider Shantel a very violent person, certainly not the type of person who would stab someone. But maybe just being a security personnel and with my exposure to personal and professional trauma and violence my threshold was just that low, and my boundaries just that skewed.
After being stabbed, I underwent extensive surgery for an injury medically termed as Brachial Plexus. Brachial Plexus Neuropathy (BPN), refers to damage to a single nerve or a set of nerves, specifically where nerves from the spinal cord branch into the arm nerves. What the doctors waited to tell me was the damage to my nervous system would be permanent; and due to the inability to fully use my right arm or hand I likely could never be a soldier again.
By the time I got home from the hospital most of the blood had been cleaned up in the kitchen, but my eyes like mini-black lights seem to find its trace. In between the crevices of the hardwood flooring, in the decorative patterns of the cabinet knobs, resting in the scratches of the stainless-steel sink and embedded in the porous granite stone countertops. Blood was all around me and if any of you have ever been exposed to large amounts of blood, well…you can smell it.
I didn’t hear from the security company. No phone calls, No get well cards, Nothing. It was like nothing happened but it wasn’t long before the incident hit the paper and the local media. I can't begin to tell you how messed up the incident had sounded when the media got a hold of it. Was I embarrassed? Absolutely. Why was the word lesbian used to target an audience? The word lesbian was used to exploit my sexuality and make the seriousness of the shooting sound like a circus act.
I didn’t understand why the stabbing wasn’t addressed initially. A transparency. Instead, an internal investigation ensued into allegations against me for “not living an exemplary lifestyle” and “bringing ill-repute” to the company. I was in excruciating pain, a victim of domestic violence, yet I was being accused of this….Why? I didn’t want to believe that she could get away with stabbing me, or that society didn’t view this as serious as a heterosexual act of domestic violence. But it appeared so.
While further reviewing police reports I learned she admitted to getting the knife while standing in my driveway, then shoving it in her waist band while waiting for me to get home. She told officers she knew I wouldn’t want to talk to her and then told 2 inconsistent stories as to how she ended up stabbing me. “I was just trying to scare her,” “She stabbed herself accidentally”.
The investigating officers did not view the crime as domestic violence as there was no proof of a relationship. They also said they could not prove she had the ‘intent to commit a crime” therefore it must have been an accident. They blew it off entirely. How was it that our criminal justice system completely disregarded such violence. Was it because she was a woman? Because we were both women? Or maybe because she didn’t look “masculine or butch enough?” Or because she didn’t have a criminal history, because she was a middle aged woman with a professional career; or maybe it was because I didn’t look like a feminine, vulnerable, victim. After all I was a security officer and I guess that alone makes me unable to be victimized.
There was no direct emulation or imitation of a heterosexual relationship, therefore they couldn’t visualize what this violence was. This contributed to lessening Shantel’s criminality and allowing my victimology to become almost non-existent.
The complaint as it was prepared, never indicated that I was purposefully stabbed or injured. This lack of justice was absolutely sickening, and devastating.
I filed a grievance and won, and was cleared from the internal investigation and placed on administrative leave pending medical discharge to full duty. I taught myself to use my left arm defensively and tactic- fully.
Almost 6 months later, against all odds, I was medically released from my doctor and their doctor to return to full duty. I remember receiving that doctor's note saying, “Cleared for Duty”. I was so proud of myself, but my employer rejected it. They claimed there was no way I could still physically do the job. I had to see specialist after specialist, fighting their resistance to return and fighting for my career, something that was going so well and then stolen from me twice, once by her and then by them.
Often I would stare into the hole of my wound and search for these answers.
I rebuilt my career and I eventually left that security company and transferred to another.
Intimate partner violence seems to be occurring in Belize more or less at about the same rate in heterosexual relationships; however, police aren’t recognizing victims in the LGBT community and that needs to change!
Although I despised the lack of efforts from law enforcement, I didn’t give up on the efforts of our criminal justice system. Instead I came back stronger and with a mission to increase awareness and improve police recognition and response to IPV in same-sex relationships. Police officers need to be aware of the family dynamic differences in same-sex couples in order to identify intimate partner violence. It is only when the criminal justice system understands the victimology and marginalities of same-sex intimate partner violence can this cultural shift can begin.
Being fearless is being honest and so I am able to speak this truth from a unique perspective; a lens of “within” and “against” a criminal justice system. I speak through my scars...the ones I wear, and the ones I won’t forget. I still remind myself I am lucky.