A RUSSIAN WOMAN WHO WAS RAPED MARRIED AN AMERICAN WHO WENT TO PRISON FOR ABUSING HER

CHAPTER : IT'S NOT OVER TILL THE FAT LADY SINGS

UNNAMED WOMAN from Sevastopol, Russia, a Black Sea port.  She came to the United States and married a man who abused her and who she escaped from.  He was sentenced to two years in prison.

Page 240)  SHATTERED DREAMS BROKEN PROMISES is C 2007 Michael Viner Phoenix Books

"Most mothers were very careful not to let their daughters out of their sights.  We were counseled to never get in any man's car even if the ride was offered during a rainstorm or heavy snowfall.  Gradually, as a couple years passed, after school, my girlfriends started talking about sexual experiences.  They told frightening stories of being raped by men, all sorts of men: clerks at the grocery store, teachers after class, truck drivers along the highway, a group of boys out for a joyride in their parent's car.  The stories were plentiful and awful. More than a third of the girls grew up with this shared fate.

There was no one to complain to.  When a girl tried to report anything, she was ridiculed by the police and usually blamed for having provoked the situation.  In fact, for some off us, this came to be considered a rite of passage.  Almost all of us were raised by our moms with little or no help from our fathers, who usually traded in a wife every ten years or less for a newer, younger model.  In a country where the woman outnumbered the men fifty-five to forty-five percent, there was little choice for the women,.  And Soviet women outlive their male counterparts by an average of twenty years, so most women spend their later years without anyone to chop the wood..."

Page 253)

"It happened that Mark, although American, didn't know the immigration laws of his own country.  He had threatened me.  After I improved, the hospital sent me to a shelter for homeless people.  They gave me a place to sleep and food to eat.  Half the women in the shelter like me, all victims of domestic violence...  It was important for me to be among people who understood me and cared.  I was a zombie.  I couldn't think about anything.  I felt nothing.  It was just very comfortable and secure with all those strong women.  They tried to help me very much.  They were kind to me... The Office of Immigration and Naturalization drew up papers under the battered' wife's law, which allowed me to remain in the country and to apply for immigration papers without an American husband.... Recently, my free government lawyer filed an application Form I-360 for me.  It gives me the right to get a green card because I was a victim of domestic violence.  We attached a copy of the police report, the medical records, and a psychological evaluation from the Women's Center of Albany."  ..."