February 9, 2021
Honorable Judge [redacted]
Omaha, NE 68102
Re: Sentencing of David
Dear Judge [redacted],
David was my first experience with true narcissism, violent outbursts, and both physical and sexual abuse. The impact that this relationship had on me has been devastating and life-changing. David and I had been on the periphery of each other’s lives for over a decade. I knew from a friend of mine that he was loud, assertive, and dominating. However, I had no idea he was capable at being an excelled manipulator, liar, and an incredibly violent man. I never thought I would allow myself to be with someone who abuses me. I am a very determined and independent woman. I own my home. I work a successful job. I have a good circle of friends. David completely swept me off my feet and drowned me in love and affection. Less than one month into the relationship he made me feel like I couldn’t live without him. I was head over heels in love with him. I told everyone around me that David was my prize and I was going to marry him. Now, I know it was all a game - a manipulation - in order to get me to be completely vulnerable to him so that he could get whatever he wanted out of me. It was love-bombing and the first step into the world of a malignant, narcissistic abuser.
David moved in the second night he stayed over and from then on, he wanted for nothing. I took care of the house, our bills, cleaned, cooked, gave him my car to drive, and made sure that our sexual relationship was everything he expressed he wanted. After he went to jail, I went through Venmo and calculated that I had sent him just over $14,000 over the course of our 9 month relationship. Though he would send me $100 from time to time, he never really contributed. He didn’t have a job. Most of the money I gave him went to his poker addiction. Whatever he made back from poker he put toward his own bills or it went right back into the addiction and was lost at the table.
The first time he was violent toward me was in February, the weekend I left my long-standing career [redacted] and was ready to start an entirely new career path. He ripped the bedroom fan right out of the ceiling while it was moving and threw pieces of the broken light fixture at me. He lifted me up [redacted]. He tried to kick me down the stairs. This, of course, was all while he was being verbally abusive. The second violent fight was exactly two weeks after the first and was the most violent one of them all. He pulled me from the kitchen to the living room by my hair. He then held me down with a foot on my neck while he kicked me with the other, talking about how maybe the world would be better off without me. I [redacted]. After he was done being violent, he would threaten me before heading off to bed. I would stay awake until I was sure he was asleep and then attempt and fail to get some of my own sleep. I was afraid he would wake up and kill me if I fell asleep. The third violent fight happened in April. This was the only time I tried to stand up for myself after he called me names. I fought back and he [redacted]. The fourth time was in May right before we left [redacted]. A week or two prior, David and I had discussed his violence toward me and he had agreed to stop. I was attempting to set boundaries and told him that if he was violent again that we would be done. We got into a huge fight the night before we were supposed to leave and were up most of the night because of that fight. After a few hours of sleep, he carried that fight over into the morning which ended in him shoving me in the chest over and over, pushing me into my car, and asking if I was going to leave him because he was being violent again. He was taunting me about the boundary I had tried to set. He knew I wouldn’t leave him. My chest had painful bruises for almost 2 weeks. The fifth and final violent fight was when he was arrested in June and was the first and only time he ever blatantly told me he was going to kill me. Those details are already available and why we are here today.
I never slept well when I was with David. My sleep cycle was destroyed quickly and I was often sleep-deprived which started from the first night he came over. I was up all night with him and worked all day. When we’d fight, we’d fight all night long and when we weren’t doing that, often times our [redacted] lasted just as long. I later learned that sleep deprivation makes the abused easier to manipulate. I was exhausted and constantly desperate to fix any and all problems when they would arise. I would stumble over my words because I couldn’t think properly and then we would spend hours fighting over how I said something. I would spend all night trying to get him to talk to me, attempting to mend the argument, or begging him not to leave me and to come back to bed. David punished me by giving me the silent treatment, packing and pretending he was going to leave me, or being incredibly verbally abusive if he wasn’t also being physically abusive. He used my codependency and trauma-bond against me, forcing me to sleep by myself knowing that I would be up all night long wondering how to fix things and worrying about him.
When he was violent, he would often destroy my property. He broke my television and printer, stomped on my computer, destroyed my bedroom and vanity, ripped part of the ceiling out in the spare bedroom, and put holes in walls and doors. About every three months, I would find a new girl he was cheating on me with. He was constantly emotionally and verbally abusive and would tell me that if I wasn’t so pathetic, maybe he wouldn’t be reaching out for validation elsewhere. He forced me to take anti-depressants at the threat of our relationship, and then became my savior from them when all they did was give me terrible insomnia. Our sexual relationship was incredibly rough in nature from day one. David doesn’t like the word “no” and would start a massive fight if I told him I didn’t want to do something. In healthy kink, aftercare is a must, but David did not once care for me after a rough or violent sexual act. I was left to care [redacted] on my own. I also had to go to urgent care for one incident [redacted]. He knew I had no prior experience to this kind of [redacted] relationship and used that lack of knowledge to manipulate me [redacted]. I was constantly put in a deep state of vulnerability with no one to make me feel cared for and safe.
After every violent argument and every verbal beating, he would smooth it over by apologizing. He would say the most perfect and loving words to me and then immediately [redacted]. After the arguing, [redacted] his immediate actions would make me feel like I had power and control in a time where I felt I had none. It was all a false sense of control, of course. He would try to be better for a few days and then we’d be back to arguing, the violence getting worse as time went on. Often times, he took advantage of the vulnerability the abuse caused to manipulate me further. I would find myself apologizing to him and begging him not to leave me. I would try harder to be a better girlfriend. I would second-guess everything I said. I would give him the benefit of the doubt. I would offer him more money and support because he had no job, was on felony probation [redacted], and was constantly losing money playing poker. I thought that if I tried harder to be a better girlfriend, support his dream of being a professional poker player, and chose my words more carefully then he would stop being so self-deprecating and self-sabotaging. I thought he would stop being abusive toward me. I thought he would go back to being that loving and caring, incredibly attentive man I met in the beginning. I was trauma-bonded to him. He always promised me that it would get better, yet it continually got worse.
After every violent incident, I learned tips for the next ones. I started hiding my things in anticipation of the fight getting violent as I didn't want both my work and personal computers to be broken by his rage. I started hiding my phone so that he couldn’t take it away from me and hide it as he’d done in the past. I started carrying my house and car keys with me so that he couldn’t lock me out of the house anymore. He once accused me of voice recording him when I wasn’t, so I kept that in the back of my head. It is the only reason I remembered to get recording of the night in June. If he hadn’t mentioned that in a previous fight, it would have never crossed my mind to do so. I knew I would need proof of his behavior and actions toward me.
I feel so much shame and embarrassment now. I kept everything he did and said to me a secret. I was and still am afraid of how David will retaliate. He has proven to be very vindictive and has been honest about purposefully ruining other people’s lives to get what he wants. I felt obligated to protect his image and the image of the perfect relationship we had to everyone around us. I lied to everyone. I felt guilty every time I even considered leaving him or telling someone about the abuse because I didn’t want to be the reason he went to jail or got into trouble for violating probation. I didn’t want to be the one to break the news to our friends and families that the guy I was going to marry was abusing and hurting me. I feared no one would believe me. When I would tell him to leave he would argue with me about being legally required to give him a 30-60 day notice. I was sure he would make my life miserable while he was staying in my home during that time. I felt trapped in my relationship and in my home.
It wasn’t until he was taken away from me by the police that I was able to breathe and dissect the relationship for what it was. It was the first breath of air after drowning for 9 months straight. I found out about the affair he had with his probation-approved therapist. I found out that he was having sexual conversations with countless other women the entire time we were together. I found out about his affliction for disturbing, violent porn including genital mutilation, [redacted]. The entire relationship I was living in was a lie. Someone who loves and wants to marry someone doesn’t do what he did to me. For me, it was true love, but for him I was his greatest challenge. Our relationship was simply a game to him. When he went to jail, I told my friends everything. I stopped lying to my therapist and came clean about my entire relationship. I have been working ever since to heal from this.
I’ve been in therapy for years [redacted] I would lay in bed, afraid to fall asleep out of the irrational fear that he would get out of jail, break into my home, and kill me while I slept. [redacted]. He has specific lines, phrases, love letters and emails that he uses to manipulate women into loving him and thinking he sees and understands them. He has a script to make women more vulnerable and easier to attack. [redacted].
David will not stop and will be this way for the rest of his life. He takes his failures and his losses and simply learns to be more cunning. [redacted]. In previous fights, he would talk about how the earth would be a better place if I weren’t on it. He’d suggest I kill myself because of how depressed I was at the time. [redacted]. A few years in prison for threatening to kill someone, abusing them, tearing apart their belongings, and attempting to light the broken pieces on fire doesn’t seem right. In addition, there isn’t a punishment that could ever cover the manipulation into immense vulnerability and then using every piece of valuable information I shared with him to get whatever he wanted from me until there was nothing left but an empty shell and an empty bank account. [redacted] he is simply concerned about when he’ll be freed and who he can manipulate when he’s released. There is no restitution for me that will feel good enough to fix any of this. I’ve already lost so much I won’t ever get back. I want him to serve the maximum sentence solely because it will be a significant chunk of time in which he will be unable to do this to another woman.
Respectfully,
Rhegan