Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: This is where my story begins, September 30, 1997 at 652 Bush in Saint Paul. I remember being inside this house. I remember my father standing right here on this porch, almost exactly where I'm standing, banging on the door. He just wanted to talk. She didn't want to listen to him. But I feel like she also didn't listen to us because we told her don't go outside, mom. Please don't go outside, mom.

SPEAKER 2: I should've listened. But I figured it's going to be all right. The neighbors are all outside, and I just thought we were going to be safe. We wouldn't.

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: His eyes were red. He was not him. He was someone else. There was no love in that man.

SPEAKER 2: So we sit out there. We talked and I told him that we couldn't get back together, and I think that's what made him mad because when I got up and turned my back to come in the house, that's when he stabbed me, and y'all was screaming at hollering.

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: I remember standing beside my sister inside. The youngest of my brothers was a few feet ahead of me, and then the second oldest of my siblings, he was trying to get through the screen door.

SPEAKER 3: It just looked like he was hitting her, and then I seen the streetlight glisten off the blades, and I'm standing in the doorway, and I was going to run around-- run through the back door and come around front. But I didn't want to do that, and then miss something, and it'll be the last time I seen my mom alive.

SPEAKER 2: I remember feeling the knife going to my neck. I remember giving up. But the picture of y'all, you, Jermaine, Vicki, and Roscoe I remember that I saw your face. I kept seeing your face and I couldn't give up because I kept saying who's going to take care of y'all if I give up.

SPEAKER 3: My mom's laying on a porch bleeding to death, and we lived a half a block away from the police station, and it's like she's trying to talk to 911, and they asking her questions. I left my little sisters and my brother with the neighbor, and I told the police officers that if you don't catch him before I do, I'm killing [BLEEP]. Well, I was walking around Saint Paul for three days with a brick in my hand, and I was on my way back to his house, and my aunt called me and told me the police just picked him up at his house.

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: My dad spent 11 years in prison for trying to kill my mom. We had no contact with him. Meanwhile, our family's life was a blur of moving to different states. My mom was too paranoid to live in any one place. My siblings and I never talked about that night we almost lost our mom. It wasn't until I turned 18 that I dared to look back at what happened and think about how it affected me. Reading the police and court reports about that night in 1997, my sister and brothers and I are like background figures.

Squad 332 Officer McPeak was leaving East Team. I was approached by a hysterical young Black male later identified as Miller Jermaine Johnson. I then arrived on scene. There were several people on the porch. Children were standing near her crying hysterically. I asked that the children be taken away from the scene. I kneeled down. I asked my mom how she remembers us.

SPEAKER 2: Nobody really never asked me how the kids doing, and I think about that all the time, how did that affect y'all? Because when y'all was little and when it happened, I was trying to get y'all to go to therapy to talk to someone. When none of y'all go, everybody was so angry. But nobody never actually told me how they felt about anything.

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: She's right. Until this interview, I hadn't talked to her about it. I avoided those emotions and thought this was in the past. Jeffery Edleson says this isn't unusual at all. Edelson is an expert on how domestic violence affects kids. He directs the Minnesota Center Against Violence and Abuse at the University of Minnesota. He says it's a relatively new phenomenon to look at the long-term effects on kids.

JEFFERY EDLESON: It's only 25 to 30 years ago that we started to even mention the kids. It's only in the last 10 to 15 years that a lot of attention has been given to kids. So I think we're just at a starting point of responding to kids exposed to domestic violence.

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: Edelson says kids who grew up with parents physically fighting each other are two to three times more likely to use violence in their own relationships or become victims. That was certainly true in my case. As a kid, I got into a lot of fights. I was a bully. I remember this kid David. All I remember is my first punch. Then I blacked out. That scared me. I'm just like my dad, I thought. I made a decision right then at 12 years old to stop fighting, and I haven't since. It doesn't seem like my siblings have done the same. My mom has also noticed that.

SPEAKER 3: I guess the boys do got a lot of anger in them, and it upsets me that they do the things that they saw done to me. It really bothers me.

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: It really bothers me too. I don't want my nieces and nephews to see things I've seen or to think violence is how you solve problems. Edleson says, everybody has the ability to change. The will to change will come and go depending on pressures from outside.

JEFFERY EDLESON: It's learned, and it can be unlearned, and new ways can be learned. And that's the one thing that I'm really optimistic about.

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: Edleson says education and treatment can help offenders end their violent behavior, and the entire community needs to give clear and consistent messages that violence is not OK.

JEFFERY EDLESON: I've seen lots of people in the work that I did with men who batter. A lot of men change and make big changes in their lives.

VALENCIA MCMURRAY: My dad walked back into my life on my 18th birthday. The courts had prevented him from contacting me until then. He called me up from his home in Wisconsin, and it was clear. The only thing that had changed was time. I was really mad because I couldn't understand how we thought we could start talking like nothing happened, and like it wasn't a big deal.

He didn't seem to think about how that one night had affected my whole life up to this point, and it's continually affecting the way I see men. His reply, "Well, that's the way I was raised. I was raised in violence." This made me angrier because if you understand how badly something has ripped holes in your heart and your life, why would you put that same burden on those you claim to love? Wouldn't you want to stop that cycle and keep your kids from that? I told him I lost him. I almost lost my mom. And if I could give up violence, he could too. I'm still waiting. For Minnesota Public Radio's Youth Radio Series. I'm Valencia McMurray.