A Vet's Ex-Spouse's Search for Safety

Hello, a few people on here already know me but I’d like to introduce myself to those who don’t. My name is Theresa Lee Clark-Carraher. I am the daughter of Ervin L. Clark U.S. Army Ret. one of the designers and builders of the Star Wars Program, daughter in law of Dennis Evan Carraher Sr. Head of Psychology for the Veterans Administration lic #001 (until his death a couple of years ago), the second-cousin of General Wesley Clark, and Great granddaughter of the Honorable William A. Clark Senator of Montana.

Unlike them I’m not an engineer, scientist, soldier, doctor, or politician I was an ordinary housewife until my husband Dennis Evan Carraher Jr. U.S. Army Ret. (a former U.S. Army Ranger) tried to kill me. I'm writing this for a couple of reasons, one of which is the fact that domestic violence is on the rise in the military and among the vets who've come back from Iraq and Afghanistan. This trend is going to continue to rise the longer these wars go on, unless we as a country decide that something has to be done to put an end to it.

"In January of this year, The New York Times reported that charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault have risen sharply at Fort Carson, Colorado.

But the fear of repercussions and the immense challenge of going against the Camouflage Code of Silence, which defines the Armed Service's refusal to acknowledge the war on military wives and women veterans, ensure that most domestic abuse is not reported.

Furthermore, the Department of Defense does not track off-post police reports or claims filed in civilian courts.
Epidemic Minimized"
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/index.php/veterans-category-articles/190-stacy-bannerman Nor do they count the retired military. Fort Carson is connected to Colorado Springs, the town that we were living in when my husband attacked me.

"The men who enlisted knew that putting on a uniform meant being willing to die for their country. But as a military wife, I can assure you that not one of us took an oath at the altar saying that we were willing to die for our country at the hands of our husbands.

There is nothing loving, honorable, or patriotic about taking a beating for your nation. I am appalled at the mentality within military culture and civilian society that seems to believe that talking about one of the most horrendous home front costs of war is somehow unpatriotic and anti-veteran.

Being pro-veteran shouldn't require complicity with or tacit consent to the increasing incidents of domestic violence, rape, and sexual assault perpetrated by veterans. If domestic violence is never acceptable, then we can't make exceptions when military wives and girlfriends are the victims." http://www.womensenews.org/story/military/090413/veteran-domestic-violence-remains-camouflaged This also goes for the wives, fiances, girlfriends, ex-wives, ex-fiances and ex-girlfriends of vets!

Sometimes I think the only way to shame the military and the VA into helping the wives and children of abusive Vets is to start our own National Cemetary for those wives and children these Vets have murdered! We also need a day of rememberance for these murdered wives and children. We need to have a roll call with the name of every wife, fiance', girlfriend, ex-wife, ex- fiance, ex-girlfriend and child that has been killed by a Vet! Get this straight! I am not anti-military, the military is my families life/way of life, what I am is a survivor of an attack by a maniac who is former military.

My ex husband Dennis Evan Carraher Jr. was diagnosed with Bipolar personality disorder, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as an adult,while in the military, these are part of the reason he was given a medical discharge, he was also diagnosed with a mild form of autism and dyslexia when a child. He and his brother were the school bullies growing up and they were repeatedly removed from one school after another. Amongst the siblings in his family they each reported that the others were diagnosed with border line personality disorder, but not they themselves (of course). After talking to his father and birth mother I have been told that his father was highly abusive to his birth mother and successively to his second wife. After his fathers death I discovered that his paternal Grandfather was the Grand Dragon of the K.K.K. when a fight broke out between his Uncle Prof.Charles Carraher and his brother David Carraher over who would receive his Grandfathers Granddragon Robes (that one at least explained to me why his step-mother Barbera Carraher snubbed me more than once in public, and why all of his grandchildren except my two sons received an inheritance when Dennis Sr died)..

If I had known all of this before hand I would never have married him much less gotten involved with him knowing that he was also a retired U.S. Army Ranger, a man trained to kill anyone whom he perceives to be an enemy.

He hid the fact that he was bi-polar from me by receiving his medications through the mail from the Veterans Administration Hospital. I found out one day about a year after we were married, when I checked the mail on my way into the house from work (I was a counselor in dual diagnosis). I confronted him about the meds and told him that I knew what types of diagnosis they were for before he finally admitted that they were for Bi-polar disorder. Slowly over a few years time the other disorders were disclosed

Two years after we married he moved us to the lower 48, from Alaska, removing me from my family, my friends, and my social life. We eventually moved to a city where his adoptive family lived and basically controlled everything’ after I left him and found my way back home my grown children, and other family members, told me that when we first moved out of the state of Alaska whenever they called he would answer the phone and tell them that I was at work, or that I didn’t want to talk to them. In other words he completely isolated me from everyone I knew.

"There is a strong relationship between Combat PTSD and physical or emotional spousal abuse. A 1995 study found that 63% of Veterans seeking help for PTSD had been aggressive towards their partners at some point in the last year. A later study of Vietnam veterans with PTSD found that 42% had been physically abusive toward their spouse, 92% had been verbally abusive, and 100% had used "psychological aggression." While there is no excuse for such abuse, it's obviously happening - and sticking our head in the sand and ignoring it isn't going to help. Instead, I think we should look harder at why this phenomenon occurs.

In a combat zone there is no "in between," no "gray area," no "slightly pissed off," or slightly in danger. Any circumstance that is the least bit threatening is considered a matter a life and death (and rightfully so). In Iraq or Afghanistan, your Veteran couldn't take the chance of responding to any threat without full "I'm going to kill you" rage.

Now - fast forward a few months (or years) and that same Vet still has a deep, subconscious reaction to threats - even on the home-front. His (or her) idea of a "threat" is very different than it used to be. His fuse is MUCH shorter. And, his version of fighting (or "discussing") any marital issue is now very, very dirty. He's not going to use kid gloves - in a combat zone, kid gloves would have gotten him killed'" http://familyofavet.com/PTSD_domestic_violence.html

You know what? This is called lack of self control! Spoil your kids while they're growing up give them everything you possibly can, make excuses for thier bad behavior or pretend they're perfect little angels. After they're grown you don't/won't have to put up with them only thier wives/husbands will. I know plenty of soldiers that have come back from war that have never laid a finger on thier wives or kids.

Being a good soldiers wife, a few months after we moved to the states and about a year before I left him, I asked him if I could go with him to his psychologist’s appointment at the Veterans Administration Hospital, in Fort Smith, Arkansas, because our marriage was becoming a suffocating atmosphere for me, and I wanted help for the both of us, in order to ensure that our marriage stayed intact.

His Psychologist was absolutely no help what so ever, everything that I thought was important and brought up as a subject was dismissed. I was treated as though I were a spoiled child who expected the world to be a perfect little place full of sunshine and happiness. During the session the Psychologist admitted to having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder himself and implied that it is only slobs that can’t keep up that find such a disorder as annoying or a fault. I felt like the whales heart that Raven married. Needless to say as our marriage progressed we became more, and more, distant we eventually lived in separate homes, and led separate lives, only coming together on agreements for the children’s education and necessities such as school supplies and clothing.

On December 2, 2003 he was supposed to come over for dinner, and a discussion, about the children’s schooling, and what we were going to give them for Christmas. He came in the kitchen door saw his plate on the kitchen counter swiped at it and it flew across the room. He attacked and I fended him off. At one point I managed to get away from him and I dove out the laundryroom door and started to run down the alley before i got a couple houses down I heard him holler my name, I turned around and looked he had my daughter by the throat with his left hand and by her pony tail with his right hand hand, her head was yanked back as far as he could pull it. He screamed "Get back here or I'll kill the little bitch." I went running back to the house. My daughter had been upstairs sleeping in her bed, apparently when I ran out of the house he ran upstairs yanked her out of bed by her ponytail, and dragged her bodily down the stairs.

The fight went on all through the night with him repeatedly saying things like “Til death do us part.” and “Why don’t you just die?” “Why do you keep fighting back?” “It would be easier if you just stopped fighting and die.” I had an old victorian house the kind with the oak book cases all the way to the ceiling and he kept slamming my back into one of the book cases. My back hit the shelves so much that it knocked a chunk off of one of them, 4 feet long by one inch thick, by two inches wide. He was angry that I wasn't making a sound, no screams, no hollering, no talking just fighting back, protecting myself. It was another of Dad's trainings don't make a sound in battle psychologically it will freak the enemy out. During the whole fight all those old Eskimo stories kept popping in my brain, I kept thinking to myself, Never Marry a Dog Faced Man and The Two Women Who Lived in a Whale Carcass. Sometime during the fight the boys woke up, probably because of all the hollering Dennis was doing, he was like a mad man, and they peeked through the stair railing and saw what was happening the youngest being only four years old peed his pants. Dennis eventually tired and went upstairs to my room and lay down. Mumbling under his breath in a growling tone of voice.

When the boys saw him coming they snuck back in thier room and lay down pretending to sleep. My daughter ran and got her little brothers, and I went in the laundry room, I got dirty clothes for them to put on. We got dressed as best as we were able and ran out of the house. The whole time we were fighting I don’t think I said a word except “You f***ing idiot!” He had forgotten that I'd trained with my Dad and his men. My self defense mechanism was also on automatic. The good thing about martial arts training is that your body never forgets. I condensed this incident because it was long and tedious to recount, as I have had to so many times, at each and every police station, every where I’ve lived since the event.

We ran that night the weather was against us it was the first snow storm of the season. We ran from three blocks at one end of the lake to a couple of blocks on the side of the lake, about a half a mile, or so, to my husbands adopted brother's house. We didn't have any mittens/gloves or hats on we were all wearing dirty tennis shoes instead of boots and hoodies. We were half frozen by the time we got there. We stopped running a couple of houses away to give ourselves a chance to catch our breaths. Just as we got to the end of his "brother's" walk-way his brother, his brother's girlfriend, and his brother's children came out of the house, they were on thier way to the midnight matinee. He asked me what was going on and I said "Nothing, can I borrow your phone?" (I didn't know who I could trust and part of Dad's training was "If you're in deep shit in a strange country just fall in with the crowd and act like you belong.") He said "Yeah, sure, just lock up when you're done." I finally got ahold of his other "brother" by phone and he came and picked us up, he dropped the kids and I off at thier sister's house where we spent the next couple of days while she tried to find a shelter for us. I was edgy and rarely slept, I felt sick and anxious even though they tried to make us feel comfortable while we were in thier home. The court finally gave me permission to go home and Dennis was ordered to stay away from it. The problem was the house really belonged to his "brother's" ex mother in law, they managed to wrangle me out of it by getting her to sign it over to the family corporation and then evicted me from my own home.

During one of the court procedings Dennis admitted that he hadn't been taking his medications even though he'd been receiving them in the mail as usual. When he was asked why the medications disappeared from the bottles and what he was doing with them he ignored the question. The judge just looked at me with a questioning face but didn't say anything, then I knew what he'd been doing with them. That's also when I realized that I wasn't going crazy. I had an antique dressing table and I kept everything on it in the same exact place since the day I got it, but after a day of running the kids, and nieces, to school, to the rink, and back home all day, I'd go upstairs to get ready for bed and something would be moved or not on the table. At first I thought I was becoming forgetful but it happened so many times, and I knew I had placed the missing item exactly where it belonged, then similar incidences began to happen around the house. The only thing I could assume was that he had been coming into the house, when he knew I'd be out, and move things around. You can probably guess what I think he was doing with the pills, I am a coffee addict and keep a strong pot of coffee going all day, when I'm out running around here, there, and everywhere, I just stop by the house every once in awhile and refill my to-go cup. I usually drink two pots of coffee each and every day.The judge then ordered him to see a psychologist and go back on his medications as a condition to seeing his sons.

By December the 10th of 2003 we received the first Temporary Order of Protection (it was the date of our seventh wedding anniversary) because of this beating, and attempted murder, my children and I received a Permanent Order of Protection in February of 2004 in Colorado Springs, the staff at the women's domestic violence shelter were amazed at how quickly I was getting my court case through but it still wasn't fast enough for me, and he still tried to kill us a couple more times that I know of, he even broke into my lawyers office and terrorized the staff there. He broke into the car that the court ordered him to let me use, loosened all the lug nuts on the tires, bashed out the steering column and yanked the wires. When the boys asked him about it at one of the C.A.S.A. supervised visitations he had with them he told them it was a joke he was playing on me. The Domestic Violence shelter finally let us move in there, before that we had been staying at the Red Cross homeless shelter, as the Domestic Violence shelter claimed that they had no room for us. When they finally let us stay at the domestic violence shelter they put us in the attic. I filed a complaint with the police and asked them to fingerprint the car they told me that they wouldn't because it was a nuisence crime, even though it was on record that Dennis had tried to kill me. With the child support checks that he was ordered to give me I had all the fluids drained from the car everything flushed and refilled. (Only God knows if he poured anything into any of the fluids during his little "joke.") I also slowly got as much of the repair work done on the car done as I could, whenever I could afford it.

The whole time we were in the Colorado Springs shelters we were in and out of court, finally the fight was a court battle, instead of him physically attacking me. Some of the things that greatly upset the kids though were the facts that although I still had them in a Private Charter School they no longer had the wardrobe to keep up with thier peers, they didn't tell anyone that we'd been moved from shelter to shelter and when we finally stayed in the domestic violence shelter every other woman that came in would see me and say "But, you're the rink lady." The only thing I could say to them was "If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone." The kids couldn't understand that although we had a place to live and they were still in "thier" school they couldn't spend money (I had very little) and my daughter could no longer go to the midnight matinees with her cousins. We quit going to the rink and that just about killed my daughter emotionally. I was still of the upper middle class mindset and when the staff told me my children couldn't wear thier roller blades and skates in the house the only words out of my mouth were ''Well how do you expect me to raise champions?'' My daughter was waiting for the Olympic speed skating try-outs

One of the times that I was to drop the boys off to meet with thier father he handed me an envelope with a pile of papers in it one set of these papers was the quitclaim deed for the Knight House, a house we had bought in Vinita. Oklahoma, the problem with that is that house was not his to give me he had already signed that piece of property over to a lawyer in Miami, Oklahoma.

One day when I picked the boys up from the courthouse where the supervised visitations took place one of them told me what Dennis said about the car being trashed. Later on the way home the boys unbuckled and were getting a little rowdy in the back seat of the car. I told them to sit down and buckle up or I’d stop the car and buckle them in myself. The oldest told me “We don’t have to listen to you.” So, I pulled the car off to the side of the road and buckled them back in, telling them that I am their mother and they do have to listen to me. My son said “Not for much longer, you aren’t. We're getting a new Mom." unbeknownst to me Dennis was seeing a woman named Rosemarie Walsh whom he later married. During this time period a man in Colorado Springs killed his wife and only spent one week in the city jail as payment for this crime. The staff at the shelter were in shock.

A few days later one of Dennis’s “friends” a retired Gunnery Sgt. was caught by the security cameras and videotaped walking around the outside of the "secret" domestic violence shelter in Colorado Springs counting all the windows and doors, the women working at the shelter smuggled me out of the state of Colorado, fearing that harm would come to thier staff and other clients in their shelter. (Isn't that just great? One vet helping another abuse ones wife!)One of the shelter staff got some hair bleach for me and I bleached my hair red as I knew Dennis's friends and family would be on the look out for a darkhaired woman with three red headed kids. My daughter blamed me for missing the Olympic speed skating trials and has never forgiven me for it. Going over Wolf Pass the car overheated and we had to pull off to the side over looking the edge of the mountain until the car could cool off. I was terrified that one of the big rigs was going to hit us, or we were going to cause some kind of accident. Every time a big rig passed by the whole car shook and shimmied, but there was nothing I could do.

We got to New Mexico and were traveling to Gallup when the right rear tire blew I pulled off the road and there was no jack handle for the jack so I couldn’t change the tire, A gentleman and his female companion stopped and helped me change the tire they also gave me $20.00, to help me pay for a new tire, or feed the kids. I believe in angels!

The spare tire didn’t last long, the next day it blew too. A Navajo Tribal Cop named Patrick stopped behind me and came over to the right side of the car and started speaking to me in Navajo but really fast and I couldn’t quite understand him. I told him in English that I was from Alaska and I could understand him but he needed to slow down because he spoke a different dialect of Athabascan. He started speaking to me in English and I told him what was going on, he called a towing service and had the car towed to the nearest tire shop, he used his A.A.A. card so we could get a discount there and at the hotel room that I had to rent because the car wouldn’t be done until the next day. Patrick fed the kids McDonalds meals and gave me a handful of M.R.E.s for us to have for breakfast the next day. Then he dropped us off at the hotel showing me that the tire shop was just a couple of doors down from the hotel.

The kids were happy to watch cartoons on tv and that's how they fell asleep. I woke them the next morning at dawn so we could all take turns showering, But first I had them all line up in front of the door to the balcony and I dramatically opened the curtains then we watched the sunrise over the beginning of the Grand Canyon, it was a magnificent way to start the day, and it gave the kids hope that everything would be getting better soon.By the time we were on the road again I was flat broke.

We arrived at the woman’s domestic violence shelter in Gallup, New Mexico and they asked my daughter and I if we’d seen a doctor yet (meaning since the fight with Dennis) of course we hadn’t, there is no Indian hospital in Colorado, and the only Indian Clinic in Colorado is a mental health clinic. The staff at the domestic violence shelter were angry, they told me that the domestic violence shelter in Colorado Springs should have told me that seeing a doctor was free in cases of domestic violence. They gave us directions to the Indian Hospital and we went. When the doctor came in to do the examinations he looked at me with disdain, as though I were a worm, someone really needs to teach these doctors and police officers how to act and react around abused women. When another man uses the same looks, actions, words we go on the defense automatically. I didn't need him to make me feel like a piece of shit by a look that I'd already seen on my husbands face. It turned out that my daughter and I both had severely damaged back muscles and Dennis had knocked most of my teeth out, my face was pretty much healed but the acanthic folds over my eyes had collapsed and now sag over my eyelids, the doctor put us on muscle relaxants and pain killers.

This was a shelter run by native women, for native women, and one of the first things they asked me was if I had family I wanted to contact. So I sat there wondering if I should call anyone. I decided I couldn't because one of my Dad's cousins living in Leavenworth, Kansas is Dennis's Godfather. Dennis's parents met him when his Dad was the Prison Psychologist at Leavenworth, and if anyone found out where I was at then he would find out.too. There's family, and then there's Family, and then there's your Army family. Besides I'd reasoned - no one ever wrote to me or called me anyway, so they must not care. I didn't know he had blocked thier communications when we were first married and by the time all this happened my grown children thought he had already killed me and didn't want them to know. The staff also asked me if I wanted a sweat lodge, or a hand trembler. Although I really wanted to see a healer we were on our way again before anyone could arrange them. We were only there in Gallup long enough to get enough money put together to get to Arizona as we were heading to Payson and the women’s domestic violence shelter there. This wild drive was just the beginning. I drove everyday until I was exhausted then I would find a place to hide the car and we would sleep in it. I let the kids lay down but I stayed sitting even while I slept. to this day I have severe problems with my legs and feet especially because i was born with bilateral club feet and as a result I have childhood arthritis in my feet and legs. Never laying down and very little standing up or walking around while we were traveling didn't help.

I got lost driving to Payson and we ended up in Phoenix, Arizona. We stopped at a gas station and I asked the Securitas security guard I saw there if she knew where the women's shelter was she gave me directions to a Red Cross, or Salvation Army, halfway house. I drove there and spoke to the security guard at the gate house. He let me borrow his phone and phone book. I found the number for the local women's shelter and they said they'd take us in. The woman on the phone gave me directions on how to get to thier "house."

I followed the directions and couldn't find a house there was something that looked like a ware house and a little house with a group of men sitting on the porch. I drove up and down that street a couple of times finally stopping at the house with the men on the porch but when i stepped out of the car to go talk to them they started hooting, and hollering, at m,e in spanish. I just stopped put my hands on my hips and told them to knock it the hell off and demanded to know where the shelter was. They tried to act like they couldn't understand me - yeah right they wouldn't be able to keep a job in the United States if they didn't speak at least a modicum of english. Then they tried to act like they didn't know what I was talking about. I called them on thier b.s. telling them that this was thier neighborhood and there isn't a thing that goes on in it with out them knowing. Finally one of them walked over to me and told me how to find the shelter.

I drove the car over to what looked like a brick wall with a gate in it, the gate had a security camera. I stopped walked over to the gate and spoke into the camera they let us in. I parked the car and got the kids out we walked to the next gate and spoke into a camera there. They let us in that gate. This wasn't a house it was a fortress, in the middle of the barrio, in Phoenix. The woman on the speaker told me which building to enter when we came in. The kids and I went in and I walked over to the front desk. I told them who I was and a counselor came out and walked with me over to a table. She interviewed me for what felt like an hour it probably wasn't that long but the kids and I were exhausted and hungry. She had a check list and after every question she marked it. It was some kind of scoring system when she was done with the interview she added up the score looked at me and said that I had been in the most dangerous situation that she ever heard of and lived, let alone escaped with my kids. They assigned a room to me and walked us over to it.

I’ll write more of the story later I need a break from it, as even remembering, and retelling it stresses me out. Sorry it's taking so long to get this written out, but it's a part of my life that's hard for me to discuss. The next section is called The Barrio and Beyond.