The impossible, made possible

I didn’t think I could leave my husband. He’d beaten me down psychologically and had me believing I had no way to survive economically. But the day I discovered his secret offshore bank account, I knew I had to leave.

BY ANGELIQUE METROYER

My mother taught me exactly what I needed to know about men. She was a living demonstration about the type of man not to have a relationship with. It took me four decades to understand.

But 40 years later, I got it. When I confronted my husband about his secret bank account in Dominica, he denied it all. He was high and half-drunk, which probably wasn't the most advisable moment for this inquisition. I was putting myself in jeopardy, but I had reached the breaking-point. I was ready to explode. I had held this information for far too long, and I needed an answer come hell or high-water. He seemed calculated and even tempered as he denied it. But there was something suspicious about his tone, that confirmed for me that he was lying. The fact that he was doing it so cunningly, seemed to egg me on.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

But I did. I had a letter from Griffon Bank, saying that the account opened in my husband’s name was accessible by a code within the letter. It included instructions on how to make deposits and wires to other banks worldwide. Griffon Bank was listed on several offshore banking sites. Its own website announced Griffon Bank was “dedicated to the established tradition of international private banking.” (Griffon would later become Banco Transatlantico, and is listed on the Dominica government site among the revoked offshore bank licenses, as of April 14, 2018.)

I had stashed the Griffon Bank letter in my safety deposit box, along with a signed letter saying that if I were to disappear suddenly or be found dead, authorities should investigate my husband and his partner, a known Chicago mobster. I knew my husband was in business with a “made man.” He’d been dropping hints about his secret life, laughing about how everyone thought Sonny was a mafioso, like it was some big joke. But to me that was not a laughing matter. I knew what “made man” meant—Sonny had killed someone.

The mob in Chicago is known for its “cement shoes” disposals, and I now had reason to think my husband was doing business with mafia figures. The legends about bodies wearing a “Chicago overcoat” have it that Lake Michigan and Cal-Sag Channel are littered with bodies. But even that urban myth has some truth to it. In 2016, the body of a man whose feet were encased in cement up to his knees washed up on the Brooklyn shoreline. So as fantastical this seems, there have been a few documented cases. Whether it is a myth or reality that the mafia employs, it garners respect for individuals to not double cross them. Threats are reason enough not to double cross them—less you suffer the consequences. I had no idea how desperate they were.

“What happened to the money in Dominica?” I asked.

“Are you saying that I am hiding money?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Repeat that.” He strode toward me.

The determination mounted on his face as he approached me. At over six feet, his presence put me a physical disadvantage which would typically make me want to shrink back,  but for once, I stood firm.

“I know you are hiding money,” I said.

“You stupid c#@&,” he said. “I’m not hiding anything.”`

Then his hand smacked my ear, though he had aimed for my face.

And then I realized, he’d finally hit me.

I had just become a statistic. Only 34 percent of people who are injured by intimate partners receive medical care for their injuries, and intimate partner violence accounts for 15 percent of all violent crime, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence.

In reality, he had knocked some sense into me, because in that moment, I vowed to escape. I would take any means to that end. Even if it meant cleaning toilets. Now was the time to act. The next day I had my resume together. Never mind that I left the corporate world 17 years ago, I was determined to land a job. My world was falling to pieces.

‘We suffer in silence’

This man was my second marriage. Though it took 17 years for that pivotal smack to land on my ear, my first marriage had seen a lot of physical and mental abuse as well. It also included my daughter seeing her father chase me around the house to evade having my mouth washed out with soap or being hit again. As we were divorcing, he casually told me that he drove around with a rifle in his jeep so that he could kill me. Thankfully, he wasn’t too savvy in the tracking department.

What goes through a child’s mind when that happens? Many years later, I questioned my daughter, and she said she felt scared and startled. I would I imagine I witnessed my father pushing my mother around and I distinctly remember him calling her “gordita,” which means “little fat or plump one” in Spanish. She detested that. I could see the pain in her eyes every time, her defiance to hold back the tears. “We suffer in silence,” her eyes said to me, a very bad pattern to learn. But I resisted the idea of suffering in silence.

In high school the three of us, (myself, my brother and sister) urged our mother to terminate the marriage. I believed then that I would have no such hesitations, should the violence be turned on me. I was determined to get out, fighting maybe crawling if it came to that.

Yet, here I was, 40 years later, in the same situation. I had given up my power to a man. I allowed him to belittle me psychologically and believed him when he told me that I was too stupid to get a job, even though I had a degree and was a CPA. Perhaps my particular dilemma  is a first world problem, but domestic violence affects all people regardless of age, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, or nationality. Physical violence is often accompanied by emotionally abusive and controlling behavior as part of a much larger, systematic pattern of dominance and control. And as in my case, that power and control dynamic included financial abuse, by not allowing me knowledge, access or documentation of our money. Domestic violence can result in physical injury, psychological trauma, and even death. The devastating consequences of domestic violence can cross generations, as in my case, and last a lifetime.

I will tell you that whatever story you are telling yourself on why to stay is fueled by the fear of the unknown. I am living proof. I revived my career and got a job doing accounting for a Fortune 100 company after 17 years of being inactive in that field. The emotional journey is a little more difficult. One day, I had to physically leave, without telling him that I was leaving. I had been packing for almost a year and many items were already in storage. I had patiently waited for my moment, because  unfortunately there is the possibility that you will not get out alive, and if the moment arrived where I had no choice but to run because of imminent danger, I had a Plan B waiting, a safe house to which I could go and various friends prepared to help me. I was willing to leave at a moment's notice if that was the case with little but the clothes on my back. But, I can also report back, quite honestly, that every fear you’ve had of the future, every fear you have had about not making it on your own, is worse in your imagination. I am living proof  - currently, I am employed by a municipal entity and I fully support myself. And I’m purchasing my first house. It is not as nearly difficult—in fact, it is so surprisingly easy after enduring your worst nightmare. Anything is. Believe me.