With October comes thoughts of fall, Halloween and midterms. Domestic violence likely isn’t foremost on your mind, even though October is dedicated to its awareness.

You might think: How does this apply to me, I don’t know anyone that’s been abused? But the fact is, domestic abuse likely has affected many people on this very campus.

Edie Huss, director of campus safety and security, recalls a special memory of her younger sister, Carol.

“Carol was the youngest girl of the six of us, and she is the only one of us that looked like my mom,” Huss said. “She had long red hair and green eyes, so when we were younger we three older sisters would put her hair up in pigtails and tie shoestrings around them for bows. We then put our oversized Raggedy Ann doll’s clothes on her and would carry her around like our doll. She was the cutest!”

Unfortunately, for the past five years, Huss and her siblings have been haunted by those memories. In May 2004, Carol became yet another casualty to domestic violence, but this time it resulted in death.

Carol’s husband murdered her and tried to make it look like a suicide. She was an accomplished woman, graduating magna cum laude from college and was in the process of completing her master’s degree. With her gentle nature and a bright future to look forward to, Carol was going places. That is until her husband decided to take it from her.

After being arrested and posting bail, her husband toke the easy way out and committed suicide, Huss said.
With both of them gone, they left behind four young children Catie, who was 2 months old at the time; Emily (18 months), Jackson (2 years) and Robert (5 years). What Carol’s husband didn’t think of that day was what his children would have to go through in the next years. They were left with feelings of confusion, Huss said, “The one who had the hardest time, I think, was Emily … My sister just doted on her. Suddenly she was no longer there. Emily really acted out. She couldn’t verbalize what she was feeling, but it was apparent she felt the loss. She used to crawl up on my lap and just snuggle there and pull on my ear to comfort herself. She did that for quite a while.”

In Carol’s case, there were no signs of physical abuse until that tragic day, Huss said. However, her family did notice that he mentally abused her. Sometimes the mental abuse does far more damage than physical abuse.

Some signs of being in a abusive relationship include feeling as if you never do anything right, believing that you deserve to be hurt and feeling that you’re helpless.