In a darkened room in Nelsonville, Ohio, a 43-year-old woman listens to Joel Austin's CD "Becoming a better you" - "Maybe you weren't the person who made the bad choices. But somebody else's foolish decisions caused you to experience wrenching heartache and pain..."
Tami is not the typical single mom of four children. She and her children- Aaron, 21, Andrew, 14, Joel, 12, and Jacob, 8, lived with Bruce for almost 9 years in Nelsonville, Ohio. "My children especially the oldest ones- Aaron and Andrew are dealing with the fact that I lived with a man who hurt us." Tami said. Tami was the second wife of Bruce. He also destroyed his first wife's life. "He would talk to me how he wanted to kill Angie. He told me ? he wants to tie her hands behind her back, put cowboy boots on her and drop her in the river," Tami remembers. Bruce's violence towards both women was like a bad dream, which never ends.
An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year. 25,928 domestic violence victims in Ohio in 2006 were wives or live-in partners of their offenders.