Domestic abuse survivor channels past pain into helping others

Editor’s note: The Western News published an article on Jan. 31 titled “Lincoln county domestic violence in numbers.” Susan Berry, a survivor of domestic violence, came forward to The Western News this week wanting to tell her story of abuse and a 15-week class called “Her Journey” she’s bringing to Libby and Troy to help others in abusive relationships.

“I think domestic violence is a problem and it’s one of those problems that’s secret. A lot of times, victims don’t know how to deal with that because people don’t know how to listen to them. My story is a little different...”

Susan Berry was raised on a farm near Libby alongside her seven siblings.

She said her mother’s abuse was mostly aimed at her.

“I’m lucky to be alive, because there were several times where she tried to kill me,” Berry said.

Berry was the oldest daughter in the family, and said, excluding her mother, she came from a loving home. Her siblings and father were all good to her.

Most people didn’t know her mother was an abuser and the rest of Berry’s family, including her father, didn’t know the extent of her abuse.

“She was very knowledgeable, very talented and she had a dark side,” she said.

It started when she was young. When she was two-years old, her mother burned her hand. Berry went to show a relative her burn, when her mother grabbed her arm, slapped her on the burn and shamed her for looking for sympathy.

“My mother always had this attitude towards me. When you come out from underneath [abuse], you’re in survival mode and you don’t even realize it. You start thinking, ‘If I’m a perfect child, maybe I can stop the abuse, maybe my mother will love me.’”

An adult to a child is big and all-powerful, Berry said, so she learned survival techniques — namely to not fight back.

One day when all of her siblings were outside working, and her dad was at work, Berry recalled her mom grabbed her by her hair and pulled her down to the floor.

“She started kicking me all over, my head, my neck, my back, and as she was kicking me she said ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you,’” Berry said. “Then she said, ‘I love you because you’re my daughter but I hate you.’”

It was a young age when Berry realized her situation wasn’t normal.

She starting making plans to run away when she was 11 years old.

Unlike many children who make plans to run away — Berry was serious and made a long-term plan. Knowing she was too young to be out on the streets, she decided to wait until she was 14.

It wasn’t until she was 15 when she left to stay with her aunt.

That’s when her mom got sick and Berry returned home.

Shortly after, Berry would leave again, but that time, it wasn’t her choice.

One day, her dad was in the other room and her mother grabbed her and pulled her outside the house.

Since Berry had learned not to fight back, she stood there as her mother grabbed a wooden board with two nails sticking out and swung it at her head.

“Out of nowhere, my dad came between me and that board,” Berry recalled.

After that, her mom and dad started arguing.

That’s when her mom kicked them both out.

Berry and her dad walked three miles to town and moved in with his mother.

A week later, her mom came for her dad, but said “Susan can never come home again.”

“That was good, because I was starting to have real serious nightmares that my mother would kill me,” Berry recalled. “That saved my life.”

She said after that, her mom changed to some degree, although she never completely changed her mentality towards Berry.

She recalls never receiving any compassion from her mother.

“When you never get that from a parent, that’s hard.”

When she was 37 years old, her mother came at her with a knife. Her father was there and stopped her.

Her father, she said, always gave her a balance of having at least one great parent.

“I told him of the past abuse, and he was shocked because he didn’t even know.”

Up until the day before her mother died, she received abuse from her.

“It’s funny, she loved her grandkids and she loved her kids,” Berry said. “That’s typical with a lot of abusers — when they’re good they can be good people.”

Berry tried over the years so she wouldn’t repeat the cycle of abuse and fall in relationships with other abusers.

However, the cycle continued with some of her relationships.

“I would pick men who weren’t responsible in relationships,” Berry said. “Once you come out of abuse, you don’t realize that you’re primed to go back into other abusive relationships. You get attracted to it, thinking ‘this is going to be a different person’ only to find out it’s another abuser who’s nice and sweet and turns out to be another person.”

Her boyfriends, she said, were educated and had steady jobs — some of them were wealthy.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor,” she said. “An abuser has a different mentality, they live in a different reality. You can’t reason with them.”

The first boyfriend who wasn’t “responsible” left her when she got pregnant at the age of 20. Another, realized she was about to leave him and, while driving with her, started silently swerving the car towards a lake.

Berry is in her 60s now and both of her parents have passed away.

Breaking the cycle of her abuse, Berry is now making plans to help others break their own abusive cycle.

Berry is starting the first Abuse Recovery Ministry and Services, ARMS, chapter in Montana.

Under the nonprofit, she is starting a program called “Her Journey”, a 15-week class designed to meet weekly and assist women in healing from current or past abusive or controlling relationships. Classes are free to attendees (paid for by donations) and attendees may begin at any time and continue as often as needed.

According to their website, ARMS is an international, faith-based, non-profit organization that exists to serve those who have or are experiencing domestic abuse.

In her research and personal experience with domestic abuse, Berry listed characteristics that her abusers shared:

• They were charismatic and most people like them.

• They were confident.

• They were controlling, which is sometimes difficult to detect.

• Her abusers were known to hurt pets.

• They had an explosive and irrational temper.

• They often wanted to control money even if they weren’t responsible with their own.

• Few people held them accountable.