Why She Didn't Leave

«I know this is incredibly difficult for anybody to understand)), Burnham says. People always ask: «Why didn't they get out?' My explanation to myself is that I was madly in love. I continually made up excuses for him».

Kate's reaction to Stephen's violence is all too typical, say ex­perts. A battered woman is still a woman in love who believes she can trust her husband. The abuse may have started with snide criti­cism over her clothes. He may then yell about her cooking. And she thinks that maybe she can look better, maybe she should try to im­prove the menus. Next he slaps her over something else. He's contrite and she's forgiving. The violence escalates, and each time she blames herself for his rage. He only wants her to be perfect. If only she could be a better wife, this wouldn't be happening.

Kate drew the line after Stephen attacked her when she was pregnant with their first child. (Studies show that at least 25 percent of battered women are beaten when pregnant.) But she stayed away for only three days. He came to her on his knees, weeping. It would never, never happen again, he told her.

When the baby's head was crushed during labor, her husband decided to quit his job and help care for the sickly girl at home. In any other family that would have seemed heroic. But when Stephen found he could not make Beth well, he twisted his frustration into sadistic violence against Kate. Her eyes redden as she points to the spiral staircase in the kitchen. «I had a wineglass in my hand, and I remember being pitched down the stairs», she says in a whisper. She was so debased by that point that she thought she'd done some­thing to deserve it. When she regained consciousness, she managed to drive herself to the hospital. She told the doctor that she'd been drinking and tripped on her robe. He duly recorded her injuries, and her flimsy story, without telling her he'd found a footprint from the kick that had sent her sprawling.

Two weeks later she left Stephen for a second time. But she had no money and no emotional support, and she had left her sick daugh­ter behind. She went back and tried to put the best face on things. When her son, Robert, was born, she struggled to give him a happy home - but Beth's death (from complications of her brain damage) escalated Stephen's anger.

Later when Stephen threw Kate up against the refrigerator and announced he was going to kill her, she knew she had had enough. Her then-eight-year-old son's pleas to his father to leave seemed to work. When Stephen disappeared, Kate dialed for help. When he reentered the house, police hauled him off to jail in handcuffs. De­spite being convicted for assault and threats to commit murder, Ste­phen was sentenced to only one year of probation, issued a restrain­ing order and required to attend a banerers' treatment program.