Cover Story
by Mike Richeson
"Secrecy was like a disease," she said. "I would do anything to hide the abuse and my bruises."
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Domestic violence ends with a shooting, long jail sentence
Diana Smith is incarcerated at a women's prison in Wilsonville, Ore.
She has six years left on her sentence. -Mike Richeson, photo
Twenty-six years of violence was about to end. Diana M. Smith snapped out of sleep as her husband, intoxicated as usual, barged into the bedroom to continue the fight they had started earlier that day.
Mrs. Smith had tucked a pistol under her pillow before trying to sleep because she feared for her life. Her fears were real. As her 6-foot-3-inch, 230-pound husband rushed to attack her, she pulled out the pistol and fired. The fight--and years of abuse--was over.
Mrs. Smith, 48, has spent the last four years in prison for the shooting death of her husband. Instead of going to trial for the murder, she worked out a plea bargain with the district attorney's office. The judge sentenced her to 10 years for manslaughter and an additional five years for unlawful use of a firearm. The court will waive the five-year sentence for good behavior. She is incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, Ore.
Mrs. Smith, who had never had so much as a speeding ticket, didn't plead self-defense because if she did, the attorneys were going to make her grown daughters testify in court. "I refused to put them through that," Mrs. Smith said through her sobs. "They had been through enough. Besides, what the law does to me doesn't matter. It's better here in jail than I had it out there."
She also wasn't sure if she could prove her case. No one knew about the abuse besides her daughters. She had never filed a prior police report and because she didn't have close friends, she had never told anyone about the violence.
"Secrecy was like a disease," she said. "I would do anything to hide the abuse and my bruises."
Dr. Larry Day, a professional counselor with Tigard Family Counseling, said a desire for secrecy is a common factor among abused women. "A lot of abused women try to nurture the man," he said. "They have this eternal optimism that if they love him enough, he'll change. There is also a lot of shame and fear."
Mrs. Smith married at age 17, a decision she said she made to get out of her parent's home, which also was an abusive environment.
Mrs. Smith and her husband lived in Dorena, Ore., a southern Oregon community Smith said is rampant with abuse. "Abuse was just normal there," she said. "Most people drank and did drugs. They were good ol' boys who drank at the bars and slapped their wives around."
By the age of 21, she was trapped in an abusive marriage with two little girls to care for. Her husband drank heavily and also did drugs. Because of his size, he was uncontrollable.
"He liked to pick me up by the throat and choke me," Smith said. "I couldn't leave because he threatened to hunt me and the kids and kill us."
So she stayed.
He had cut her off from her family and didn't allow her to have any friends outside his own gang. Her sisters quit calling her because she could never talk on the phone. Looking back, Mrs. Smith said she can see the many warning signs that should have alerted her to Mr. Smith's abusive nature: verbal assaults, isolation, extreme jealousy and compulsive lies. He also liked to torture animals.
Dr. Day commented that most women would see such obvious problems in a man, but because Mrs. Smith grew up in an abusive home, that type of person was normal for her. "For her to pick a healthy man would be like picking a Martian," Dr. Day said. "All her coping skills were designed around that lifestyle."
Although Mrs. Smith saw the warning signs, she still married him. "It was too easy to explain away the warning signs," she said. "It's too easy to get up the next day and think it will be different."
Dr. Day said that women must talk to someone if they are victims of abuse. "Women have options, but as they are isolated and don't talk to anyone, they feel their choices narrow until, as in this case, they see only one choice left."
"I wish I had believed I could leave," Mrs. Smith said. "I wish I had called a hotline or something."
While in prison, Mrs. Smith is slowly recovering from a lifetime of abuse. She takes medication that helps her with depression. She also feels a certain relief that many women in prison don't have: Her husband isn't waiting for her once she gets out.
"We just had a lady come in, and she's terrified," Mrs. Smith said. "Her husband lived. When she gets out, he'll probably try to find her.
"I don't think I could do the time OK if he was still out there. I'm not proud of what I did; a man died. But I know he's not out hunting my daughters."
When Smith went to prison, she gave her daughters everything she owned: a sizeable retirement plan, two new vehicles and her house. Her oldest daughter used the money to go to nursing school, and both daughters have been able to get therapy with the funds.
Daily life in prison can drag on, so Mrs. Smith fills her time as best she can. She is allowed to do crafts, and she recently started to work at the Department of Motor Vehicles for a few hours each day. She has also begun some Bible studies.
"I was a total non-believer before this," she said. "I saw too many people get drunk, do drugs, slap their wives around and then go to church on Sunday. I wanted nothing to do with that."
Shortly after her arrest, she was walking down the prison hallway, thinking how alone she was, when she heard a voice say, "I'm with you; you are never alone."
"There was no one else with me in that hall," she said. "After that, there has just been a peace. I'm growing in my faith every day."
Mrs. Smith said she has made no plans for her life after prison. She is just trying to take each day by itself. She still has a hard time remembering much of the shooting. Her doctors have told her this is a common defense mechanism to deal with the trauma.
"If this can happen to me, it can happen to anybody," she said. "I was a mother; I helped my kids at school.
"I still wonder how this all happened, but there is a reason for it. It's all in God's hands."
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