The Survivors — Libby Caswell BONUS

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This episode includes a detailed discussion of domestic violence.

It can be hard to hear, but we think it's important not to gloss over the reality of what happened to Libby Caswell and what happens to countless other victims every day.

Please take care while listening.

I stayed for so many reasons.

You know, I wanted that image of what I saw for us when we got married.

I wanted my girls to have their dad around.

I wanted, you know, our family to be okay.

I just wanted us to be okay.

Domestic violence relationships have one thing in common, an imbalance of power and control.

But the behaviors used to maintain that power can take many forms.

Abuse that is physical, verbal, sexual.

Abuse can start start subtly and get worse over time.

There can be periods of calm or a constant state of threat.

It can be difficult to recognize from the outside, but also when you're in it.

Whatever form it takes, domestic violence is ubiquitous.

In their lifetimes, more than one in three women in the U.S.

will experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner.

In their lifetimes, about one in four four women will be subjected to severe physical violence by their partner, hit with a fist or something hard, beaten, slammed against something, and not all of them will survive it.

Strangulation became his go-to method at the end of our relationship.

When I finally did get out,

the only reason I left really

was because I wouldn't be here today if I had stayed.

He would have killed me.

I'm sure of it.

Libby Caswell endured years of domestic abuse, but we are unable to share her experience in her own words.

And because we think it's important to let survivors speak for themselves, we wanted to give them a voice in this bonus episode.

Our team spoke with five women who've all asked to remain anonymous.

Many of the stories may sound similar to Libby's.

Teenage love, drug use, strangulation,

but these stories are all very different from Libby's in one key way.

These women are alive to share them.

So I'm going to step aside and let you hear their stories, the details they remember, and the ones they wish they could forget.

He was controlling, but at that time I was really young and I kind of romanticized the control and the extreme jealousy.

And in addition to that, friends and family will encourage me to believe, oh my gosh, he loves you so much.

And this is why he's doing this.

You're so lucky.

He was always angry.

He would punch walls or punch trees or slam doors and punch the bed to create an environment of physical intimidation, threat.

I thought, like, he's got a temper.

He can be really mean, but it wasn't physical.

It was, you know, I guess emotional more so.

But I didn't see it as abuse at that time.

All the red flags were there.

I was just

didn't have the capacity to understand it.

When I started dating

my abusive boyfriend,

a lot of it started as emotional abuse, psychological abuse, verbal abuse.

And I told myself, if it were to ever get physical, then I would leave.

Because in my mind at the time, I thought physical violence is the worst thing that can happen to me.

The first time that he ever put his hands on me was actually right after we had our first child.

And it was my first night out as a new mom.

A year and a half into our relationship, it got physical.

And in that first instance where he was physically violent with me, I ran home to my parents and I cried and I confessed everything.

We would gone to a concert and we came out of the concert and then all of a sudden he grabbed me and threw me like on the ground in front of all of these people and all of our friends.

And at the time,

my parents didn't know a lot about the legal system in America.

They are immigrants.

Their first language isn't English.

So they asked me if I wanted to report it to the police.

And I decided not to because what's so tricky about domestic violence is that

even though my boyfriend had just been physically violent with me, I still loved him and I still wanted to protect him.

And it happened so fast and all of our friends like kind of swooped in and grabbed him and took him away.

And I remember thinking like, what the hell was that?

I did recognize that something was off about my relationship.

when he became physically violent with me.

But there was always something in my head saying,

Well,

you're just not a good enough partner.

You just need to change yourself.

You just need to make yourself a better partner.

Then the violence will stop.

And I was pissed, if I'm going to be honest, I was really, really angry.

And I was one of those like fiercely independent women, like, no man's ever going to put his hands on me.

And then that situation came to me directly.

And so it was, okay, what are you going to do do now?

Whenever I got upset, it was always to go up to my face.

and grab it by the neck.

The first time I experienced strangulation in relationship was on my 30th birthday.

It was around our second year of dating.

Was actually during sex.

I remember clearly because at the time I was the youngest living with my parents and both of them were at work and I was alone at home.

He just knocked at the door and I remember feeling really scared because his eyes look

lost.

He was under the influence of crystal mat.

My ex had planned this whole elaborate birthday party for me and he had gotten belligerent and I had two children at the time and our baby was sick and so I was like you know what this is silly we're going home

and as we were driving home it was only about five minutes but he punched me in the face on the way home and

When we pulled into the driveway, I got out and he came around the car

and he grabbed me by my throat and slammed me against the garage.

It was definitely shocking to me

because we were being intimate.

And

all of a sudden, he laid his hands on my neck.

And I think he had gotten the notion that I would enjoy this, perhaps as a sexual act.

But since there really was no consent involved in that it made me incredibly terrified

on his way out i just was like standing holding the door open for him to leave and he looks at me directly and put his hand around my neck

and he is a pretty tall guy around 661 and he's big hand so it only took him one hand to just go around my whole neck.

He was holding me up by my throat against the garage, and I was like, He's gonna kill me.

And then he slammed me on the ground and cracked my head open.

And then he went inside the house.

I remember thinking, Oh, thank God, I'm okay.

And I grabbed the kids out of the car really quickly, and he had locked me out of the house.

So I broke into our bedroom through the window, holding the kids, and I barricaded us in the bedroom.

And I just remember

just thinking about who he was in the past, to what was happening in that moment.

I just was in shock and couldn't believe it.

I just was like so terrified that he felt pretty comfortable doing that to me.

He would do it to the point before killing me.

It was more of proving a point.

I'm the boss.

You listen to me.

You obey to me.

And then release you.

I remember sitting in the bathroom, like smoking a cigarette, thinking, I can't believe this just freaking happened to me.

So that was the first time,

not the last.

I actually thought that strangulation was pretty normal, or it happened so often that it became so normalized, it didn't especially stand out to me as a red flag.

It was just another kind of manipulation tactic, another method for him to gain power and control over me.

Once he realized that he had the power to do that,

then what was going to stop him to do more things in the future?

For so many years, it went from actual hitting, pushing, leaving bruises on my arms and realizing, oh, there's bruises to strictly using

the weight of his body and usually was like on the bed, like weight of his body on me and choking.

And then I remember I had to learn how to do self-defense, how to hurt him in certain areas so he would release because my fear was always I'll get killed.

When I got pregnant and I started living with him, that's when the physical abuse was more intense and frequent in the relationship.

So he felt he had a lot more

power

to do anything that he wanted.

However, he was a very intelligent person

and he would physically abuse me, but not to the point of leaving any marks on my body.

He was pretty aware of the consequences of having some sort of physical bruise or mark on my body.

I had marks that time and I was like, oh my gosh, people are going to see this.

And I'm a social worker.

And that was something I struggled with for the entire time because I thought I help people that are in the same situation that I'm in.

And I'm, you know, like pretty much preaching what I'm not practicing.

And so that was really also embarrassing for me, I think, which contributed to me not saying anything.

I was a pretty popular student during high school.

And I definitely put on a facade of how great my life was.

And to everyone else, it seemed like I had the perfect boyfriend.

And to admit to my friends that, hey, actually, I'm being abused by him on an everyday basis was terrifying for me.

I never talked about anything that happened to me with anybody until I actually left for the final time.

He was very charismatic and like he was fun and funny.

And I tried to protect that, I think, and not show him in a different light to our friends and family, and especially my family, I think, because

they already weren't sure about him from the get-go.

And so I really didn't want to make him look bad in any way.

I was with my abuser when we were teenagers.

And I think

that made it incredibly more difficult for me to seek out resources, seek out support.

I was terrified of sharing with my parents and my sister because I thought that they wouldn't believe me and that they would instead chastise me for being with someone at such a young age, for engaging in sex at such an early age.

So I felt so incredibly alone.

I never told anyone.

I never told anyone

what had happened.

I didn't want to believe what had happened.

And it was scary to even

think about it.

And of course, I wouldn't imagine myself sharing it with anyone.

And it was shameful too, right?

It's like, oh my gosh, I have this

wonderful, charming, handsome boyfriend.

What is people going to say?

Why did I say five years?

That's what I was supposed to do because till death, do your part is your vows.

And you have to honor it for your family's name's sake, for your religious sake, for your culture's sake, you want to be the one who did everything right.

And damn it, there's a one thing I didn't do right.

I didn't pick the right person.

How do I make this better?

When you're in love with an abuser, your logic changes.

They're so good at changing your logic to a point where abuse is all that you know.

It's all that you think about.

It's all that you justify.

I would have done anything to make my abuser happy.

His happiness was the most important thing to me on the planet.

I thought that

this was just

my reality.

This was the rest of my life, that I would, of course, get married to him.

Of course, I would have children with him.

And this is just something I would endure for the rest of my life.

We'll be right back after the break with more from these women, including how they got out of their abusive relationships and how they feel about it now.

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It can take many attempts to leave an abusive relationship.

Libby left Devon multiple times and came back just as many.

This can be hard to understand from the outside.

These women's stories stories illustrate the risks and costs of leaving.

But ultimately, they did leave for good.

That weekend where I visited him in college was one of the worst weekends I've ever experienced in my life.

Because we had been going to different colleges, the

emotional and verbal abuse he was putting me through was heightened because he couldn't physically touch me.

He couldn't sexually abuse me.

But when I saw him in person, now in the flesh, I had all four kinds of abuse that I was experiencing.

So the emotional and verbal abuse continued, but now the physical violence and the sexual violence were occurring because we were now physically together.

So after that trip, I returned home and I decided to break up with him.

But often when survivors try to leave, it takes them on average anywhere from seven to 11 times to actually leave the relationship.

And at that point, it probably was my third or fourth time trying to leave the relationship.

Then I got to the point that he was strangling me and I was welcoming it.

I was like, please just F and kill me, you know, just fucking kill me.

And that really, really was what kind of kicked my ass into gear.

That scared me, that I was welcoming it.

And

I had gotten so desperate and wanted out of that situation so badly that I just wanted him to kill me.

And then I thought, what's gonna happen to my girls?

It scared the crap out of me.

And

one night he came home and told me to get the fuck out of his house and take my fucking children with me and i listened and i didn't ever turn around i called my brother he flew out that day brought a duffel bag and said just pack what you can carry and so for the me and my three girls threw whatever we could carry into one duffel bag and he got us out of there while my husband at the time was just watching us from his car

he just sat there and watched and like kind of taunted us.

Eventually I got the courage to say, I'm done.

And he attacked me.

It was really bad.

And I ended up in the hospital and, you know, in a hold.

I was there for three days, but it felt like I was in a safe place because there were individuals like me.

And that's when I realized, being away from him, like,

I have a way out.

I have a lot to live.

I had a great therapist in there that reminded me that I still have plenty of years to live.

And I was able to get out of that scenario because of that.

Realizing the way I still see God in religion is not the way to death you apart no matter what they do.

It's only when they honor you.

It's a mutual honor.

And realizing that gave me so much freedom.

My son started to imitate his behavior.

My son was around six at that time and that was impactful to me.

I cannot allow this to happen.

Seeing my son, I knew if I had stayed, he would have totally adopted that behavior and my daughters were going to learn what I was doing, right?

So that really helped me have the courage to leave that abusive relationship.

At that time, we were living at his mother's home and he would not allow me to leave with my kids.

I was undocumented and he was documented.

So he used my legal status to threaten me,

to take me to Tijuana and kill me, or to take the kids to Mexico.

And I would never find out where he was with my kids.

And it got to the point where I was 100% isolated from my family and friends.

But my parents got really worried that they were not able to talk to me.

And one time they just came to visit.

And my father was like, what's going on?

And I was like, oh, everything's okay.

I'm just like, you know, out all the time, busy with the kids.

And he's like, no,

like we know what's happening.

And my father was like,

you're not my daughter anymore.

And I want my daughter back.

So

it really helped me to

lift the shame and fear off my shoulders and knowing that I was not alone.

So after that, I just came up with a plan to leave, but

that was just the beginning of a long journey of leaving safely and staying safe with my kids.

Leaving an abusive relationship, you're afraid to love again.

You're afraid to trust others because you might feel that people are inherently bad or people are out to get you.

When I look back at my younger self, sometimes I wish I could shake her shoulders and be like,

there are 8 billion people in the world.

I have yet to meet so many amazing people

that I don't need to endure this.

There are

many, many people I'll continue to meet who would love me for who I am,

who will never, ever lay their hands on me, never ever say disgusting insults.

and comments to me.

And I wouldn't have to spend the majority of my days crying and screaming and feeling so incredibly low.

The aftermath has been quite a roller coaster.

We're going on, let's see, I have nine years that I got out,

and I still have hard days.

I still,

you know, because I still have scars from him.

I still have marks.

But definitely the emotional abuse was

brutal.

Like I was a shell of a person when I came back and that has taken a lot of time and work and I kind of just dove into like things that I loved because he had taken all those away from me.

That has been my path to kind of healing.

I know that I have

a longer way to go and I think that's hard for me.

I feel frustrated sometimes because I think, God, I should be better by now.

And I can't rush it.

You know, there's no rushing it.

And so I have to kind of take a step back and say, you know, you'll be okay when you're supposed to be okay, which isn't always easy.

And I actually do have a scar from my then spouse.

He did cut me pretty bad in one of my arms.

And I actually do have a scar in my body that always reminds me, I did live this,

but you carry the scars, but people don't see the scars because they're in your heart.

They're in your soul.

They're in your mind.

They're in your triggers.

They're in the defense mechanism that you built around yourself.

You have to be okay with the uncertainty of what lies ahead.

And it's okay if you make mistakes, it's okay.

If you don't do things right the first time, second time, third time,

you know, just be patient with yourself.

I think that would be the best advice I can give.

If you or anyone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Abuse Hotline for help.

That number is 1-800-799-7233.

Thank you also to the National Network to End Domestic Violence for their help with this episode.

For more information, you can visit their website to find a coalition near you at nnedv.org.

What Happened to Libby Caswell is written, reported, and hosted by me, Melissa Jeltson.

This episode was written by Lauren Hansen and edited and mixed by Jeremy Thall.

Our executive producer is Ryan Murdoch.

For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Jason English and Katrina Norvell, with our supervising producer, Carl Cadel.

Our theme song is written by Erin Kaufman and performed by Aaron Kaufman and Elizabeth Wolf.

Original music by Aaron Kaufman with additional music by Jeremy Thal.

To find out more about my investigation or to send a tip, please email me at what happened to Libby at gmail.com.

Thanks so much for listening.

Don't you know I follow you

until I,

until I fell apart.

What a way to find myself

in pieces

in pieces in the dark.

Don't you know I'll follow

you

until I,

until I fell apart.

What a way to find myself

in pieces,

in pieces in the dark.

I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different.

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club?

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