Sandy Smith is so scared of her former husband, who pleaded guilty to cutting her throat from ear to ear, she'll still be terrified when he gets out of prison as a man in his 70s.
"I hope he doesn't survive," said 45-year-old Smith, who had a son, Justin, with Gary Wickel. "I hope he dies in prison."That's the only way Justin and I will ever have our final peace. I am afraid of Gary. I probably will be as long as Gary's alive."
A petite woman raised in a nonviolent household, Smith doesn't look or act like she could ever wish ill of anyone. But then again, Wickel was the man who terrorized her for years in a self-described love-hate relationship that was easier to get in than get out.
That's the case for many battered women.
October was Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Nationwide, domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women, more than muggings, stranger rapes and vehicle accidents combined.
And more than 3 million children witness acts of domestic violence every year.
From July 1993 to July 1994 in the Twin Falls area, Volunteers Against Violence fielded 368 crisis calls and had 797 crisis coun-selings, executive director Janis Quinn-Nelson said.
There were 631 victims of domestic violence and 105 adult victims of sexual assault, she said.
Shirley Blakeley, coordinator of adult services at Canyon View Hospital & Counseling Centers in Twin Falls, said people are becoming more aware of domestic violence, but many myths about it endure.
Some think whatever happens in someone's home is private. Others believe domestic violence only happens in impoverished households.
The idea has survived that battered wives and children deserve it somehow.
Many battery victims become very passive about the abuse after they've tried - and failed - to get help.
"They get to thinking that there's nothing I can do about that, so they essentially stop trying," Blakeley said. "It's really difficult to get out of it."
For Smith, her cycle of abuse began long before Jan. 21, 1992, when a drunken Wickel stopped by Smith's trailer house, which she shared with their then 13-year-old son.
Divorced from Wickel since 1983, Smith had nine months earlier agreed to let Justin and Wickel have supervised visits.
"He (Justin) had not had any contact with Gary in several years and wanted to know his father," she said. "Justin had the right to make up his own mind if he liked his father."
That day, Wickel pinned his former wife to the couch - and methodically tried to cut her head off with a hunting knife as Justin ran for help, Smith said.
"It's not the first time Gary tried to cut me with a knife," said Smith.
Early in their marriage, Smith loved Wickel, she said, and she wanted to believe he was sorry when he apologized after physically or verbally battering her.
"At that point, you couldn't have asked for a better husband," she said. "And that's what makes these men so dangerous."
Smith said there were many factors that prevented her from leaving Wickel even though he severely beat her several times: She wanted the relationship to work, they had a child, and she wasn't sure she could survive financially.
When she realized things would not change, Smith said she tried to leave Wickel.
But he physically would not let her and threatened her life, she said. Smith was unable to get a restraining order from the Cassia County prosecutor's office while they lived in Burley.
Wickel once rammed her car and tried to push it off a bridge when she attempted to leave him. Once he held a gun to her head, and another time he shot up her car.
Smith finally left Wickel, who had abused Justin without her knowing, when the 4-year-old tried to stop his father from hurting her, she said.