The image of domestic violence is coated in stigma, the woman often assumed to be meek and weak-willed. While women are assured in books and on Web sites that domestic violence crosses all socioeconomic boundaries and is nothing for the victim to be ashamed of, they’re rarely provided with testimonials from women professionals—lawyers, doctors, highly educated go-getters—who have suffered at the hands of their partners. The message is clear: Maybe it does happen in affluent society, but you sure as hell don’t talk about it.
No doubt, Yeardley Love was taught never to tolerate domestic abuse. Notre Dame Prep, her high school, prides itself on instilling strength in its students, and Yeardley’s own academic and athletic achievements indicated that she intended to bust through any obstacle that cluttered her path. By all accounts, she was tough both on and off the lacrosse field.
Maybe too tough for her own good.
Strong, educated women sometimes lull themselves into a false sense of security, domestic violence experts say. These women believe abuse simply doesn’t happen to people like them, so those who do experience violence in their relationships shroud themselves in silence. They trick themselves into thinking that the relationship isn’t even abusive, much less that it’s the type to escalate into one of those grisly stories covered on the nighttime news.
Yeardley seemed to be growing increasingly concerned, according to details in police reports and her friends’ accounts in the days after her death. A week before she died, she reportedly shared with a teammate a disturbing e-mail Huguely had written her. She had also gone home for a weekend to get away from George after a particularly heinous fight. To journalist Jamie Stiehm, the red flags were there, but everyone seemed to ignore them.
“They couldn’t imagine something so vicious could happen in their circle,” Stiehm said of Yeardley’s friends and teammates. “It’s a lack of imagination and profound elitism as well. That willful oblivion really cost her her life because they didn’t protect her.”
Affluence and education can work against the victim of an abusive relationship. People shrug off her concerns because they assume she has the means to leave the situation.
Add to that a privileged abuser, and things get even more complicated. The picture of Huguely painted in the wake of Yeardley’s death was that of a young man who had been given too many breaks for behavior that would have likely landed most people in jail. Somehow, he had evaded real consequences for all of it.
“George exemplifies the Cavalier culture with a capital C,” Stiehm said. “The privilege, the breeding, the sense of entitlement, the thinking that the rules don’t really apply to me…His teammates, if they weren’t protecting him, they were ignoring him.”
Women trapped in abusive dating relationships are sometimes hesitant to seek help, experts said. They tend to focus on their partner’s better attributes rather than examining the put-downs and the violence they’re secretly enduring.
“She sees a good side of him. You don’t fall in love with someone who’s horrible all the time,” Dr. Barrie Levy said. “You see him when he’s not being abusive. Maybe he’s really loving or has a lot of other qualities you really like.”
Yeardley didn’t have children or a lifestyle to support, so she had no solid reason to stay with Huguely—except, perhaps, that she didn’t want to put her lacrosse friends in a tricky situation by breaking up and having to air the couple’s dirty laundry, a development that undoubtedly would have made the final months of their college careers much less pleasant.
Maybe that’s why some of her friends didn’t even know she had broken up with George.
Court records show that police began investigating whether Huguely had threatened Yeardley immediately after her body was found. At the same time, they were gathering other information—specifically about Huguely’s constant text messaging.
In today’s society, cell phones and smart phones mean people can stay in constant communication. For an emotionally unstable partner, this can provide yet another tool aimed to tether a couple together. Friends told reporters soon after Yeardley’s death that Huguely was texting her constantly after their break-up. While the contents of the texts weren’t immediately released, dating violence experts said they needn’t have been threatening to constitute what’s been dubbed as “textual harassment.”
“It’s gotten astonishingly worse in the last two years,” Jill Murray, an author of dating violence books, told the Washington Post for a 2010 story on the high-tech stalking method. “It’s part and parcel of every abusive dating relationship now.”
The messages perhaps seem benign at first glance: Call me. Where r u? Who r u with? But they arrive at the sender’s will, never mind if it’s during class or dinner or a family vacation. Kristin Mitchell’s family said she seemed to get text messages constantly from her then-boyfriend and killer-to-be. After her death, detectives discovered an ominous message on her phone that she had sent to Landau just hours before he stabbed her to death: You are being ridiculous. Why can’t I do something with my friends?
Victim advocates say technology, yet again, is proving a double-edged sword: With all the convenience attached to being easily found, there’s the potential danger of being easily found.
“The advances in technology are assisting the perpetrators in harassing and stalking and threatening their victims,” Kacey Kirkland, a victim services specialist with the Fairfax County Police Department, told one reporter.
Charlottesville police were granted a search warrant to examine Huguely’s Blackberry smart phone in December to see how many, and what types, of text messages he may have sent Yeardley. Even if the messages had been deleted, a forensic examination of the phone could potentially turn up saved screen shots of the notes. Police would also subpoena cell phone records in hopes of learning just how many of those notes Huguely tended to send out. If the messages themselves were benign, perhaps the quantity would be telling.
As a public service, Break the Cycle posts “ten warning signs of abuse” right on its Web site: checking your cell phone or e-mail without permission; constant put-downs; extreme jealousy or insecurity; explosive temper; financial control; isolating you from family or friends; mood swings; physically hurting you in any way; possessiveness; telling you what to do.
Bill Mitchell is convinced that nothing will change without education. Years after his daughter’s death, he hears regularly from people trying to save loved ones from dangerous relationships. The Kristin Mitchell Foundation’s Web site spells out ways to get help and highlights the common theme that seems to run through most cases of dating abuse: control.
“I think every time a young woman dies like this, it’s the opportunity for everyone to wake up and find out what this is all about. Dating violence is real. It happens a lot! It’s just that you don’t hear about it much.”
In the months that followed Yeardley’s death, that began to change—much to the apparent discomfort of the university and the slain woman’s family.