Domestic Violence Victim Fears Abuser's Release

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Domestic Violence Victim Fears Abuser's Release

Posted: 3:39 pm EDT May 29, 2009Updated: 11:10 pm EDT May 29, 2009
CHARLOTTE -- On the day the man convicted of her brutal beating is released from prison, Heather Thompson is living with a sense of dread.
Her ex-husband, Thomas Price, Jr., was sentenced to prison in 1995 for beating her for hours, at times using a broom handle. In Union County, she became the public face of domestic violence.

A different kind of abuse followed. From prison, Price sent a letter threatening to find his wife when he got out, writing, “I can’t wait to see the fear in your eyes … before I kill you.”

Price got five more years in prison for that, but today he was released.
Thompson wonders what will stop him from making good on the threat. “I have said for 14 years he is going to come after me when he gets out, and there’s still not enough in place to keep us safe.”

Federal prosecutors and probation officials today asked a federal judge for restrictions to keep Price away, including GPS monitoring and an order not to come near his ex-wife or children.

But Heather Thompson said none of that will stop her life from changing. “The thought of living in fear again, every day looking over my shoulder and wondering where he is, when he’s going to show up. In exchange for him being allowed his freedom, I’m now the prisoner.”

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Abused Woman Lives in Fear of Ex
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By MARTHA WAGGONER
,
AP
posted: 8 HOURS 12 MINUTES AGO

MONROE, N.C. (June 2) - Heather Thompson's blackened and bloodied face has served as a warning to battered women in North Carolina. On a billboard and in brochures, she tells them they can get help.
Since her ex-husband used pliers and a broom handle and a belt to abuse her 15 years ago, leaving her with permanent disabilities, she's shuffled to high schools to counsel students and taught law enforcement officers about domestic violence.
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Heather Thompson's ex-husband was just released from a federal prison, and the North Carolina woman is terrified that he will kill her or their daughters. Thomas Howard Price Jr. served 10 years for brutally beating Thompson, then 4 1/2 years for threatening to kill her in a letter. "Is he coming today, is it going to be tomorrow?" said Thompson, holding a 1994 photo of herself.


But always, in the back of her head, was the vow Thomas Howard Price Jr. made in a letter from prison. On Friday he was released, and she began waiting for him to make good on his promise to kill her and her daughters.
"Is he coming today, is it going to be tomorrow?" she said before he was released last week. "Just the always wondering, always having to watch your every move and never knowing when he's going to show up."

Price walked out of a federal prison in South Carolina after serving 4 1/2 years of a five-year sentence for sending the letter, which began with the words, "Dear Slut." He penned the message during the slightly more than 10 years he served for beating Thompson in 1994.
"There's no doubt in my mind that he plans to come after me and the kids. The death threat said all three of you will die by my hands," said Thompson, 38. "That's tough to know that I can't protect my kids right now."

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Price originally challenged restrictions for his three years of supervised release but relented just before a hearing was to be held Friday in U.S. District Court in Greensboro. He agreed to wear a location-monitoring device for six months and to have no contact with Thompson or their 19-year-old and 17-year-old daughters.

Price's attorney, Milton Shoaf of Salisbury, said Thompson had no reason to fear Price.
"He will not go around her. Period," he said. "He has no interest."
Still, said Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, Thompson's fear is reasonable.

"These guys are good," Smith said. "They find ways to get past firewalls and confidential names. There isn't any real protection. You can do your best to hide and disappear. But I've heard of cases of men finding women who thought they were invisible."

But for women like Thompson, she said, the question becomes: "Are you going to run and hide the rest of your life?"

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Thompson met Price when she was 12 and he was 14; they married when she was 18. He shoved her to the ground once before they wed, but she brushed it off — thought everything would be OK "if I just loved him enough."
Then came the bruises she hid under clothes and the black eyes she had to explain away. Once, he left two bullets on a Harley-Davidson emblem above their bed. One was for her, he said, and one for her boyfriend if he ever caught her with another man.
"The biggest reason I stayed was fear," Thompson said. "Because he said to me, 'If you leave, it doesn't matter where you go and how far you go, I will find you, and I will kill you.'"
She was 23 the day in 1994 he beat her senseless, leaving her with back, neck and hand injuries — bone spurs, pinched nerves, osteoarthritis — that still require surgeries. He told Thompson he would kill her, bury her in the back yard and tell their daughters she had run away. He slapped her so hard that a ring on his right hand flew off and dented the wall.

"In all the years I've defended or prosecuted cases like that, she probably suffered the worst and had the most horrific injuries for somebody who survived," Donna Stepp said. "I do remember the case just because of that and because of how far she came since that."
These days, Thompson's pain is so severe she can't sit for more than an hour straight and can't work full time. Doctors tell her that CAT scans and MRIs make it look like she was in a severe car accident.