Chapter 3: Part 3 - Why I Stayed
THE TRAP DOOR CLOSES
Shortly after Todd's arrest one Lake Travis Youth Lacrosse parent emailed me saying: 'Whatever reason you had for staying, no reason is good enough.' Maybe this Blog will open her eyes a little, and more importantly encourage other youth sport organizations to screen their coaches a whole lot more carefully! The fact that Todd Thomas Kress coached Lake Travis (Austin) 5th-8th Grade boys in a sport he had only played for a few years before dropping out of High School, is quite remarkable. And then that the coach “screening process” allowed this non-parent such easy access to young children is concerning. Through an affair with Tara Schafer Waldrop, a divorced Lake Travis mother, Todd penetrated a system that should have been designed to keep young children safe.
So onto why ‘women like me’ stay!
Somewhere in the Love-Hope dance, Fear enters the equation. Now this evolution is slow. As slow as a pebble being rubbed smooth by running water.
For 2 years I was exquisitely ‘groomed.’ I was irrationally ‘in love’ and susceptible to every lie, every deception, very financial con. I paid for concert tickets so Todd could take his “exhausted sister” Stephanie to see her favorite band. I bought plane tickets so he could attend his Grandmother’s funeral. Which he did, with his mistress, whom his Vestal NY family accommodated, even though they had known me for over 7 years. And I believed the story that he needed somewhere to live for 6 months while he awaited ‘military call up’. And when his ‘army career’ never materialized I paid for this High School drop-out to attend 2-years of classes at Georgia Perimeter Community College. Studying ‘Criminal Justice!’ No, I couldn’t make that up! Guess he was studying how to keep avoiding the law? And because the bank had repossessed his truck, and the police had suspended his driving license after a list of traffic offenses longer than my arm, I drove him to and from College. And did his College homework because as a student he is as dumb as a box of rocks (and stupefyingly lazy).
But surely not as dumb as me. As I write this I hang my head in shame. I find it beyond comprehension that anyone, never mind ME, could be so monumentally gullible. I now totally appreciate that “love is indeed blind”.
Love is in essence a chemical imbalance, and when in the hands of a master manipulator you really are doomed from the get-go. And when the ‘monster’ is finally in your home and you are draped in red flags, all that sustains you is false Hope. Hope that you’ve got the obvious wrong. Hope that the beatings won’t happen again. Hope that if you do enough for him he won’t hit you again. Hope that he will change.
Love - - Love/Hope - - Hope/Love - - Hope/Fear - - Fear/Hope - - Fear - -
OMG FEAR!!! TOO LATE!
Once I was finally in the trap that was 2 years in the making, the beatings began. The first time, Todd picked me up in the air and dropped me face-first into a concrete floor. He was immediately distraught and claimed it was just “horseplay”. Through the mists of agony, and face and rib X-rays, and pain meds, I believed it had been an accident. He was so very, very sorry.
When he beat me the second time, just a few months later, I felt my brain freeze. I could not process thought. All reason shut down. My conscious mind suppressed the unthinkable and for a few more weeks I clung to Hope. But as the beatings continued the change I prayed for became a spiral of fear instead.
And then this 220lb body builder threw me into a wall!!
And so before all hope died, and immobilizing fear reigned supreme, I dialed 911.