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Jim and Elsa have lived in Butler County for 40 years. Jim is retired from the State of Ohio, and Elsa has retired from the Middletown School District. Their youngest daughter, Tina was murdered December 21, 1992 at age 18, by an ex-boyfriend. As a result of Tina's death, Jim and Elsa founded Citizens Against Domestic Violence in 1996. They do presentations for middle and high school students, college students, youth groups, ladies groups, churches, and other organizations, educating them to what Domestic Violence is, how it affects individuals, families, churches and communities, and how persons involved can be helped.

Our Mission : Citizens Against Domestic Violence is a program which acts to promote an awareness of domestic violence and the damage it does to individuals, and to family, church and business relationships. Citizens Against Domestic Violence seeks to educate through information and to implement services to those who desire freedom from violence/abuse.

                                                 Tina’s Story

 When our daughter, Tina, was in high school, she met a young man whom she thought was the love of her life.  He played football, was tall, blonde, and had a beautiful smile.   What we did not know was the fact that his normal was abuse that he had witnessed in his own home all of his life.  The yelling, screaming, cursing, hitting, threatening, and all of the rest that goes along with family abuse. Consequently, he did not know how to have a normal relationship, so he started telling Tina where to go, what to wear, who to talk to, and what time to be home.  Tina was very straight forward and strong willed.  She was one of the young ladies who would have said, “There is no man going to tell me what to do!”  However, when she did allow this to happen, her boyfriend then started slapping her and punching her.  When she came home one day with a big bruise on the side of her face, I asked her where it came from.  She very nonchalantly replied that several of her friends had been playing football and the football hit her face.  Due to the fact that she was very straight forward, I believed her, when, in fact, this young man had punched her.

During their on-off relationship of several months, this boy displayed some behavior that gave us reason to wonder about him – bursts of anger, getting upset over some of Tina’s friends being around, wanting to be with Tina constantly, and even transferring from his high school to the school where Tina attended.   On one occasion, he found Tina in the school hallway talking to another guy.  He totally lost it!  He grabbed Tina and threw her against a locker and called her some inappropriate names.  That day he was suspended from school.  When Tina got home from school that day, we told her that the behavior of this young man was very inappropriate and that she must break up with him, which she did.  When he heard this news, he became hostile and belligerent.  He spent most of his time calling or searching for Tina.  If there was no one at home, upon returning, we would find obscene messages on our phone.  He was on our street constantly trying to see Tina.  He appeared at the school many times, looking in the windows to see what Tina was doing.  The whole school was on alert, with the football players walking Tina into the building in the a.m., and out of the building in the p.m.   He showed up at our church on a Sunday morning after the service to harass us and call us names.  The youth pastor escorted him to Middletown Hospital and tried to get him admitted to the psychiatric ward, but due to the fact that he was 18 and had no insurance, he was not admitted.   He finally spent a night in jail after showing up at my job and creating a scene causing an assistant principal to call police.

My husband, Jim, and I both believed that this would all pass, and that this young man would move on to another girlfriend.  He did have other girlfriends but his obsession never waned for Tina.  Wherever Tina went, this young man would “just happen” to be there – at the mall, movies, a dance, school functions or whatever. On one occasion he followed Tina to a gas station where he proceeded to talk to her while she pumped gas.  With the beautiful smile that he had, he persuaded her that he had been to counseling and had changed and that she should start dating him again.  When Jim and I realized that Tina was seeing  the young man again, we told her that he was not allowed at our house or to call on the phone.  After all, we did have a restraining order against him.  We informed her that if she chose to see him since she was now considered an adult, that she must meet him away from the house and she did.

            It took only a few weeks for her to figure out that the young man had not changed and she broke up with him again. Tina was now working part time and going to Miami part time, and again the young man started stalking and harassing her. 

            On December 21st Jim and I left for work on a Monday morning, leaving Tina sleeping in – no school or work that day.  Since Tina and I had plans later that day, I started trying to call her around 9:30.  No answer.  I called again – no answer.  This went on for a couple of hours when I finally called a neighbor and asked her to check on Tina.  In the meantime, I felt compelled to go home.  As I drove home I realized that something dreadful had happened and when I turned off the main road to my subdivision, I saw all of the police cars, the vans from the  TV channels, and the coroner’s car.  When I drove up in front of my house, a body was being rolled out.  The young man had gone into our house and into Tina’s bedroom where he shot her in the head as she slept.  He then killed himself in her bedroom FOUR DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS.

            Hundreds of people filed through the line at Tina’s visitations.  We were practically numb and of course in the state of shock.  Her funeral was Christmas Eve day.

            After a lengthy period of grieving, as we looked back over the course of events, two things stood out in our mind:    

    1) Many of Tina’s friends had come through the receiving line at visitations  sobbing and telling us that they knew full well that Tina was being abused, but THEY DID NOT TELL ANYONE!!!  Their comments were, “If we had only told you, maybe things would be different today”.                                                    

    2) Many parents and grandparents came to us and said, “That could be my daughter or granddaughter”, or “my daughter just got out of a mess like this”.  In fact, the director of the mortuary that we had chosen was incredibly angry over our situation because he had just gotten his daughter out of a very similar situation with an ex-boyfriend.

            Our situation is not an isolated case.  We get feedback from teenagers almost daily with stories of their own about how they are trying to deal with abusive situations from their boyfriend or girlfriend.