In the above image you see me, my mother, and paternal grandmother pictured on my 1st birthday. This picture was taken at the primary home of my childhood in Cape Coral. We moved in when I was about two weeks old, September 1988, brand new construction.
This photo was taken in the dining room. Behind my mother and I is a large sliding glass door to the patio and pool. To the left of the image is a breakfast area and kitchen. To the right is an entrance to what we called the family room. At that entrance just to the right is a stone fireplace, that marks the beginning of a long hallway, with two bedrooms and a full bathroom along the way.
Little did I know then in that photo as just a baby, that about half a decade later that same scene would scorch one of the most violent memories I have from my entire life into my brain for eternity.
The violence usually broke out after a few days of arguing and “screaming bloody murder” as my mom used to put it. True screaming at the top of their lungs was common growing up, an almost daily occurrence sometimes. But there were periods a few days in a row where things cranked up from a 9/10 or 10/10 volume, to something truly beyond.
Screaming you never forget, that you can still hear decades later.
As I grew up, I developed an internal sense of how imminent violence was based on the screaming volume. There was no chance I could articulate it that way at the time, but internally I was observing and processing patterns of behavior in my parents that led to brutal domestic violence, with or without law enforcement getting called out.
Sometimes the volume indicated a threat of immediate violence, other times it suggested later that night, or later that week, depending on the days leading up to that moment. Even as a boy I figured out that the intensity of their screaming directly reflected on their current emotional states, and for my dad in particular, how close he was to losing control.
This night as far as I can recall was preceded by a typical few days of extreme screaming matches, where my dad would be shit faced 20 beers deep, chasing my mom around for hours screaming at the top of his lungs late into the night.
While I don’t remember my exact age at the time, I know my little sister was born, but my brother was not yet born. I was three when she was born, and eight when he was born, so my best guess is that I was about 6 years old at the time in 1st grade.
That would leave my younger sister about age three, and older sister about eleven years old.
This night was truly hell, and while my father was piss drunk as usual, what made matters worse was his steroid abuse during this period of his life.
He was 6’1 about 240lbs around this time, throwing 100lb dumbbells around like paper weights, with a max barbell bench of over 400 lbs.
His previously successful company Newport Construction, Inc was facing imminent bankruptcy then. That’s why in the above photo his shirt says Newport Gym. He would frequently turn the garages of model homes he built into fully equipped gyms for him and his (steroid abusing) friends. Free shirts for all.
So now you have him and my mom fighting over serious money issues. He was already a violent dude, devoted alcoholic, facing the total collapse of his business, and he’s injecting steroids into his ass.
He wasn’t “cycling” the drugs either to my knowledge, which is why when I was about 7 years old he collapsed right in front of me from a heart attack (via cardiomyopathy) in Islamorada, Florida on vacation. I recall watching him get wheeled out of a nearby hospital the next day in a wheelchair. The one and only time in my life I saw him in a wheelchair.
When the screaming reached a certain intensity my sisters would usually run and hide in their rooms crying. While he never beat them, this was understandable as it was genuinely terrifying and relatively unsafe to be around him when the violence broke out. He was literally a violent, drunken lunatic.
Scared as I was as a boy, I never ran and hid. I always wanted to face reality and observe what was happening, no matter how horrifying. I wanted to protect my mom, even if that was impossible. At least by watching I could understand the truth.
Late in the night after hours of screaming, with me watching from just a few feet to the left of the opening image, he finally closed a fist and pummeled her to the ground. She went down instantly, right in front of the stone fireplace. He continued to scream in her face as she lay on the ground stunned.
He then walked around her a bit, and grabbed her hair with one hand. He was about to drag her down the hallway. My blood boiling, hair standing on end, the only thing I remember her saying, looking right at me, screaming at the top of her lungs was
HHHEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPPPPP
Kicking, bleeding, and fucking screaming for her life, he dragged her down this long hallway towards my big sister’s room at the end of the hall.
I didn’t follow. I was frozen.
While I had seen him beat her before, actually dragging her like this was new for me, and a level of terror I had never experienced at that point in my life.
Even to this day I only recall one other time he dragged her around like this on the floor, in the master bedroom, a few years later.
From what I remember hearing he screamed some more, beat her some more, and then walked away. Triumphant in his drunken victory, of beating his own wife half to death.
I don’t remember what happened after that. I believe it is only the emotional intensity of this event, and other events like it, that I remember the basic facts clearly enough. The visual, emotional, and auditory intensity enough to scar my brain.
While I’m not certain if he was arrested for this incident, this arrest in 1994 lines up closely with my memory of events for the timeline.
09/01/19941. BATTERY (DOMESTIC VIOLENCE) Statute: 784.03(1) Misdemeanor - First Degree
My mom was a classic enabler and battered wife, so I’m sure he didn’t get in much trouble for it. Even if the neighbors or my older sister called 911, my mom would plead with law enforcement or state prosecutors to back off. She might tell them the basic truth, in bare bones terms (how did you get the black eye?), but then quickly limit or refuse to cooperate further as a victim.
Domestic violence is an already complex problem to deal with for law enforcement and state attorneys. A victim actively thwarting their efforts takes their job from difficult to nearly impossible.
That’s why the domestic violence went on for so long, over 40 years, even at this intensity and severity.
The violence had not yet spread beyond my mom though. I was the next victim, still a few years out from being beaten by a violent drug addict without mercy.
In 2021 while visiting The Guzys in Utah, I told an abbreviated version of this story to Tanner and his wife on the front porch of their house. They were both stunned, even by a simplified version of events. That was one of the first times in my life I had ever told a non-family member about this night of terror.
Truly it was one of the most horrific nights of my life. While this degree of violence would be bad to watch as an adult, as a young child, you have a very limited capacity for understanding the world or contextualizing these events.
You know almost nothing about cops, lawyers, judges, laws, jail, and the criminal justice system.
All you know is that you love mommy and daddy - your creators and protectors - and they are fighting, really really bad.
What I was actually developing at this time was a primitive OODA loop. My actions while simple, were the exact opposite of my sisters as we aged in this environment. A pattern of behavior that persists to this day. Their survival strategy was always focused on an evasion and denial of reality.
Mine was to face and confront it head on, no matter the fear.
/s/ Anthony Dream Johnson