You can tell just by looking at her that Smiti Bhatia is confident.
She's self-assured, from her walk to her smile. She has overcome a lot, but she'd never let it show.
She is not only a fighter, but a survivor.
In 1996, Bhatia, now 43, was living in India. She was in her sixth year of teaching as a political science instructor — one of the most prestigious and competitive positions at Delhi University in New Delhi.
"I was touching the sky in my career," she said.
Her life changed traumatically when she met her husband — an abuser, she said, who trapped her with his charm.
Bhatia was one of roughly 65-90 adults and children who seek help from MSU Safe Place each year. Safe Place, a free and confidential shelter for domestic violence, offers shelter, support services, advocacy, community education, scholarships and volunteer opportunities. Bhatia credits the shelter as being one of the key factors in saving her life.
'From heaven to hell'
In December 1996, in the city of Ahmedabad in India, Bhatia said her cousin introduced her to a man from America. He was making a short trip to India to look for a wife.
Bhatia said he told her she could marry him and come to America, and if not, he would forget they had ever met.
He showed her a video of his family dancing, cracking jokes and having fun with one another. Bhatia said she was impressed by the affectionate and dignified people she saw on the tape.
Impressed enough to sacrifice her family and job in India and join him and his parents in East Lansing in May 1997.
He was a 34-year-old MSU computer science undergraduate student without a job. At 6 feet tall, he was heavily built, but she said he was kind.
"I didn't get married to him in order to live out the 'American Dream,'" Bhatia said. "I came for family. I knew I was taking a huge risk."
After living for a few weeks in Michigan with her husband's parents, Bhatia said she began to feel the ground slipping from beneath her feet.
She was forced to do countless chores — cleaning and cooking — for the family. From there, she said, a cascade of threats and abuse began. His parents pressured her to go back to India.
"Never in my life had I seen such an abusive mentality," Bhatia said.
When his parents said they couldn't tolerate her living there anymore, Bhatia said she and her husband left and moved into an East Lansing apartment to live on their own. Bhatia's worried parents sent her $2,000 from India to offer support.
She said she was relieved, thinking freedom from his parents meant she could finally have some peace in her life. However, Bhatia said her husband was quick to follow in their footsteps.
"The day I saw his true face, I realized that my life was doomed and I was trapped by a charming man to live a life of hell," Bhatia said. "I quietly followed his dictates and remained subdued to meet all his demands and desires. He was a monster that unleashed his cruelty on me day and night."
Bhatia said she had no income, job, friends or family in America. She was terrified of shocking her family by sharing her husband's true personality.
"In India, I was known for boldness," Bhatia said. "It's like I was thrown from heaven to hell."
She said he threatened her, saying he would call her family back in India and tell them she was a woman of no morals and she did not take care of him.
"He took advantage of my weaknesses," Bhatia said. "I had a lack of awareness of the laws and rights of women in this country. Abuse and domestic violence were terms that I had never heard of in India."
Domestic violence is a continuous pattern of behavior in which one person tries to get control over another, MSU Safe Place volunteer Alyssa Baumann said.
"An abused person may have hope that the abuser can change," Baumann said. "And that keeps them in the relationship."
In America, about 1.5 million women are raped, physically assaulted or both by an intimate partner every year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Holly Rosen, MSU Safe Place director, said domestic violence is an underreported crime — regardless of race, class, culture, gender or sexual orientation.
The violence continues
On July 7, 1999, Bhatia gave birth to her daughter Disha, which she said would put a new perspective on her life: She now had a child to protect.
But she said having a child still didn't stop the abuse.
One night in 2000, she said, her husband took a carving knife in his hand and said he would kill her if she did not allow him to call her parents. Bhatia said she begged him not to call them. She said he also threatened to call the police to tell them he was threatening his wife with a knife.
Her husband had told her if he was thrown behind bars, he would lose his job and Disha would be sent to live in a foster home.
"I protected him," Bhatia said. "I wish now that they had arrested him."
To her surprise, he did call the police that night, but he wasn't arrested. She said about six police officers came to their home.
"I could feel shivers down my spine when they came," Bhatia said. "I was afraid if I did not protect him, I would have to face his wrath, rage and fury."
The vicious cycle continued, which happens in most cases of domestic violence, said Baumann, the Safe Place volunteer.
Studies show 25 percent to 40 percent of people who are abusive to their partners as adults grew up witnessing or experiencing some type of violence, Rosen said.
"Still, many do not become batterers, and many batterers grew up in a loving home," she said. "But when interacting with their partner, abusers are selfish, controlling and have a great sense of entitlement."
Two days later, Bhatia received an eye-opening package in the mail. It was an envelope with a list of local resources for domestic violence victims. Bhatia looked through the information and began to realize she was a prisoner in her own house. Yet she said she thought she could change his attitude with patience, goodness and forgiveness.
"I thought that when you are good, what goes around comes around," she said. "But the better you are, the more abusive they get."
In August 2001, she called Lansing's Capital Area Response Effort, or CARE, who taught her how to keep her and Disha safe. CARE has volunteers on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to assist victims of domestic violence. They gave her a cell phone, told her about shelters and instructed her to keep a bag packed in case of an emergency, Bhatia said.
She heeded that advice Feb. 3, 2002.
Disha had a friend over that day and they wandered into a room, where her husband was on the phone, Bhatia said.
With the receiver still in his hand, Bhatia said her husband summoned her into the room and began to yell at her for allowing the children to play while he was in the middle of an important conversation.
Bhatia brought the children out of the room, but she said he called her names and threatened to slap her. Gathering her courage, she asked him to stop.
He told her to move out.
That night, while he was sleeping, Bhatia took her passport and clothes and left with Disha. She fled to Texas with money wired in from India by her parents. She stayed for three weeks with a distant cousin she had never met, she said, until realizing she would need to return to Michigan to file for divorce.
Finding a haven
With nowhere to go, Bhatia found MSU Safe Place, which she said offered a loving home and a listening ear. She stayed there for a month in 2002.
"There was a place that guaranteed safety, food and a roof over my head," she said.
Bhatia said Safe Place gave her courage to finally make the decision to file for divorce.
"I stood up on my feet," she said.
However, in September 2002 at a referee hearing, Bhatia said she saw a kindness in her husband's eyes. She thought his abusive ways might have changed, so she said the day before the divorce was filed she sent him an e-mail, asking if they could reconcile for Disha's sake. They did.
"I couldn't take the grief and trauma of divorce," she said. "This was my chance to give another shot at a healthy married life."
Baumann said most domestic violence survivors will leave an abuser seven times before they actually leave for good.
"That's the nature of domestic violence," she said.
Abused people often stay in relationships for long periods of time, and often return as well, Rosen said, because they still love their partner and enjoy the good times they had.
"They blame themselves for the problems in the relationship," she said.
Her husband told Bhatia he had forgiven her, she said, but he never accepted he had done anything wrong.
"To my shock, he only took me back to take vengeance on me," she said. "But this time, I knew it was abuse."
In April 2004, her husband said he would leave if she continued to allow Disha to play with her friends.
"I always valued relationships," she said. "So I told him he could leave. That was my first day of my journey to real liberation and freedom."
From victim to victorious
A month after her husband moved out, she found a job at Profile Referral Systems in Lansing. Before then, she and Disha had survived with financial support from Bhatia's parents.
"There is so much happiness and peace in my life now," she said. "I can laugh when I want, cry when I want and eat what I want. I was a prisoner before, and as a prisoner, I wasn't allowed to do any of that."
Baumann said one of the most rewarding parts of volunteering at Safe Place is educating people about how healthy relationships should be and empowering them to make decisions to take control of their lives.
"When we are working with them, we only get to see such a small window of crisis in their lives," she said. "It's nice to see the bigger picture and how things end up."
Bhatia said she now has the opportunity to empower Disha, now 7, in gaining back her dignity, grace and self-worth with the help of her parents.
"My daughter is the whole and soul of my life," she said. "I am helping her to distinguish between right and wrong, and at the same time teaching her not to hate her father. If you hate anyone, you are the one that it hurts the most."
However traumatic her journey might have been, Bhatia said breaking the silence was worth it.
"There is no evidence of emotional scars, which are buried in me until I die, but I have broken the vicious cycle for good," she said. "I feel so bold. Courage has seeped into my blood, and no one can snatch it from me."
