![]() ![]() Brendan had been arrested and had torn up an emergency room. According to Beyer, Carly could see this was PTSD with dissociative episodes, and she was determined to do whatever it took to bring Beyer back to health, even if it took months. The therapists, particularly one named Carly, started to grasp what had happened to her. Beyer was afraid of what this meant-maybe she really was hopelessly crazy. In her small therapeutic “process group,” she was unable to talk about everything that had happened. The mere sound of a door scared her, a sudden noise would send a flash of panic through her body. She couldn’t sit with anyone or make eye contact. Then, she was unable to function-a walking live wire. The Jennifer Beyer who entered treatment is a far cry from the Jennifer Beyer of today. With a divorce proceeding looming, and everything on the line, she entered a mental health facility to prove she was sane and a fit mother. She was psychotic, Brendan told people, and now there was evidence. But afterward, she was informed that CPS was charging her with child abandonment. Believing she was safe, she shared what had happened. ![]() The next day, she was called into the Office of Child Protective Service (CPS). Within minutes, the kids were located and she was reunited with them. “Where are my kids?!” Hysterical, she immediately called the police, who were sympathetic. A few minutes later she came to, and panic jolted through her. Then suddenly, without realizing it, she pulled the car over, opened the door, and walked some distance. On December 27, 2018, a date that’s etched into her brain, she was driving her car with two of her young sons strapped in in the back. She began having dissociative episodes-breaks from one’s reality and surroundings. This forced him out of the house, but he moved nearby and made sure she knew he was watching her.Īll of that led to the haunting incident that brought her to the Arizona treatment center. ![]() He told her that if she revealed the truth “she wouldn’t make it.” Fearing for her life, she took out a protection order against him, and filed for divorce. His line was that she was mentally ill, suffering from postpartum depression, and she was making it all up. When she let onto others the truth about his behavior, they couldn’t believe it. At his insistence, she explained away her bruises and broken bones as the results of falls in the shower or down the stairs. But behind closed doors, he controlled Jennifer’s every movement, she says, and was physically and sexually violent. While she worked at the hospital-“the best nurse I ever worked with,” says a former colleague-he was a member of the grassroots advocacy group Indivisible, and was often picketing with the kids in tow. In their small, liberal community in Topeka, most people saw him as a doting father with the right values. No one understood what she knew, but couldn’t articulate for so long: that Brendan was an abuser and master gaslighter-in the original sense of the word. She was suffering severe PTSD from all she’d been through in her 18-year marriage. In January 2019, Jennifer Beyer, a registered nurse from Kansas, arrived at an Arizona mental health treatment center believing she’d never get to see her five kids alone again. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |