Article from the Indy Star: http://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2014/11/19/rep-woody-burton-fight-domestic-violence-personal/19269491/
By: Tony Cook, tony.cook@indystar.com
The Indiana House is making a big push to increase awareness — and, possibly, funding — to fight domestic violence.
For one lawmaker, that effort is deeply personal.
Rep. Woody Burton still remembers the night when his estranged father broke into his childhood home on the Near Southside and woke up the rest of his family at gunpoint.
It was June 1950. Burton and his two siblings were sleeping in their mother’s bed.
“He came in though the attic,” Burton said. “He put a shotgun to her head, said if she didn’t come with him he’d kill her.”
His father, Charles Woodrow Burton, was a big and violent man. At six-foot-eight, the former police officer sometimes beat his five-foot-one wife until she was unconscious.
Burton said his mother, Bonnie, had tried several times to obtain a restraining order, but the authorities turned her away. They relented only after she threatened to buy a gun and shoot her husband, Burton said.
But the restraining order did not deter Burton’s father.
On that night in 1950, he marched his wife outside, put her in his car, and took off.
Burton was only 4, but he remembers waking up in a police car that night. He and his older siblings, Sylvia, 10, and Danny, 11, were taken to Marion County’s Children’s Guardian Home.
His mother was held captive for four days. She escaped only after her husband finally fell asleep in Tennessee and she was she able to crawl through the car window. A trucker took her to a police station, Burton said.
He still recalls the mixture of emotions he felt when his father was allowed to visit Burton and his siblings at Guardian Home shortly after his arrest.
“They made me go outside and see him,” Burton recalls. “I started crying because I didn’t want to see him. He was big and mean and I was scared of him. Then I was crying when he left because I didn’t want him to go.”
He stopped his story to take a deep breath. “I’ve never forgotten any of that stuff,” he said.
His father spent several years in prison and Burton’s mother remarried. But the terror continued after his release.
“One time, he put sugar in my step-dad’s car and ruined it,” Burton said.
On another occasion, he remembers his brother, Danny, now a former U.S. congressman, chasing off his dad with a shotgun.
Burton’s last interaction with his father took place when he was 19. The Whiteland Republican had just married his first wife, and his father said he wanted to meet her.
“I started crying,” Burton said. “I said if you come around me, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m gonna kill you. He never came around again.”
Burton, who was named Charles Woodrow Burton Jr., — after his father — rarely uses his first name today. He also had his middle name legally changed to Woody, in part to distance himself from those painful memories.
“I didn’t want his name,” Burton said. “I wanted my own identity.”
When his father died some years later, Burton did not attend the funeral.
Burton, now 69, said he knows his family’s experience is not unique. One in every four women will experience domestic violence, and most cases are never reported to police, according to the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Every year, House Speaker Brian Bosma chooses a charity to support throughout the legislative session. This year, that charity is the ICADV. Lawmakers held an event at the Statehouse to announce the partnership Tuesday during the legislature’s annual organization session.
Laura Berry, executive director for ICADV, said more than 1,700 victims were turned away last year from services such as emergency shelters due to a lack of resources. House Republicans have said that increasing funding for domestic violence programs will be a priority during the session, which begins Jan. 6.
“I will be all over supporting that,” Burton said. “People need to know that stuff is out there and it crosses all boundaries. It’s everywhere. There’s women abused. Men. Kids. At any social level or age group, it’s wrong. I know what that is like, and I want to eliminate as much of that as I can.”
