Sniper shows how domestic violence hurts us all

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"You have become my enemy and as my enemy, I am going to kill you." So said D.C. sniper John Allen Muhammad to his then-wife of a dozen years, Mildred, in 1999.

Muhammad and his young accomplice, Lee Malvo, would kill 10 Washington-area residents and wound three before police realized that Mrs. Muhammad was the intended target of the snipers' "elaborate scheme" to make good on her husband's threat, she said.

"It wasn't random ... the police said didn't I notice that he was shooting people all around me ... He was going to kill me and come to get the children as the grieving father," she said of Muhammad's plan to collect survivor's benefits. "I'd been dead, and no one would have known."

Mrs. Muhammad, who writes a monthly newsletter and published a journal for domestic violence victims, knows firsthand that "in a traumatic situation, victims don't know where to look [for help] or what to do. What they need most is legal representation and counseling."

Well, one place they can look to get information is the third Forum on Domestic Violence. Founded and coordinated by D.C. community activist Cherita Whiting, the event will be held tomorrow evening at the Lamond Riggs Recreation Center in Northeast. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier is a scheduled speaker.

Mrs. Muhammad, speaking on the eve of a busy schedule in the Washington area this week during which she will recount her harrowing experiences as "a survivor of domestic violence," yesterday recalled those scary weeks in October 2002.

"Other people were looking for two white men in a van, but when I stepped out my door, I was looking for two white men in a van and John, too," she said.

Law-enforcement officers staked out her Maryland suburban home for a week before they informed her that her ex-husband was the suspected sniper. They were acting on a tip they received from Muhammad's best friend, Robert Holmes, who told them that Mildred was the target.

Mrs. Muhammad pointed out that she couldn't get help from the police when she tried to file domestic abuse complaints or when she got a restraining order after her husband kidnapped their children for 18 months. When he was captured, the only thing police had to hold him on until they could secure more evidence was a weapons charge that stemmed from her restraining order.

What makes Mrs. Muhammad's survivor story unique is her passion for providing assistance to women who silently suffer the more insidious mental, psychological and financial forms of domestic violence, such as forced starvation. That's the kind that "no one listens to" and bares "no physical scars," she said.