The Murder of Jeffrey Dryden: The Grim Truth Surrounding Male Domestic Abuse (8 page)

---Jason Dryden (Twin
Brother)

“
Jeff, the last time I
heard you say ‘I Love You Mom’ was about 6 hours before you were
killed. I'm lucky that I still hear Jason say I Love You Ma, Jill
say I Love You Momma, and Josh say I Love You MAMA, but I would do
anything to hear your voice just one more time. I miss you so much,
Jason and I just got home from the cemetery and I wish I could hear
your distinct voice, but I didn't. One day I will hear you again up
in Heaven, but until then I will think of you every minute of every
day. I LOVE YOU,”

***

“
Today Jason came over and
we watched the Michigan game and Nascar, both of those you loved to
do. I kept thinking of you and the way you used to hug and kiss me
goodbye. I miss you so much. I cannot believe that it has been 7
weeks since you were taken from us. I know you are watching over us
and that makes me feel a little better, but just wanted to tell you
that I LOVE YOU. Mom”

“
I am having trouble
getting to sleep again, I remember 7 weeks ago when I was woke up
by a detective knocking on the door. He gave me the worse news a
mother can get. You were dead. I wanted to die right there myself.
I miss you so much. Sometimes when Jason hugs me I want to think
that it is you. I know that you are watching over me, but I want
you here physically with me. It makes feel like you are with me
when I write to you. I will love you forever. Mom.”

---Paula Dryden (Mother)

CHAPTER 9:

JULY 19 2010 12:00
AM

His Last
Moments
…

“
It’s okay Jason,’ Jeff
said as we talked that night, ‘I have accepted Jesus Christ as my
savior,” Jason said in reference to a conversation he shared
between his brother just before leaving for home the night of his
murder. “For some time now, I have had this feeling that I won’t
live to see 30… that she might go off at any time and kill me,”
Jason added as he and Jeff talked about his future with Chiquita
and where it would be going.

“
I should have gone with
him that night, I should have known something was going to happen,”
Jason said almost to himself, tears raining down the sides of his
eyes as he tried to remain composed. “Dude, we can stop at any
time, you don’t have to talk about the stuff you don’t want to,” I
said, about ready to shut off the digital recorder. “No… I want
people to know… I want his story to be told,” Jason said.
“Besides,” Jason added, “that’s about it anyway, he went home
shortly after and about three or four hours later I was told that
he was dead… that she had killed… murdered my twin brother,” Jason
added.

At the end of the interview that day, I
thanked Jason for being so open with me, and allowing me to tell
Jeff’s story in my own words. Though I am his cousin, there is a
bond between family, between brothers and sisters that I feel goes
beyond blood. A bond that can only be known and felt by the heart,
thus, for him to let me interview him, for him to share his
thoughts and memories of such a personal and traumatic moment in
his life, I felt truly honored by his trust

As we turned away from the river that
day and looked back towards the group of people, we called family,
Jason added one final comment; a comment I felt should be shared
and mentioned in this book as well.

“
I know he knew… he always
knew that I loved him but I should have told him… Instead his last
words to me were, ‘See you tomorrow at NASCAR…’ and mine were, ‘See
you tomorrow,” sadly a tomorrow that was never to come.

***

In an e-mail sent to me by Jason a few
months later, Jason asked if he remembered to tell me about Jeff’s
life insurance policy (Dryden, Jeff's Life Insurance, 2011). Which
I informed him he did not.

In the e-mail’s that followed that day,
Jason informed me that it was his belief that Chiquita thought she
was in for some money after Jeff passed away. “His company was
having an open enrollment on Life Insurance,” Jason stated in the
e-mail.

“
Jeff had called me up
while I was at work and asked me for my social security number
because he needed to turn in the form,” he stated. “He had told me
that Chiquita told him to put her as the sole beneficiary to his
life insurance, but at the last minute he just couldn’t bring
himself to do it and decided for me to be on it instead.” Jason
wrote.

“
I had told the police
this… and was planning on testifying in open court about this when
the Prosecution asked me about it, had the case gone to trial.”
Jason added.

Whether or not this had a bearing on
Jeff’s death, only Chiquita can answer that, but in hindsight, it
makes you wonder why a single male of 28 years old, with no
children of his own, or a wife to worry about, would be so
distraught over a life insurance policy… it just makes you
wonder.

CHAPTER 10: FEMALE
DOMESTIC PERPETRATORS:

“THE TRUTH BEHIND
TRUTH”

“
(Blank) attempted to
smother me with a pillow while I slept…”

“
I have been chased with a
car and attacked with a chainsaw…,”

“
Our last argument left me
with a broken leg, wrist, and ankle…,”

“
I was chased around the
house with a knife… I felt as if my life was going to end that
night…, (Cook, 1997)”

When you hear the phrases above and
think about the social acceptance of Domestic Abuse, what are the
first images you get of the individuals saying the above phrases?
Most people, not all, but most, envision a woman that has been
physically assaulted, perhaps abused in front of her kids by an
overpowering, domineering husband or boyfriend whom has no regard
for the woman he is supposed to love, honor, and
cherish.

However, when you see this woman in
your mind, what does she look like? Does she look like a biker
chick from hell, bound in skintight leather, her arms stretched out
in front of her, clinching her hands into fists, ready to strike
back at her attacker or does she look helpless?

Does the image that first snaps into
your mind reflect that of a weak, perhaps frail or submissively shy
woman? Does she have her arms stretched out and her hands clinched
in fists like the biker or does she keep them down around her body,
like a shy, perhaps timid and withdrawn woman?

Again, most of us would choose the
latter. Most of us see a poor defenseless woman too afraid to move,
too afraid to do anything but take the beating her lover continues
to inflict upon her, but what has placed this image in our minds?
Why do we envision a defenseless woman instead of that biker chick
from hell?

In this current age of equality towards
all regardless of age, color, creed, religion, sexual preference or
gender, why do we instantly think of the woman as being the weaker
abused sex? Keep these questions in mind as we explore this topic
in more detail as it will come up again when we discuss and explore
Domestic Abuse and its interpretation when applied with the prime
cannon (rule) of the Feminist Theory, which states:

“
No aspect of the
male/female relations can be considered as fact, without first
accepting the male as all powerful and the female as completely
powerless.”

As you will read in the pages below, by
having this principle as their basic construct, feminist will not
accept anything that cast a poor light on their gender, unless,
however, it is required to get the support and financial funding
they need to continue their cause. For the most part, feminist and
the organizations that they support will not and do not accept the
fundamental truth of over 200 reports, surveys, and studies that
show women are just as, if not more so, prone to use violence in a
relationship as their alleged male equals. Nor will they accept the
idea that, “the all-powerful,” man can be beaten and/or abused by
the, “completely powerless,” female, and thus through political
influence, continue to do everything in their authority to keep
this idealism, this false truth, the societal norm for which we
have all unknowingly come to accept as fact. Think I’m wrong? It
may surprise you that the phrases stated at the beginning of this
chapter. The phrases that invoked the image of a female being
abused by her male lover were actually statements made by men who
had been abused by their wives or live-in girlfriend, bet you
didn’t see a dude as the first image that came to mind did
you?

Boys Don’t Hit Girls; Girls
Hit Boys

“
When she got mad, she’d
start hitting me. She’d slap at my face, and then keep slapping and
try to scratch my face. I’d put up my arms, or just grab and hold
her hands. I never hit her back; as a child I was taught that you
never hit a woman, no matter what.” – Anonymous male married to an
abusive woman of 10 years…

As a child; a young boy, I can remember
both my parents telling me not to hit girls, that hitting girls for
any reason was wrong and that real men do not get into fights or
hit girls. Thus, from the moment I was taught this, I knew there
was a difference between girls and boys, the ideal; the basic
construct of women as the weaker of the two, whether true or not,
was entrenched in my mind. After reading the surveys and studies on
male domestic abuse for this book, I began to wonder, “What, if
anything, are girls taught when it comes to hitting
boys?”

Consequently, I posed this question to
my sister recently, asking her when the time comes and my 3
year-old niece goes to school, what will she be taught when it
comes to hitting boys?

“
Em, will be taught, not to
hit anyone unless they hit her first,” my sister said, “I don’t
want her growing up being picked on and thinking she can’t fight
back, but at the same time I don’t want her to think that it’s
alright to hit first,” she added (Veenstra, 2011).

Sadly, though I agree fully with my
sister’s reply, I found that most girls my niece’s age might be
taught the exact opposite. In a study on adolescent violence done
by Peter Stringham of Boston University Medical, “30-50% of all
adolescent girls hit or kick adolescent males, vs. 20-35% of
adolescent males hitting females.”

This apparently only gets worse as time
goes on and adolescent females grow into young adults. In a youth
survey done in 1995 of 1,725 participating young adults,
researchers found that nearly, “48% of the female partners
committed acts of violence against their male partners, of that
48%, 22.4% of the women perpetrated severe violence.” Most
noteworthy from this study was the fact that, “women were the sole
perpetrators in nearly 37% of the couple’s vs. 14% of the men that
were sole perpetrators, (Morse, 1995).”

Furthermore, a study that looked
specifically at physical abuse against male college students found
that, “40% of the males surveyed reported that they were recipients
of physical aggression from their girlfriends. 29% reported that
they received serious physical abuse at the hand of their
girlfriend resulting in a visit to the hospital or other forms of
medical treatment (C.J. Simonellie, 1998).” Thus, it seems, “In
today’s society, as reflected in TV, Movies, and feminist doctrine,
women are openly given permission to hit men. For example a woman
slapping a man in the face, is rarely, if ever viewed as Domestic
Violence (Gelles, 1997).”

“
From early 1950s TV
through the 1990s, we had family sitcoms where the TV dads were
often funny, but nevertheless had the respect of their kids and
wives… centered in these forty years, the Feminist Movement turned
from job equality issues to rampant male-bashing,” (Young, 2011).
The proof of this is in the sitcoms we see today, shows such as
Married with Children, Family Guy, The Simpson, Two and ½ men and
so on all show men as unintelligent slobs, thinking of nothing more
than sex, booze, sports and their next bowel movement. Thus by
lower the standard of respect men once had as equals to something
lower than that of a domesticated animal the media has allowed
women to believe that hitting and/or abusing men is nothing to
worry about as morally they are nothing more than pets that need to
be prodded and trained to behave.

The Primetime Social
Experiment

You may think that the above examples
are just rare and perhaps isolated incidents, that though today’s
movies and TV shows display women hitting men, or place men in an
unfavorable, unintelligent light, that in real life if such a
situation would occur, that society would step in and resolve the
issue. However, the ABC show, “What Would You Do, Hosted by John
Quinones,” (Quinones, 2008) proved otherwise when it posed an
interesting social experiment in which it took two actors to act
out a scene of a male and female couple having a physical
altercation in a local park.

When the situation involved the male as
the abused and the woman as the violent abuser what the show
captured was sadly not surprising considering the societal norms
that the Feminist Movement and women’s abuse organization have
placed on the mass media in using them to further the ideals of
violence against men.

In the course of a few hours, over 160
people, both men and women of various lifestyles, passed by this
couple as they sat on a bench next to the park’s main walkway.
Everyone that walked by could easily see and hear the obvious signs
of the abusing woman choking, slapping, hitting, pulling hair and
verbally abusing the scrawny white male doing nothing more than
shaking their heads or laughing as they walked by. In fact, when
interviewed later, one woman who smiled and brought her hands up
towards her face and began to air box as she walked by was asked,
“Why did you do that,” she stated with a smile, “Good for her…the
guy probably DESERVED it.”