Criminalizing Violent Behavior in Neighborhood Settings

A Long Walk on Eggshells:  35 Years and 500 Miles

I attended high school in Dayton, Ohio, but now live in a city in the State of Virginia, a distance door-to-door of about 500 miles.  My particular location in Virginia does not seem to matter, as I have been told my experience would be the same anywhere in the state.  The main problem appears to be the Virginia criminal misdemeanor code, and its tolerance of threatening behavior towards women. 

My “long walk” started as a 16-year-old girl in the mid-1980’s, when I dated a violent young man.  He was aggressive, irrational, selfish, and unpredictable.  At the time, he was able to isolate me from my friends and family, and I thought this was an experience unique to me.  I later learned that being a victim of domestic violence is a common experience for many women, then and now.

Back in the 1980’s, I absorbed and adopted the norms of the time, which reflected a lack of societal awareness and education about violence within dating relationships.  In a pattern common to these relationships, my boyfriend made me feel the violence was my fault:  If I had phrased something differently, perhaps I would not have triggered his rage. 

Because of this formative experience, the mid-to-late 1980’s was an incredibly difficult time, but I got through it with help from friends and family.  I finished college and went to law school.  I graduated and served in the U.S. Army as an attorney, including as a prosecutor for two years.  Later, I returned to Ohio and then moved close to the Washington, D.C. area to further serve my country as a civilian. 

When I moved to Virginia in 2009, I did not expect to be the target of violent intimidation again, given I was now an adult, with many years of work and personal experiences to guide me.  I decided to purchase a condominium, and given location and cost, I selected one in a building that had been converted from apartments.  The floors and walls were thin, so there was communal noise, but that was to be expected.  For this reason, I was not overly concerned.   

To my surprise, my downstairs neighbor started to contact me within weeks.  He began slipping notes under my door, saying my steps were too loud.  I was gone a lot for work, but otherwise kept regular hours, so my movements seemed reasonable, but I purchased rugs and padding to minimize noise.  Despite this, within a couple of months he started pounding on my front door, complaining because he could hear me walk.  He also began screaming at me from below.  I told the condo association and local police that I found him threatening.  They indicated I was “too sensitive” and should try harder to work things out with him.  They said there was nothing they could do. 

Around the same time, the neighbor started hitting his ceiling/my floor with incredible force, directly beneath me.  He would follow me under my floor, slamming it as I walked, hard enough that I physically jumped.  On a few occasions, he hit the floor so hard I initially thought a structural failure had occurred.  His force caused his own ceiling fixtures to shatter.  I called the police to the scene, and they came, but my neighbor wouldn’t answer his door.  They said there was nothing they could do, so I didn’t call them again. I kept a razor blade in a small box high on a kitchen shelf, just in case he came to my door enraged, and I had to protect myself.

My neighbor acted this way until I moved out in 2017.  The relentlessness of his behavior deeply affected me:  I started tiptoeing around my condominium; I quit inviting people over.  To appease him, I hired professional flooring experts to create massive carpet cutouts with commercial-grade padding.  I wanted to sell my condo, but I felt obligated to try to resolve it before I subjected another condo owner to this abusive behavior. 

Despite my feeling that this situation was remarkably similar to my prior experience with domestic violence, I absorbed and internalized the rationalizations of my condo association, the police, and various lawyers, much as I had accepted the logic of the culture three decades ago:  Perhaps I triggered my neighbor’s behavior, with my exceptionally loud walking; maybe he would react differently to others.  Considering this, I decided to hire a management company and rent out my condo.

As you can probably guess, I quickly realized I had not been the problem.  My tenants reported the same harassment and intimidation from the downstairs neighbor.  I went through three tenants in as many years.  I let two families terminate the lease early with no penalty, because they felt they could no longer safely live there.  In one case, the wife carried a small knife with her whenever she left the residence.  This was the last straw for me.  When I lived there, I felt obligated to bear it, but watching someone else experience this was intolerable.

Since then, I’ve escalated reports of my neighbor’s threats and harassment to my condo association and county and state officials, and they still claim there’s nothing they can do.  This experience has made me think a lot about women in similar situations, in particular those that might not meet the legal definition of domestic violence.  Despite my resources and advocacy, I’ve been unable to convince anyone that this and similar situations are serious and must be addressed.  I cannot convince anyone that women deserve better. 

For women who are dealing with someone who is violent or otherwise threatening:  If you are in immediate danger, call the police, but if the police are unresponsive or say they cannot help you, please contact your Virginia county’s Board of Supervisors, the county’s Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, the Office of the Chief of Police, as well as your state legislative representatives.  Ask them to work together to pass and enforce a criminal code that supports the reasonable expectations of women in 2021-22.  We have the right to reside in our homes free from violent intimidation, whether from partners, family members, neighbors, or anyone else.  We have walked on eggshells long enough.