O.J. Simpson Gets 15 Years

O.J. Simpson has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Why do I care? Not for the reasons you may think. Yes, I think the guy is a complete schmuck. I know he is guilty as sin of murdering Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown. Why? Because I was just like Nicole. Except my abuser wasn’t famous, and I got away successfully.

Nearly 20 years ago, I met a guy who swept me off my feet. He was charming and sweet and funny. He had a past, but told me he was over it, and had gotten out of the lifestyle he’d lived as a teenager. Naive, I believed him. Within two months he had me terrified to leave him, scared I couldn’t live without him. It was a classic abuse process – gradual brainwashing, slow ramp-up. He convinced me that I was so pitiful and stupid and ugly and fat that nobody else could possibly ever want me, and that he was doing me a favor by being with me. He pulled me away from all of my friends and most of my family by telling me they were stupid or that they were using me for this, that, or the other. Slowly, over a period of three years, it became physically violent.

Just before I left him, the FBI came to my door, looking for him. He’d violated probation and was headed to a long prison sentence. They told me things about him that I didn’t know about, things about him that scared me. I went to ask him about it, and he got violent and scary. He accused me of cheating on him with the FBI guy. He intimidated me. Eventually, the conversation turned, and we were chatting about current events. The verdict in the O.J. Simpson case was near, and we were talking about it. I said I thought he was guilty. He agreed, but then added, “but he had a right to kill her. She was with another guy.” I asked how that worked in his mind, since they had been divorced quite some time (the fact that this implied that it was ok if they had still been together never even crossed my mind, and it’s scary that I was so brainwashed as to think that way). He replied, “if you ever love a man you stay faithful to him no matter what, divorce or no. And if you don’t, he should kill you.” He told me, “If you ever leave me I’ll pull an O.J. on your ass so fast you won’t know what hit you.” For some reason, this clicked in a way that all the beatings, both mental and physical, never did. He had threatened my life in a casual conversation, and it couldn’t be chalked up to “the heat of the moment.”

I left. He went to prison very shortly thereafter. I moved across the country to ensure he couldn’t find me. I look completely different from that young girl I once was, and I *am* completely different. But I will always feel that Nicole Brown’s death saved my life. It was the thing that finally made me see he would kill me.

A few years ago I looked him up to see where he was. He was in prison for aggravated domestic assault. He’d done it to someone else. I pray that he stays there forever, as he’s like O.J. – totally unrepentant, completely sociopathic. He has no feelings for others, everything is about him and what he can take from the world.

I am thankful to Nicole Brown for saving my life through her death.

And on a lighter note:

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