Most anonymous letters to the editor end up in the garbage.
They are usually hateful rants against society, the government, the news media, the neighbour (or insert the cause of all of that's evil in the world here) by someone without the courage to actually attach their name to their rage.
This anonymous letter came in a month ago, so anonymous that there is no post stamp on it, meaning that the stamp could be used again, and the mailing address was printed on a label.
There is no return address and no handwriting. The letter is on one single page and printed off a laser printer.
She deals with the cowardice of writing an anonymous letter in the opening paragraph.
"I would include my name or an email but am worried about any consequences that could result as I have found out domestic violence is not a laughing matter and my story gives enough information that this man I love will already think it was me who wrote it," it reads, before asking for more news coverage in The Citizen about spousal abuse.
The writer admits to once feeling superior to victims of domestic violence.
"I used to say 'why would a woman stay with her husband or boyfriend if he hit her?' I also said it would never happen to me [and] if a man ever hit me, I would throw him to the curb."
Those feelings are gone, replaced by feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness as the abuse has escalated from emotional and verbal to physical. The letter writer now lives in fear.
"As I was being abused, I couldn't call the police. If I did, I would be dead."
She is aware how debilitating that fear has become and how even writing an anonymous letter to the newspaper and going to great lengths to keep it anonymous is brave.
"I still can't answer the question why I stay with a man who hits me? I don't blame my neighbours for ignoring my situation. I blame myself for staying."
There are vague personal details in the letter that could offer clues as to the identify of the letter writer, if they also didn't apply to thousands of other adult women in Prince George. Still, she is worried that taken all together, they could somehow point to her, so she "hides her bruises and cries all alone."
She is not alone, of course.
There is the Phoenix Transition House Society (250-563-7305), the Crisis Centre of Northern B.C. and the Prince George RCMP (250-561-3300 to file a complaint or 911 for emergencies).
Prince George RCMP Supt. Eric Stubbs created a Domestic Violence Unit last year, even though he wasn't given any extra money to do it, and assigned Cpl. Carla Cook to address these crimes full-time. Prince George RCMP responded to more than 900 domestic violence cases in 2011.
Witnesses are critical to stopping the abuse, Cook told The Citizen.
"A lot of our files that are successful have third party complainants, a witness that helps support what we suspect," she said last summer after her appointment, noting that victims are normally reluctant to call the police.
The writer of the letter to The Citizen is no different.
She ends her letter by imploring her neighbours to intervene.
"I'm not strong enough to leave [so] don't judge me or ignore my plea for help," she writes. "What I'm asking is for someone to help... by making that phone call... that might give a woman like me the courage to get out before it's too late."
