Krav Maga Self Defense & Fitness

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An abuse victim takes a stand against domestic violence

Published: Saturday, October 30, 2010, 7:02 PM Updated: Saturday, October 30, 2010, 7:02 PM
Emily E. Smith, The Oregonian

Amiran White / Special to The Oregonian
Anastacia Papadopulos takes a self-defense class in Milwaukie. At left is classmate Stephenie Blackmon of Gladstone. In January, Papadopulos' boyfriend was arrested for assault after he bit part of her nose off. Papadopulos said the class and her instructors have been a great support system through her emotional recovery from a violent relationship.

Phillip Hubbard walked into the kitchen still fuming from the argument he had started minutes earlier.

Hubbard, angry with his girlfriend, Anastacia Papadopulos, told the couple's 6-year-old son to leave the kitchen. When the boy didn't leave, Hubbard grabbed him.

Instinctively, Papadopulos yanked the boy into her embrace. Hubbard lurched forward, grabbed her face and bit her nose. Blood gushed.

Hubbard had ripped off a chunk of the left side of her nose and swallowed it.

Papadopulos didn't know what had happened to her nose. She knew it was bad. "At this point all I know is I'm burning," Papadopulos said. "My face is on fire."

The moment Hubbard bit his 31-year-old girlfriend was the culmination of his long history of assaults. Four months earlier, he'd picked up a piece of wood with small furniture nails poking out of it and beaten her with it.

He once kicked her in the face, severing a piece of the inside of her lip. He'd punched and choked her and pulled her hair.

Papadopulos tells a story like those of many other victims of domestic violence, one of 563 cases prosecuted in Washington County this year. But what makes her story unique is not just the disfigurement, but that she's a college instructor of criminal justice and had escaped the abuse for five years, only to rescue her abuser from homelessness and fall into a second destructive relationship.
And she's different from many victims of domestic violence in that she testified against him. That testimony in Washington County Circuit Court resulted in Hubbard pleading guilty last month to two counts of second-degree assault, Measure 11 charges that landed him a 10-year prison sentence.

Her case shows that anyone, even someone educated in criminal behavior, can fall victim to domestic violence.

"The reasons for it are so deep and so complex," said Jeff Lesowski, the Washington County deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case against Hubbard. "Most of it boils down to the fact that the offenders are very good at control and establishing a power base in the relationship."

Lesowski said Papadopulos' job as a criminal justice educator speaks to how domestic violence crosses social boundaries, levels of education and income.

"The fact that she is in that field and yet still fell victim to the same emotional trap that so many other victims fall into "is a testament to how powerful this cycle of domestic violence is," he said. "It transcends logic, it transcends common sense; it affects everybody."

Papadopulos met Hubbard through a friend's friend about 10 years ago.

He was a sweet, funny young man who came from rough beginnings. His parents used drugs, and as a kid he was bounced around from one family member's home to another. He started using drugs early and dropped out of high school.

Anastacia Papadopulos, an instructor of criminal justice at Pioneer Pacific Collee, takes a self-defense class in Milwaukie. After fleeing a violent relationship in January, Papadopulos takes the class to release stress and learn fighting moves to protect herself from an attacker.

Papadopulos grew up in Greece and moved to Oregon with her family in high school. She was taking college classes and working when she met Hubbard. Coming from a far more stable background, Papadopulos became friends with Hubbard, who seemed to need some looking after. Eventually, she fell for the kind, young man who had a crush on her.

The first time he snapped at her violently, he put his hands around her neck. An instant later, he apologized and teared up. She was floored, but took his apology as sincere. Something she had said must have set him off, she thought.

But Hubbard's abuse didn't end there. Just when Papadopulos had decided to leave him, she found out she was pregnant with their daughter. At that news, Papadopulos renewed her commitment to Hubbard.

Hubbard's temper continued to flare. Vulgar name-calling, insults and physical attacks continued, too.

One day when Papadopulos was pregnant with their son, Hubbard pummeled her with a closed fist in the kitchen of their Portland apartment. She pleaded with him to stop, noticing the couple's 18-month-old daughter watching the attack.

Hubbard was arrested on assault charges, pleaded guilty to fourth-degree assault and received six months in jail.

Papadopulos didn't speak to Hubbard after that. Over the next five years, she earned a bachelor's degree and did graduate work in criminal justice, then began teaching.

But she still cared for the man she fell in love with back when he was a 21-year-old charmer who laughed with her for hours on the phone.

All along her two worst fears nagged at her: "I'd find out he was dead or homeless."

Papadopulos hit the streets looking for Hubbard. She passed her phone number out to homeless people who said they knew Hubbard. A couple of days later, he called.

She wanted to help him. After their tumultuous beginning years ago, she didn't intend to become romantically involved with him.

Stephenie Blackmon (left) and Anastacia Papadopulos perform a partner exercise during a self-defense class in Milwaukie last week. Papadopulos was disfigured when her boyfriend assaulted her in an incident that landed him 10 years in prison. She is scheduled to undergo reconstructive surgery next month.

Uses put-downs, name-calling, yelling and cursing to verbally abuse you.

Attempts to control finances, the people you associate with, where you go and what you do.

But their second start was much like their first: Comfortable, caring and happy. And like the first time, the violence started unexpectedly and escalated quickly. Papadopulos woke Hubbard one morning, urging him to get up and see the kids off to school. Hubbard stirred out of his sleep and kicked her violently.

Papadopulos felt the familiar shock and dread at Hubbard's outburst. But, just as she had before, she quickly doubted herself. Maybe she had provoked him, she thought.

Months passed and the attacks continued. Soon, Papadopulos felt stuck. She loved her boyfriend, but she was angry and scared. Her first priority was protecting her children from Hubbard's unpredictable rage. She sent them to live with her parents. The couple's daughter refused to come over for weekend visits.

Hubbard's last assault came during one of their son's visits in January.

After Hubbard bit her, Papadopulos demanded that he see what he'd done.

"Look at my face," Papadopulos said. Her bleeding face was already scarred from previous attacks. Some cartilage was exposed and a one-inch piece of flesh, measuring from the tip of her nose to the left side of her face, was missing.

"I can't," Hubbard said, sitting on a bed crying. "I can't look at it."

She told him that he and their children were who she loved most in the world, "but I don't know why you hurt me so bad."

And then, "believe it or not," she said, "I sat there and kind of rocked with him. And there I was, once again, protecting Phillip."

Papadopulos went to the hospital and told doctors a dog had bitten her. The doctors said she'd have to have reconstructive surgery after her nose healed. She would never look the same.

She went home, slept, cried and sank into a deep depression. She feared Hubbard's violence might kill her.

"I'd stashed a knife underneath the bed. I thought about killing him," she said. "But I'm not him."

Days later, her son told his grandparents what really happened between his parents. Papadopulos' mother called the police. Hubbard was arrested on assault charges.

Taking steps to heal
Hillsboro police Detective Cheryl Banks made herself available to Papadopulos day and night, knowing domestic violence victims often recant their stories, not yet ready to end relationships with abusers they love.

The detective carried on conversations by text message at all hours, she said, assuring Papadopulos of what she already knew.

How an instructor of criminal justice found herself victim to a violent offender -- twice -- is a question Papadopulos struggles to answer.

Sometimes she stayed with Hubbard out of love for him and the family she wanted them to be. Sometimes she stayed out of fear and hopelessness.

She lost her identity in loving an abuser, she said, and since cutting ties with Hubbard, she's still rebuilding it.

"It's very suffocating. They're the machine that keeps you alive," she said. "(When) you actually start thinking maybe this person is going away ... you don't know what's the next step."

Prosecutor Lesowski said Papadopulos wavered at times, unsure whether she wanted to bear the responsibility of helping put Hubbard in prison. But she beat the odds of most domestic violence victims and stuck to it, testifying before a grand jury and attending every court proceeding.

"She is one of the more remarkable victims that I've ever worked with," Lesowski said. "She's got an incredible strength of character and a very uncommon resolve."

The bravery she showed, he and Banks said, was her commitment to tell the truth. The truth that saved her.

The day she returned to school, Papadopulos decided to admit the truth to some of the people she was most ashamed to tell: her students.

Papadopulos stood before the class and began telling her story. She told it to explain the still-raw wound to her nose. She told it to clear the air. To heal.

"I respect you and care about you too much to continue lying to you," she began. "I was assaulted by Phillip."

"Hi Mark, I just wanted to let you know the training I received while living in Portland and the rape defense seminars saved my mom and my life. My mom and I were in Bangkok, two blocks from the American embassy and got into a metered taxi to take us home after the night bazaar. We were driven out of Bangkok into the country at 1 AM. The taxi stopped in the middle of a dark field and we were beaten and left there in the middle of nowhere. I am fine, I just have 6 stitches in the back of my head where the cab driver hit me with a tire iron. My mom is bruised on her back where he hit her. I kicked him in the throat, pinned him to the roof of the taxi with my foot. As the fight moved outside the car, he attacked me from the rear, hitting me in the head with the tire iron. I was bent over and realized I was in a familiar position to strike him in the groin. I attacked, then grabbed the tire iron, elbowed him in the throat and disarmed the tire iron from him.

I have to confess, though, that when I attended your training, I never would have envisioned that I actually would find myself in a situation where I would have to draw upon the knowledge I gained during the months of training that I spent with you. However, when the moment came -- unexpected as it was -- that I found myself in a life-or-death situation, it was your voice and words that came to rescue me when I had a split-second decision to make.

Please be reminded each and every day that you stand before students in the days, months and years to come, that you are an "exceptional" teacher, and not one who does his job with mundane and minimal effort. You HAVE made a huge difference in "this" student's life -- and I'm sure many more that you may never realize or know."