5 victims describe harrowing passages

Domestic violence crosses all economic, racial and class lines. It reaches into all professions and all communities. These are the stories of five Utahns — some women, some children — and their passages through domestic abuse.

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Hildegaard Koenig has come a long way. Today she is a confident, poised woman. She spends every day helping victims and witnesses of domestic violence navigate the daunting court system on their way through a protective order, paperwork or hearing.

She is a diversity court advocate for the Salt Lake City Prosecutor's Office now, but she's been on the other side.

"I can relate to the victims," she said. "I know the system is very scary."

Eight years ago, Koenig says she was a very different person — the victim of domestic violence and experiences with which she and her children are still dealing.

She was married to her abuser for a short time. Even when she was pregnant, her husband was verbally and physically abusive. She would go to the doctor and hope someone would ask about her well-being, her injuries. No one did.

She had a bushel of reasons why she couldn't leave. "I went through every reason you've heard," she said.

"I thought maybe he would change. I didn't want my children to be without a father. How can I make it without his financial support? Who is going to want me with two children? I could not see myself separating from him."

But she had a small epiphany when she gave birth to her first child, and though it took her another year to leave, it was an important moment in her life.

The brand-new mother was standing in her hospital room holding her child because the father was lounging on her bed watching television. As she tried to talk to the doctor, her husband kept turning up the volume of the television so he could hear it over the sound of their voices.

Koenig didn't say a word, but the doctor forcefully told the man to knock it off. "The doctor was the only person who stood up against my abuser," said the petite woman, who is also an educator for the YWCA.

Later, after what she calls a "major incident," she called the police on her husband for the first time. Her children weren't home at the time, but officials told her if she stayed with him and the children were exposed to violence, she would lose them.

"That's what opened my eyes," she said. She left with an infant and a 13-month-old in tow.