"This is for my girls all around the world
Who have come across a man who don't respect your worth
Thinking all women should be seen not heard
So what do we do, girls, shout louder."
~Can't hold us down by Christina Aguilera

This was song I was listening to, these were the lyrics we heard when my father, Lewis Alexander Boggs the fourth, told me exactly why we women are not as equal worth as a man.

This man had been a mechanic in the Vietnam War, dishonorably discharged. He, at one point had commanded a group of women, in the war or after when he lived in Korea I'm not sure. As he put it, they were completely incapable of doing anything mechanic let alone just changing a tire which is why it is completely wrong that women should ask to be treated equally to men. As he saw it we are completely incapable of performing to the same level as a man, we are the weaker sex not worth much at all.

It's for this reason that he nor his father acknowledge I'm working toward a college degree. Why my grandfather insisted on reading the morning newspaper to my mother instead of letting her reading it by herself (As she herself only has two college degrees).

My car wouldn't start the other day. The battery was fine, the alternator was fine, everything was fine. The most likely reason for my car troubles was that someone had set off my security feature. Someone who had just recently found out where I live (I was being patriotic and had registered to vote). Someone who thinks women should not be educated or be equal to men perhaps?

This is the man we let loose on our streets. A man who has told his daughter she'll turn out to be nothing but a whore and will stop at nothing trying to make her one. I'm actually more sad for the man, as that's really just pathetic!

Perpetual Harassment

It's been 15 years since my parent's divorced. It's been 8 years since I've seen my Dad, 7 since I last talked to him. He was supposed to pay our health care. He stopped leaving my single mother to pay for it. He was supposed to pay our child support. He stopped.

He's lived in Kansas, Massachusetts, California, Mexico. Once we get a hint as to where he is and start the legal procedures necessary to bring him to justice, he's already disappeared. For the past 4 years no one has been able to find him.

However he knows where we are. Always.

People who have never dealt with an abuser think we're paranoid. I remember that movie Sleeping With the Enemy with Julia Roberts. There are moments where she thinks to herself "No, I'm just being paranoid" and it turns out, no, her husband is in fact in her home. He's found her and ready to punish her.

This is exactly how it is. They leave hints, clues that they are always close by.

My family moved to a new town for a better job for my Mom. We find out a few years later that my Dad had gotten a drivers license with an address only an hour away from where we were living.
For those years that we lived there and he lived there too. For years we had horrible car problems. As soon as we got one fixed a new one popped up. Occasionally we'd smell his cologne, or see part of a cigar (he smoked one occasionally). And once, written in blood in front of our apartment were the words "Hi dead dog"

Whether or not he followed us, watched us, or even wrote those words or not. Someone did. Someone was harassing us. We'd have problems every time they nearly found him. They found out who he worked for and put a hold on his checks, the radiator in the car went out. I'm not saying he did this per se, but it is a little suspicious to say the least. Especially when he was supposedly living so nearby and all the while we had no clue.

When my parents divorced, we moved in with my Mom's parents. And only occasionally received his mail, because he had previously lived there (why will be reveled later), and my sister and I were on his insurance until he dropped us. At this point, we stopped receiving his mail. We moved into our own place and never received his mail. We moved to a new town, and never received his mail, another time and nothing.

We now have moved again, and for the first time in 9 years, we receive mail for him. Why? Why for the first time in nearly a decade are we receiving his mail? When my Mom has made sure that any connections of this sort are severed? Why are we getting his mail when he does not live here, nor as far as we know ever lived here?

We are scheduled to supposedly receive money from him this year. They may have found him and we may actually be getting the money he's required by law to pay us. Any real father would pay so much more, however by state he is only required to pay $250 per month per child. And he refuses to even pay that much. But we may get it and all of a sudden he supposedly lives with us? NO!

I ask you all to contact your congressmen and governors, and attorney generals and ask them for harsher punishments for child support jumpers, for abusers. This man abandoned us, yet continues to harass us!
This man who refused to be a father to me or my sister, a good husband to my mother, a law abiding citizen is free. Free to do what he pleases, free to continually harass my family. Free. And we refuse to be held captive by this man. We escaped him before and now we have lives, lives that surely would never have come to be had we stayed with him. And he can't live with that. He refuses to let us move past him.

I know there are many many people out there with stories similar. If you read this and think that, know you are not alone. This is why we need to take action and demand that people like this are found and punished accordingly and good people are free to live their lives without that man following them in the dark, both literally and figuratively.

My Story

At seven years old my father hit me. I was seven and we were living in Kansas, my Mom had just given birth to my sister, my Father was cooking, I was hungry. My mom was sitting on the couch with my sister and i was sitting on our class coffee table and the News Hour with Jim Lehrer was on. To a seven year old child dinner was taking way to long, so I kept going into the kitchen grabbing a couple of pepperoni slices at a time because all my Dad would say is that it would be done soon. After a few times of going into the kitchen and back to the coffee table, my Father came out of the kitchen and slapped me across my face.

My mom took me and my sister to the McDonald's down the road and told me to trust her. That it would all be okay.

A day or so later, my Dad got angry again, and I got scared and hid under the dining room table, concealed by the lace table cloth that came to the floor I felt safer.

That night I watched as my Father strangle my mother as she was breast feeding my sister.

For whatever reason, he stopped. My mom got to her feet and called for me. Both my parents looked down the hallway towards my bedroom. I didn't come. The called again, and I came out from under the table.

I will never forget the look on my Dad's face when he saw that I had seen exactly what he had done. Never.

We left that night. We left for good.

He's supposed to pay child support, and he hasn't. He's dropped off the face of the planet. His brother or father, my uncle and grandfather, won't tell us where he's gone. And we suffer. And no one can or will find him.

There are many men named Lewis Alexander Boggs out there. But one of them is this man, this man who refuses to let us move on. who has abandoned us, who abused us. He is charming and alluring and looking at him you'd never guess that he's a violent man. Lewis Alexander Boggs the fifth. His father Col. Lewis Alexander Boggs the fourth, his new wife Norma Smith Boggs, his brother Robert Bruce Boggs, his wife Bridgette Sue Bell Boggs, their son Travis Mckay Boggs. These people, my blood family, hasn't helped us. And no one will make them.

This is what abuse victims go through. People who don't believe them. But here is my story, maybe this post and posts to come will shed some light on our journey. And you too will begin to see why we need more effort in catching abusers and child support evaders.