My Parents Were Violent — First With Each Other, Then With Us. Here's Why I Let Them Back Into My Life.

“You don’t have to worry about running away ever again, because when we get home, I’m going to break your fucking legs,” Dad yelled to me from the driver’s seat of the car.

Mom and Dad, with my siblings in tow, had just picked me up from the police station in Green Bay, Wisconsin, after my failed attempt to run away.

Sitting in the back seat, I watched the approaching stop lights, waiting for the car to slow. As soon as the time was right, I planned to push the door open and jump. I had no time to think about what would happen. I knew the alternative — going back home with my parents — would be worse.

Earlier that day, there’d been an altercation when Dad discovered I’d snuck out of the house the night before and gone to a party. I knew it was against the rules but I took my chances and went anyway, hoping my parents wouldn’t find out. I made things worse by involving my 10-year-old brother, whom I asked to put my running shoes and shorts in the garage before I returned that morning. If Dad or Mom saw me, I thought they’d assume I had been out for my usual early morning run.

“Good morning,” Dad said as I walked in the house. “How was your run?”

“Good,” I replied.

I breathed a small sigh of relief as I headed toward my bedroom — it appeared I was in the clear. But a few hours later, when Dad summoned me and my younger brother to the living room, I knew something was up. Somehow, Dad knew everything, but he insisted my brother tell him what happened. I assumed he’d found out through the phone recording system he’d set up to listen in on our phone calls, his latest technique to make sure me and my siblings were staying on the straight and narrow.

Ever loyal to me, my brother refused to talk. Fearful of what would