Sarah and Susan Browder.Photo: Susan Browder
Sarah Browder and her husband had a whirlwind courtship when they were dating.
“She met him and he just swept her off her feet,” her mother, Susan Browder, 74, of Florida, tells PEOPLE.
Soon after Sarah and her husband, Camp Lejeune Marine Pfc. Kirk Harris, wed in 2011, their relationship took a dangerous turn. “The dynamics changed rapidly,” her mother says.
Harris became “less loving and generous” and “more controlling and unkind,” says Browder, who adds, “He told her what he wanted her to wear.”
Jealous of Sarah’s male friends, Harris made Sarah “remove every man from her contacts,” says Browder.
Sarah urged Harris to go to counseling, but he refused, says Browder. “He was getting some sort of anger management [counseling] through the Marines on base because there had been some problems there,” says Browder. “So we thought, ‘Okay, they’re trying to deal with this.'”
But the relationship continued to sour, and Sarah took steps to get away from Harris.
But that was not to be.
On Sept. 23, 2012, “Sarah’s controlling husband tried to prevent her from leaving an abusive marriage, and he was not going to let that happen,” says Browder.
“He raised his handgun and put one bullet through her spine and another through her shoulder as she was fleeing.”
For four days, Sarah was in the intensive care unit — “unable to speak, move, or breathe on her own,” says Browder.
The 29-year-old died on Sept. 27, 2012.
This October — which is national Domestic Violence Awareness Month — Browder is raising awareness about the prevalence of domestic violence-related shootings.
As a member of the Everytown Survivor Network, which is part of the gun-violence prevention organizationEverytown for Gun Safetyand its grassroots networks,Moms Demand ActionandStudents Demand Action, Browder is “fighting forcommon sense methods of preventing intimate partner violence,” she says.
Research shows that the presence of a gun in a home makes it five times more likely that an abuser will kill his female victim, according to Everytown.
“I am absolutely convinced that lives will be saved if we can do that.”
Warning Signs
Though her daughter died nine years ago, Browder thinks about her every single day. “She was funny, clever and artistic,” she says. “She was beautiful and she was very affectionate. And she was stolen from us.”
Since her daughter’s murder, Browder and her family have learned a lot more about domestic violence.
For one partner to rush the relationship, which Harris did with Sarah, “is a dangerous sign,” she says.
So was the controlling behavior he showed toward her.
But, as often happens with victims of domestic violence, Saray didn’t say much about it, Browder says.
“We were aware that there were some problems we thought they were ‘working on,'” says Browder. “But that was before we learned so much about the dynamics of domestic abuse. He was a Marine and we knew that he had a gun and that he wasn’t always appropriate with where he carried it, in our opinion.
“But we didn’t think of him as a potential murderer.”
Call for Senate to Renew Domestic Violence Law
There are even higher rates of intimate partner violence and gun homicide against women of color, according to Everytown, Moms Demand Action, and Students Demand Action.
“We know that domestic violence and gun violence are deeply connected,” Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts says in a statement.
“This Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we stand alongside survivors in calling on lawmakers to take action on common-sense methods to protect victims and survivors of domestic violence,” she says.
“It’s time for the Senate to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, whichpollingshows 90% of people in the U.S. support,” she said.
The landmark law, signed in 1994 to help combat domestic violence, expired in 2019. A renewal of the law has passed the House of Representatives, but some Senate Republicans have objected to provisions in the bill that would restrict access to guns for domestic abusers, reportsThe New York Times.
Survivors can also turn to theEverytown Survivor NetworkandMoments that Surviveto talk to – and support – each other.
In a guest column Browder wrote for theWinston-Salem Journalin 2013, she said she is grateful that her daughter’s “life on this earth still has purpose.”
“Awareness has been raised and lives are being saved,” she wrote.
For more information on gun-related domestic violence, please visitEverytownResearch.org.
October isDomestic Violence Awareness Month. If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go tothehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.
source: people.com
