Oh guys. Where do I start? I don't know, so I'm going to just jump into it. My sister was violently attacked by her husband, whom she had filed divorce papers against just days before. She's ok, thankfully.

He, Justin, had moved out about 3 weeks ago, at Heather's insistence, into his own apartment. Sometime around 3AM on Saturday morning, he parked his car 3 blocks away. He called her, she answered, and he started getting shitty and combative. Meanwhile, he must have been walking to her house, intending to ambush her. He used a key he hadn't returned to enter the house. He said something like, "I bet you wish you'd gotten this back, don't you?" He then held her hostage for over an hour, systematically destroying all the expensive equipment she uses for her work as a court reporter (a laptop, her steno machine, the USB software key that licenses her expensive steno software). He kept saying that she "broke the rules". He destroyed the phone, and then he raped her. He tried to suffocate her to keep her from screaming. After he'd proven himself Big Gorilla, he handed her his cell phone and demanded that she call the cops on him, as he paced around the house with a rubber mallet in his hand. I think he plotted the entire thing. A premeditated attack that I find more frightening than a so-called "crime of passion" where someone goes ape shit in the midst of a moment. He has proven himself a control freak with total disdain for any sort of boundaries.

So he is in county jail, facing 4 felonies for now, bail is set at $300,000, his arraignment is tomorrow. Hopefully the DA will stack on a few more felony charges. We're hoping even more that he serves a lengthy prison sentence. His family says that they won't bail him out, but he has an enabler grandma who could be a wild card in the whole thing. (Though she will never see her great-great grand daughter again if she does something so stupid as bail him out.)

I spent the weekend up in Sacramento with my sis and mom. Heather is shaken. We are all worried that he will get out and come and hurt her more severely. We have no evidence to believe otherwise. She is moving.

It's all too easy in this situation to begin self prosecuting: should have changed the locks, should have filed a TRO when he started acting weird, shouldn't have assumed he would be adult about sharirng 50/50 custody....but the fact of the matter is that Justin did this, it is solely his fault.

I am suddenly finding myself reading domestic violence web pages, talking to domestic violence counselors, reading the California Penal Code to identify a host of additional felonies he committed, I am imagining the sweetness of jail yard justice. I am seething with a hatred I didn't know I had in me.

But there are the immediate things that need to be taken care: the Restraining Order, the follow up interview with the Sheriff, the interview with the DA, finding a loaner laptop to replace the one he stepped on, borrowing a steno machine so she can work this week, determining if the hard drive is ruined or if she can recover the data for her most recent job, finding a new apartment - an overwhelming list under normal circumstances, but let alone as the aftermath of an attack. So much of this is stuff only Heather can take care of it, so we are in the position of trying to find where we can help. And at the same time sorting through the onslaught of emotions this triggers.

So that catches ya'all up on where I'm at. Not a fun weekend. A weekend that has changed my life.

Hug your loved ones for me today. ♥ ♥ ♥