#ConcertSwindler

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How did I fall for this and ignore the signs for so long you might ask, please read the following “victim’s statement” before you criticize. Ask yourself would you make the effort to save this life? Are you willing to do this for someone else and hope that if one of your children found themselves in a similar situation someone would go the extra mile for them?

My name is Angel Haines. I am 27 years old, and Jimmie Haines is my father. He called me Oct. 3^rd 2021 unprompted; the conversation consisted of my saying hello and him yelling at me for approximately 15 minutes. Upset and hurt, I turned to social media for the first time, and I said something there; I posted a tweet that referred to that phone call and the subject matter of that call. I mentioned that I felt worthless, that he had screamed at me and called me gay slurs.

Within hours of that post, he came to my apartment that I shared with Brandon Mitchell. I don’t remember much about the morning of Monday, Oct 4^th 2021 as Jimmie quickly became violent and was screaming about the social media post I had made. I can recall how angry he was that I shared this secret as he punched me in my right eye; after that, I blacked out. I was told he also had his hands around my throat and that my roommate had called 911. This was not the first time he has come to my home and attacked me, but this is the first time that a restraining order was filed on my behalf.

He would become increasing angrier that I filed for this restraining order and contacted law enforcement after each time he attempted to contact me. Wednesday, Oct 6^th, the phone calls began. I reached out and was informed that law enforcement would speak to him. The following day, Thursday, Oct 7^th, the phone calls began about 6 am; by noon, I had over 40 missed calls. I went to court and sought to make the temporary restraining order permanent. I would return to work as I was scheduled to work until 7:30 pm. He is aware that I no longer drive and that I walk home from work, however, that evening, I was picked up and left a few minutes early. My boss told me that the security footage caught him driving past my place of employment a few minutes after I left and a few moments before I was due to walk home. Brandon, my roommate, texted me to tell me he was circling our block, passing our home every four and a half minutes. I waited for hours hoping he would leave, just give up for the night, so that I could go home. Law enforcement was contacted and was able to stop his vehicle. My roommate was able to observe most of this interaction, needing at one point to walk my dog so he was able to hear Jimmie complain that I struck him during his attack just three days earlier. Brandon heard him tell the officer that he was just waiting for me to come outside; it was after this statement that the officer found a stolen gun in his car. My roommate was told to go back inside, and from the window, he witnessed Jimmie strike the officer. The officer defended himself and tazed Jimmie before taking him into custody. It was at this point that I was shaking, crying and terrified. I left my home with only the clothes on my back. That night, I fled for my life. Days later, my roommate secured a new living arrangement, and I was forced to come back to remove my belongings. I am living on a friend’s couch with just a few of my possessions. I was forced to leave my animals behind and struggle with the fact I cannot be with my dog, Peanut. Peanut was my mother’s dog and the last connection I have to my mother. He is sick, and I cannot be with him because of Jimmie.

               Jimmie is angry because I might tell someone about our family secret; the secret is one of severe physical abuse, torture, mental abuse and violent sexual assault. He has an image that he is fiercely protective of; he attends church daily, and it is obvious that he was triggered by the very thought that I might tell someone who he really is.

               I have had night terrors for as long as I can remember; there are four that repeat nightly. All four of these are memories, memories of violent rapes that occurred in my childhood. I have never told anyone of these rapes until now. I have never said these words out loud. One of the dreams is my earliest memories of rape. I was six years old, still sharing a bed with my sister. He came into our room, ripped away my blankets, and removed me from our bed. My mother worked most nights, but on this night, she came home early. Jimmie was angry and flew into a rage that she had interrupted him, and he began to beat my mother until she was unconscious and bleeding. He then turned his rage to me, at six years old; I laid there crying while he was on top of me believing he had killed my mother while he violently raped me. My father, who should have loved me, violently raped me that night. That was not an isolated event; this continued regularly until I was a teenager.

I was only safe when my paternal grandmother would visit for the holidays. He did not dare to beat us or rape me when she was in the house. She was my favorite. I never left her side. She loved me, and when she touched me it didn’t hurt. She brought me safety, even if it was only a day at a time. When she passed away, she left me her property, a property that Jimmie forced me to sign over to him. My earliest memories are of my mother lying in her own blood, believing he killed her and remembering him repeatedly telling us that he would kill us. The fear he instilled has shaped how I respond to him now as an adult, how we all responded to him. I have always lived with the fear that one day he might kill me. I have been forced to give him money to pay his rent, his bills and purchase the very car he drove as he circled my home just waiting for me to come outside, wanting to kill me and drive away.

               I have never been able to escape his reach. He has always found me. He threatened to kill me if I cut my hair, and I was forced to keep it long until I finally found the courage to cut it nearly five years ago. The fear he will kill me has shaped every decision I have ever made, as well as my siblings. At 17, I found my friend, on what would have been his 18^th birthday. He was who I shared my day with; he knew of the physical abuse, but he had demons of his own, and finding him shook me to my core. My friend who offered me comfort was gone, and it was a different type of trauma than what I had experienced. My father wasn’t of any use; he didn’t hug me. He screamed at me to get over it.

               About five years, I accidently exposed I was gay. I was parking the car, and when he criticized me for not parking very straight, and I said, “That’s okay, I am not very straight.” He didn’t speak; he just punched me in the face. The only thing that changed that day was that he would begin to call me some sort of gay slur every time he saw or spoke to me. He has caused four of my traumatic brain injuries. The worst and most recent occurred in 2016. I went to the hospital and was told I had a concussion. Three hours later, Brandon found me passed out in a pool of my own brain fluid. A week later, I woke up in the hospital. I was not asked if this was caused by abuse, and I was too afraid to tell them. This attack led to what was the first of many seizures.

               My oldest brother attempted suicide multiple times while I was a child. We all did, actually. Even though it looked like he was the favorite, he was beaten, too. If at any point Danny tried to protect one of us, Jimmie would beat him. Danny knew this but didn’t hesitate to step in when Jimmie would start hitting my mother or one of us. Danny helped to protect me when he could. He took me to my first concert at eight, and live music has been the only place I can escape from the trauma I have tried so desperately block out of my mind. Danny passed away from kidney disease, and I miss him terribly. He was my last living relative.

 
               Jimmie beat my only sister when they found out she was six months pregnant at 17. She nearly lost my nephew, Cory. I don’t know if she told them what really happened, but the doctors did not think the baby would make it. He was born eight weeks early. Megan was so scared of having the baby around Jimmie that Cory would live with his father. At 19, Megan left home to be with her fiancé and later have their second son. She would later go on to self-medicate and use drugs. She relapsed after giving birth to a baby girl. When Jimmie began raping me, my sister was 14, the same age I was when he stopped. I never told her what he did to me; we didn’t talk about any of the abuse growing up. My sister’s relapse took her life and left three children without their mother.

               My mother took in a child that Jimmie had with another woman. She raised him and loved him just the same, but not Jimmie. When he found out my younger brother was gay, he threw him out of the house. I defended and supported him, and Jimmie threw me out, too, at the age of 17. I was homeless at 17, much like I am now. My brother was able to take me in; we lived in New York for a little while. He got married to my best friend, Jake, and they had adopted two infants when his husband committed suicide shortly after one of those phone calls. Jimmie would call and scream at them, too. We knew if we didn’t answer the phone, he would show up at our doorstep. That was more terrifying than the abusive phone calls, but they took their toll. It was this constant verbal abuse that caused my best friend and brother-in-law to take his own life. A short week later, my brother ended his grief by also taking his life; I blame Jimmie. He beat my mother bloody. He beat my sister, my brothers; he beat all of us. I was the one to find both my brother and brother-in-law. It haunts me to this day, and I blame Jimmie.

               My mother worked as many as three jobs when my father wouldn’t just to keep a roof over our heads. Even though she worked multiple jobs, she found the time to make dinner between shifts. She worked endlessly; she took care of the house and us. I came home to care for my mother when she became ill because he refused to drive her to the ER when she needed medical care.  I stayed for a year to a year and a half and left home again after she passed away. I miss my mother, and I don’t even know where her ashes are. I don’t feel safe asking Jimmie if he knows where they are or if I can have them. Peanut was my last connection to my mother, and I am forced to live apart from him while his health is also failing. I know I won’t be with him when he passes, and I am broken that he thinks I have abandoned him.

Three years ago, after losing all of the family members that I loved, I drove off the side of a mountain in an attempt to end my life. I needed to end the constant abuse Jimmie inflicts, and I no longer had the emotional support system that once grounded me. My roommate just happened to notice I wasn’t home and prompted my rescue. This was not my first attempt, but it was my most extreme.

               Jimmie has taken so much from me. I haven’t been able to sleep through the night since he began raping me at the age of six; even though he stopped at age fourteen, I have been haunted by night terrors and wake up several times throughout the night screaming, “No,” or, “Stop,” while clutching tightly to my blankets. I relive those rapes every night, and I am an adult that is horrified of the dark. He constantly raped me. The attacks were violent, and I cannot bring myself to describe them in further detail. I am an adult that has panic attacks when the sun goes down every night. I flinch when someone gets to close; I am uncomfortable with even a friend giving me a hug. I can’t have a healthy relationship with anyone. I want this nightmare to end. I want to live in a world where I don’t have to flinch at someone’s touch. I don’t want to have to keep looking over my shoulder petrified that he will find me, and I don’t want to regret exposing our family secret, my secret, only to have him grow more determined to kill me. I want the night terrors to stop. I want to stop reliving the moments that he pulled me from my bed and pulled at my clothing as a child. I want the screaming for him to stop touching me to end. I want to stop thinking about what he did to me and what he forced me to do to him. Jimmie is a monster, and he appeared on my doorstep just because of a tweet. He got a stolen gun because I would not answer my phone, and he will be vengeful that I wrote this statement. I cannot be in the courtroom today as I honestly fear for my life. I do not believe that a restraining order will protect me, and I am in hiding. I cannot work as it could expose my location. I am fearful that he would harm the people that are kind enough to tolerate me screaming every night while I lay on their couch. They are risking their safety for the sake of mine. They have stuck their necks out to protect me, so can you. I am pleading with you to believe everything I have written as it is, a few moments that I experienced as a child. Please find it in your heart to place value to my life that I was never shown and remove Jimmie Haines from society for as long as humanly possible.

Please give me a small bit of security. I thank you for your time.

Angel Haines

WAIT UNTIL I TELL YOU WHAT PART SHE LIED ABOUT…

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