The Mind of a Former Abuser

Wallace Wendell Smith abused his wife for over 35 years before he was forced to go to classes at the Domestic Abuse Center in Columbia, S.C. He is now a counselor at the Domestic Abuse Center and sees over 50 men a week with the ‘disease’ he had so many years ago, he said in an interview.

As a child, Smith witnessed his father abuse his mother. He recalls seeing his mother with puffy, bruised eyes and hearing his father refer to his mother as “property.”

“I saw my father beat my mother four, five times a week. I couldn’t understand why she would go to bed normal and wake up in the morning with a busted lip and all swollen-eyed. It got so bad for me that I left home when I was 14,” he said.

Smith’s mother died when she was only 48 years old.

A few years after leaving home, Smith went into the Army. Three years after this, when Smith was only 19, he married his first wife, who was 34.

He met her “on the streets,” he said and added that he married her because he thought he could change her.

“You can’t change people,” he said in the interview.

According to Smith, his relationship with his first wife was bad. He even ended up in jail a few times because he abused his wife. He openly admitted that his bad relationship with his first wife also led to his verbally abusing his second wife.

“I told her [Smith’s second wife] that I treated her the way I needed to,” he said. He wouldn’t allow his second wife to “get away” with the things his first wife did. For years, Smith said that he was verbally abusive because of what his wife did. If he yelled at her and called her worthless, it was because she deserved it, he believed then.

He changed when his youngest daughter was 6 or 7 years old.

“There was a gun on the table, and she said that she wished someone would kill me,” Smith said.

He asked about domestic abuse services to get help and went to the Domestic Abuse Center for two years. While there, he grew to understand that he was abusive toward his wife because of something wrong with him, not her.

After attending the Domestic Abuse Center, Smith was offered a position at the center to help others overcome domestic violence. Smith has worked at the center for 25 years now. He wrote a book six years ago called Real Men Don’t Abuse Women, which is a memoir of his childhood and the events that led him to be abusive.

Today, Smith tells women in abusive relationships that they don’t deserve it and that no man has the right to abuse a woman, whether it is physical, verbal, sexual or psychological abuse.

The Domestic Abuse Center is located at 989 Knox Abbott Dr., Cayce, S.C.