CONNECTICUT (WTNH) — A retired award-winning Connecticut columnist is shedding light on domestic violence impacting boys and men through sharing his deeply personal story of survival.
James Walker, 72, was born and raised in the North New Jersey projects with six siblings. He says from the very beginning, life was a game of Russian roulette — each day was far from guaranteed.
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“My first memory in life is having my foot cut open,” Walker said, recounting a story about when he was 3 years old. He was attempting to get to the cookie jar when his father caught him and began beating him with a wooden hanger. A protruding nail on the hanger caused the sizable gash to his foot, he said.
Walker says chunks of his memory are missing, a result of dealing with a childhood filled with traumatic moments like the cookie jar incident. They are times that are too painful to remember, yet impossible to forget.
He said that in kindergarten when he was five years old he tried to run away from home. By the time he was seven, he said he had been molested repeatedly in a three-month period. By his early teens, he said he had attempted to commit suicide.
He continues to have flashbacks from those early years: violence at the hands of his father, getting raped multiple times in the shelter system and ultimately, a childhood robbed of joy. His siblings’ experiences were no different, but he says his mother took the brunt of the beatings.
In their quest to escape the wrath of James’ father, Egbert Walker, the former New Haven columnist says his mother, brothers and sisters would sleep on park benches or at abandoned buildings, dragging their belongings in garbage bags. Like many victims of domestic violence, the family would eventually return back to their abuser, unable to stave off their hunger or support themselves financially.
While those were terrible times, Walker says he always found a safe haven in his mother, Doris Walker.
“I really believe, had my mother not gotten us out of there, I wouldn’t be here today,” he said.
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Walker and his beloved family would go on to eventually be free from their abuser. In 1970, he says his father was behind a murder-suicide that took his own life and left a 22-year-old pregnant woman dead.
Although Egbert was gone, Walker’s trauma would be lodged into the corners of his consciousness for the decades to come. He says for years, he had trouble forming his identity. Seeing news stories involving domestic violence was triggering.
When asked how he moved on, he said, “You turn on yourself because you’re so busy with your head turned towards your past that you can’t get to your future.”
One in three men experience sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Walker says talking to people he’s met over the years has helped because mental health and community resources were sparse compared to what is offered today. But what has been most instrumental in his avenue to healing is penning a personal memoir, “Dead Windows.“
“The dead window was my father and myself. Windows are meant to be opened, they’re windows of opportunities,” he said.
Walker has gone on to seize numerous opportunities that have come his way, including interning at the special assignment unit at CNN, working as a TV reporter in Tennessee and going on to write for numerous Connecticut publications, most recently a senior editor for the New Haven Register prior to retiring.
Through his work as a columnist, Walker has met three presidents and has gone on to win seven awards for his work, including three for his pieces on domestic violence.
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He hopes to be a voice for other young men, especially those who are survivors of domestic violence, letting them know that they are not alone.
“I would tell them to talk about it because that’s the real problem,” he said. “You’re taught to be strong and you don’t cry and this nonsense. We do hurt. When you hit men, it does hurt. When you are a child and you’re being whipped to the point where there are scars all over your body, that hurts.”
“Dead Windows” can be found online on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google Books. Walker says he will also be holding a book signing at the Norwalk Public Library this October for Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Watch Walker’s full interview with News 8 below.
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