About Karen Connell
My name is Karen Connell, and I was born in Los Angeles, California. The desert community of Newberry Springs was the place I was raised in, and I returned to the city for college. I attended UCLA, majoring in economics and minoring in history. I am also a domestic violence survivor and have gone through severe abuse. I used all my experience to become an author and an award-winning speaker as a community educator. My goal was to document and share my story, which could help others get out of domestic violence situations and get on with their lives. I had numerous local and national television appearances where I spoke about my harrowing experience and used my platform to raise my voice against domestic violence.
I went on to lobby with a coalition of advocates for the first domestic violence training law in California. Served along with other advocates and law enforcement officials on the State Attorney General’s task force to create a law enforcement training manual then trained L.A.P.D.
Also served on the Los Angeles Domestic Violence Council.
The Los Angeles City Attorney’s office, which is now a special unit, recruited me to create a domestic violence advocate program.
Book Synopsis
I tried to pen down my whole journey of extreme physical pain and emotional abuse in my book that I received for almost 15 years from my husband. He ended up slashing my throat, severing my larynx, the carotid arteries on both sides, and my windpipe. I stumbled out, and a doctor found me who was the head of the emergency room at Huntington Memorial Hospital. He called for the help that I needed to survive. When I was in the hospital, barely fighting for my life, at that moment, I decided that I would use my experience to educate people about domestic violence. I realized that so many people in a similar condition would need to hear out my story and get a message from it that you should not feel helpless as there are still choices left that you could use to take back your life.
The biggest problem, in my opinion, is that we do not want to talk about domestic violence, and this ignorance hides the fact that one in four women and one in six men are affected by domestic violence. I believe it is the single most deadly violent crime in the United States, if not the world, and after all these
years, not much seems to have changed the dynamics and persistence of this very personal violence. It is a crime committed by someone you are emotionally tied to and who insists they love you.
Domestic violence is a war that you never wanted, but now your self-worth is being stripped off layer by layer until there is nothing left of your personality. Always remember that this is not the end of your story. As long as we are making significant changes to how we approach life, we are making progress in the right direction. I am trying to resolve this issue by educating both the victim and the perpetrator.
Putting forward my experiences to the readers, I hope victims learn that they have a choice to determine their life going forward and that the abuser learns better ways to deal with their anger or frustration.