Husband and I moved apartments last year.  We were very excited to be in a quiet neighborhood, away from the college students flooding our building and wreaking havoc at all hours of the day and night.  The inhabitants of our “new” building are mostly professionals with young families, aka, all quiet after 10pm.  We were ecstatic.  However, over the course of the last three weekends, I have had three confrontations with different neighbors.  These polite confrontations have ranged from, “please stop pulverizing chickens or coconuts, it’s 11:30pm and we’re trying to sleep” to “please don’t have a dinner party outside of our bedroom window”  I should mention that we live in a ground level apartment.  I should also mention that our bedroom window faces an alley with parked cars…party on dude.

This weekend’s confrontation required a phone call to the police at 1pm on Saturday afternoon.  The yelling had been going on for 15 minutes.  And I mean YELLING like I’ve never heard.  Phrases like, “I gave you an ORDER to clean” and “get the F OUT OF MY HOUSE” .  And then I heard a woman say, “Stop it you’re hurting me.”  That was the last straw and husband called the police.

We were certain this man wasn’t yelling at his wife.  She had left the apartment around 7:30am.  They tend to make grand entrances and exits, it’s hard not to notice their comings and goings.  We suspected he was abusing the nanny (they have 2 little kids) what with the cleaning argument.  And the woman was yelling back in French, so we thought maybe it was a foreign worker, or something. 

The police came and the abuser came out, polite as can be, a real Jekyll and Hyde, and said that he was having an argument but it wasn’t anything serious.  The policeman asked who the woman was.  My neighbor/the abuser replied that it was….his mother!!!!!!  WTF?!?!?!?!

I still feel sick to my stomach about this.  Who treats their parents like that?  As a friend said, he fits the profile of an abuser and is probably abusing everyone in his house, 2 young kids and wife.  I’ve definitely heard scary and questionable things coming from their apartment, but it’s hard to really know what is going on.  We wanted to send the message that people can hear what he is doing, knock it off.  But it’s hard to sleep at night knowing that bad things are probably happening to small children 20 feet away from me.  My impulse is to bang on their door and intervene, but I know that is not a safe or effective solution.  If I hear their kids scream one more time, I’m calling child protective services.

The policeman left a few minutes later and things quieted down a little.  He kept yelling at his mother, but not as loud.  The kids were not in the house to witness his behavior, thank god.  Though I’m now certain they have been on the receiving end of it.  I’m not sure what else to do or say, so I’m going to post some resources about abuse.  If anyone reading this needs help for yourself or a friend, check out the links below.

http://feminist.org/911/crisis.html

http://www.womenshealth.gov/Violence/state/ 

http://www.domesticviolence.org/