‘SPACE NERDS’ UNITE IN SOUTH TEXAS
Musk’s commercial exploration firm connects the Brownsville area to new world of interstellar dreamers
BOCA CHICA — Growing up in nearby Brownsville, Raquel Aldape went to Boca Chica Beach once or twice as a child. But as she grew older, she found she preferred the beaches of South Padre Island, giving her little reason to return to Boca Chica — until SpaceX decided to hang its shingle, er, spaceship, 20 minutes from her home.
Since then, Aldape, 51, has returned here again and again to keep tabs on early prototypes of the Starship vehicle that might someday carry travelers to the moon and beyond. As she began posting photos on
Facebook, Aldape soon became entwined in an international community of space enthusiasts and interstellar dreamers, hungry for photos and any other updates that she could provide from her weekly trips to the SpaceX facility.
“There’s a lot of space nerds out there,” she said, “and they’re just so excited about this.”
SpaceX moved into the Brownsville area with a promise to create jobs and spur the local economy. Those benefits have come slowly, but billionaire Elon Musk’s commercial space company has provided other rewards by connecting local residents to a global community beyond their South Texas hometown — a community united around a
least 46 such cases since the bill’s enactment on Sept. 1, meaning a new person enters the local criminal justice system almost once a day on this type of offense.
Offenses that now fit into the third-degree felony were formerly lumped into a wider category of assault, which is a class A misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in county jail.
“For us, this law says to survivors’ abusers that Texas no longer treats violence against pregnant women like a parking ticket,” said Emilee Whitehurst, Houston Area Women’s Center president and CEO.
Statistics show the frequency of the offense, but society still isn’t aware, she said. More than 320,000 women are estimated to be abused by their partners during pregnancy, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. The same group also found that 1 in 6 abused women are first abused during pregnancy.
“We have definitely not adequately accounted for the way that intimate partner violence has impacted the health of pregnant women,” Whitehurst said.
Prosecutor Mary McFaden called it “sad commentary” that so many people abuse pregnant women. The open cases mirror trends seen in general instances of intimate partner violence, she said. Most of the defendants are known to the survivor.
“It affects every community,” said McFaden, division chief of the Family Criminal Law Division in the Harris County District Attorney’s Office. “It affects every culture, it affects every economic group.”
‘I was trapped’
Robinson was at least six months pregnant when her boyfriend broke a bone in her face, she said.
She had accused her partner of cheating, and he retaliated. He grabbed her by the hair and slung her to the ground, she said, prompting her to make a desperate grab for her boots — the only thing on her person that might protect her and her baby.
He hit her on the side of the head, and she slung her shoe at him, Robinson said. He clobbered her in the eye, bringing her to the floor. He began choking her, she said, and she played dead.
Robinson, then 20, went to the hospital, triggering alarms for concerned physicians, she said. But the expecting mother avoided police, worried that they would only put her in a worse situation with her boyfriend.
“I think the beatings was threatening enough,” she said. “You couldn’t tell me that I was going to be OK if I go.”
The pregnancy added another layer of complication to her relationship.
“It was like I was trapped,” she said. “It was like, now I have to be with this person. It was the security, or maybe it was the hope, that it would change because I was pregnant.”
She stayed in that relationship for six years. Robinson said the abuse never stopped.
The stories of abused pregnant women in Harris County sound like echoes of Robinson’s experience. Charging documents for the arrests of their alleged assailants show repeated mentions of strangling, punching and hitting.
Some men were accused of throwing women against walls or to the ground; another was accused of biting. One man kicked his partner in the stomach, the documents show. Several of the defendants were women.
Researchers have been at odds over whether pregnant women are inherently more vulnerable in domestic violence situations, and a study published in the International Journal of Women’s Health noted that many studies disagree whether the prevalence of intimate partner violence decreases during pregnancy.
In many abuse situations, the assaulter can often feel threatened by the prospect of a woman’s attention being diverted away from them upon the arrival of a child, Whitehurst said, and her attachment to the child makes her more prone to manipulation based on the desire to protect the unborn. McFaden agreed that the partner exercises an even higher level of control in committing an assault.
That control and manipulation make it difficult for women to report, advocates said. They agreed that while the new law could be good for holding some partners accountable, prevention is the only way to stop abuse.
“Elevating the offense to a felony may or may not have an impact on whether it decreases the frequency of the crime,” said Maisha Colter, CEO of the Houston nonprofit Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse. “Most offenders are not aware of an elevation. They don’t offend based on the hierarchy of the consequence of the crime.”
She added that while the law does little for prevention, it sends a strong message that Texas is going to prosecute people at the highest level possible.
Women need to be reassured that they will be protected if they report abuse, said Sylvia Matthews, executive director of the Houston Pregnancy Help Center. For example, they might be fearful that their assailant would bail out of jail, she said.
“There needs to be more safety attached to the mother,” Matthews said.
But locking abusers up for longer periods of time can only protect the survivor, Whitehurst said. She pointed to Antoinette Sloan, a 28-year-old social worker who fled domestic abuse in Dallas with her 4-month-old baby. Her exboyfriend allegedly followed her about two months later, and on Sept. 14, he gunned down Sloan and then killed himself, according to police reports.
Sloan had been abused during her pregnancy, her parents said, and she never filed charges. If she had, it’s possible the ex-boyfriend would have been in jail at the time he killed her, Whitehurst said.
Women in similar situations can benefit knowing their attackers might face more punishment for their actions, Sloan’s father, Anthony, said.
“That’s a step in the right direction,” he said. “Not only you’re assaulting that individual, but you’re indirectly assaulting that baby as well.”
Texas Rep. Brooks Landgraf, an Odessa Republican who authored the bill, said he hopes it will deter would-be abusers.
He made it a point to tackle domestic abuse issues in the 2019 legislative session, also passing another bill into law that creates a database for domestic violence offenders. He wrote the bill on assaults of pregnant women after his local district attorney noticed an “inordinate” amount of cases in the area. He has advertised the law as “pro-life.”
“When you’re not in a position to be able to defend yourself or be able to flee your attacker, I think the law needs to offer certain protections to make up for that vulnerability,” he said.
A changed life
Until recently, Robinson has known only hardship, she said. She first got pregnant at age 16 and fell into a pattern of drug abuse, she said. She was charged with possession with intent to deliver in 2010 and completed her probation in 2017. For much of her adult life, she was also a sex worker.
After Robinson escaped her sixyear relationship with her abuser — the father of her second child — she got pregnant again. She entered a relationship with a man who was not her child’s father, and he beat her as well, she said.
When she got pregnant with her fourth child, her own family members victimized her, Robinson said, and she became fearful for her life.
She went to the Houston Pregnancy Help Center in 2018 and was sent to a facility in Waco for several months. She relearned some life skills and realized her worth.
That facility changed Robinson’s life, she said. After she left, she got married to a man she met years ago through Narcotics Anonymous. She’s also completing her high school diploma and is working to found a nonprofit that helps other domestic violence survivors.
Robinson encourages anyone who is being abused to have the courage to report to police. But she knows that’s not always realistic, so she hopes news of longer prison time reaches the ears of people who abuse pregnant women.
“Think twice about what you do,” she said. “It would only be a coward that would put his hands on a woman.”