USA TODAY International Edition
Trump aide’s case dredges up ’80s abuse trauma
Ex-wife of prominent abuser sees parallels
The domestic violence news out of the White House this month was all too familiar to Charlotte Fedders.
Thirty-three years ago, she was the wife accusing her prominent spouse of serial abuse. Her then-husband, John Fedders, chief of enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission, was a tall, handsome lawyer with a very different public image than the one his family saw at home. Like Jennifer Willoughby, ex-wife of President Trump’s former staff secretary Rob Porter, Charlotte Fedders said she was regularly called an abusive name “to the point where it didn’t mean too much anymore.”
Fedders’ 1987 best-selling book, Shattered
Dreams, became a TV movie starring Lindsay Wagner.
“It has just brought too many memories with all the similarities,” Fedders said, citing black eyes and a broken window. “It’s been hard.”
Back then, Fedders said, no one talked about that kind of abuse in the upper-middle-class, country-club world she inhabited.
She stayed for 17 years after her wedding in 1966, through the belittling, the physical abuse — including during her first pregnancy — and the weeks of silent treatment she and their children often got.
“I thought we had put a lot of this stuff behind us, us as a country.” Charlotte Fedders, who married John Fedders in 1966. Charlotte says the abuse started a few months after their wedding. She says people didn’t talk about abuse back then.
Fedders said she thought things had changed since then.
“I thought we had put a lot of this stuff behind us, us as a country,” said Fedders, 74. “And it’s very disturbing to know that someone would be in the White House that close to the president without a full security clearance with this past that people knew about.”
Porter denies the allegations against him.
Fedders said she “never said a thing” about the abuse when administration officials vetted her exhusband to be the chief of enforcement at the SEC.
“I was afraid I’d be in real trouble if he found out,” Fedders said.
Women in prominent, affluent families may tolerate physical and emotional abuse because of fears that disclosure could harm families’ reputations and careers, pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris wrote in her new book The Deepest Well, which examines the health effects of these experiences on children.
When more affluent people don’t talk about domestic violence, the problem continues, and it perpetuates the idea that “adversity is a problem for only certain communities,” wrote Harris, who heads the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco.
Domestic abuse survivor L.Y. Marlow grew up in Philadelphia housing projects but knew stigma about abuse is spread across socioeconomic, racial and ethnic groups.
A decade ago, she launched the advocacy group Saving Promise, named after her granddaughter, Promise.
Marlow wanted to prevent her from becoming the fifth generation of women in her family to become domestic abuse victims.
“Unfortunately, sometimes it takes high-visibility people and circumstances for something to become part of the national agenda,” said Marlow.
Her group works with the Harvard School of Public Health on domestic violence prevention.
“The Me Too and Time’s Up movements didn’t get elevated until celebrities said something, even though the other stories are no less important.”
When Fedders read a blog post Willoughby wrote last April, titled “Why I Stayed,” she recognized similarities to her own former life.
“Everyone loved him,” Willoughby wrote of Porter. “People commented all the time how lucky I was.”
People used to say such things about Fedders’ 6-foot-10 ex-husband, too.
They’d say, “He just must be so wonderful to live with as he’s extremely charming and smart,” she said.
After The Wall Street Journal wrote a story detailing the abuse and possible financial improprieties revealed in her divorce proceedings, Fedders said, “I think he was very surprised that the rest of the country didn’t still feel that way.”
Fedders lives in Northern Virginia, where she gets the same $400 a month in alimony, which is supplemented by Social Security and a small inheritance. She retired from her job as a nurse in 2016.
Her ex-husband tried unsuccessfully to get a 25% share of the profits from her book.
Charlotte Fedders used the money to help pay for their five sons’ college education, to which John Fedders did not contribute.
“I don’t have a whole lot of money or too many of the things I used to have, but my life is great now,” said Fedders, who sees her 10 grandchildren regularly.
John Fedders could not be reached for comment.
Only one of the grown children has any contact with John, Fedders said. Visitation stopped 28 years ago after Andrew, then 12, told his father, “Take me home. Violence is not the answer” after he was shoved against a wall for misbehaving in an elevator.
“They are all wonderful men who treat their wives like princesses,” Fedders said of her sons.
“They never raise their hands or their voices.”
When he reposted a video of the Facebook Live Fedders did with USA TODAY last week, her oldest son, Luke, commented, “You CAN be a man from an abused household and NOT continue the violence.
“Five of us can attest to that, thanks to how we were raised by a strong woman/mother.”