In an interview with ABC, Shellie Zimmerman said that she had left her husband George the night before the shooting. If you don’t know anything about domestic violence statistics, this might not have set off any alarms. But I do, and suddenly the murder of Trayvon Martin makes so much more sense.
Shellie explained that she wasn’t home that February night, “I was staying at my father’s house. We had gotten into an argument the night before, and I left.”
Watch the ABC News interview here:
The sure thing that will set an abuser off is when the victim leaves. Domestic violence stats reveal that this is the most dangerous time for a woman living with an abuser. It can be lethal.
So Shellie leaves George and the next night, he’s out on the streets looking for someone else to control and abuse, as a substitute for his wife, whom he can’t control at that moment. Nothing irks an abuser more than having control taken away, even for a moment.
Shellie is still sticking by George’s story about that night, though she admits she can’t speak to what was going through his mind since she was gone.
“That’s just not his way,” Shellie answers in response to a question about whether George profiled Trayvon. But clearly it is his way.
George Zimmerman is a predator. He appears to have both abused his former girlfriend and molested his cousin. These are the actions of a predator. A predator stalks their prey, profiles them to find the one least likely to cause repercussions, and then swoops in for the kill. George Zimmerman has been accused of both domestic violence (by a different partner) and molestation of a young female relative. He was also arrested for two third-degree felonies involving assaulting a police officer.
Defenders claim these are all false allegations, but the statistical likelihood of real false allegations is so low as to render it illogical to assume that both of these allegations, made by different women, are false. There are also allegedly other women who refused to come forward out of fear. And then there’s the police officer assault, which is less likely to fall between the “he said she said” cracks because a male authority figure was the victim of Zimmerman’s rage that time.
Zimmerman chose not to control his rage at the world. It’s likely that he is/was an abuser of his female partners. The cousin identified the Zimmerman family as racist, on top of his fondling of her beginning when she was 6. Six-year-olds are easy targets. Someone who preys on a 6-year-old is a predator.
The profile of an abuser is a person who refuses to take responsibility for their life, their actions, and their feelings. Often they feel victimized by the very people they are victimizing (see Zimmerman demanding an apology from African Americans). They feel powerless and out of control, and instead of doing something productive about it, they find a victim they can abuse so that they can feel powerful and in control. Zimmerman’s spotty “career” history is par for the course of this profile.
A predator will use a combination of violence, economic dependency, verbal abuse and isolation (often asking the victim to lie for them thereby rendering the victim’s credibility worthless, which is handy for the abuser later) to establish and maintain their control.
It’s ironic and yet predictable that Shellie Zimmerman lied for the abusive George Zimmerman, and now she is in more trouble than he.
He did not show up to court for her, even though she was there for him in spite of the fact that their marriage was on the rocks. She couldn’t explain why he didn’t show up, saying that she always wants her husband’s support.
And now their marriage is strained – she wouldn’t say if they are still together or not.
He got what he needed from her, and now she is going to pay for lying for him. She doesn’t seem to see it this way yet, but objectively, I could have written this script based on his profile.
George Zimmerman was acquitted and Shellie Zimmerman pleaded guilty to perjury and got 100 hours of community service and one year’s probation. Ironic?
Shellie offered an apology to Trayvon Martin’s family at the end of the interview, making her the only Zimmerman to express the slightest bit of humanity toward the Martin family. Sociopathy can be earned the hard way.
Zimmerman’s apology at his bail bond hearing doesn’t count for obvious reasons, especially given his claim on TV that he didn’t regret having the gun or chasing Trayvon because it was “god’s plan” and “I am sorry that they buried their child”, which reveals a troubling lack of human emotion served by the verbal distancing — he’s sorry they buried their child, not sorry he shot him — let alone empathy.
“George Zimmerman has beaten down her self-esteem,” interviewer Christi O’Connor told ABCNews.com. Yes, that’s just another sign of a predator when taken together with his other behaviors.
O’Connor, who is working on a book about the George Zimmerman trial, also hinted that there was evidence that was mishandled, saying that during the sensational trial, “there were so many untruths told.”
“What the jury never heard could have led to a different verdict,” she said.
The saddest thing about all of this is that it is all so predictable, just as it is predictable that George Zimmerman is not finished preying on the innocent. Shellie Zimmerman may have been an accomplice in his deception of the court, but she is also yet another victim in the wake of George Zimmerman’s psychological problems.
Someone like that should not have been allowed to take a life with impunity. Just as with domestic violence, by not holding Zimmerman accountable, the state has given him a license to kill again and he will use it. This is also another argument for taking domestic violence more seriously, because it’s not as if it’s a surprise to see a person with domestic violence in their past taking innocent lives later.
On the contrary, it’s an alarm bell for society, just like animal abuse by young children is an alarm bell.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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