It's a fair question: Why would Christine George get back together with a man whose violent history, detailed in court records, she knew all too well?
A few weeks ago, the hulking parolee and father of her teenage son moved back in to her Gentilly home. Days later she was dead.
Now George, who was a New Orleans Police dispatcher, is set to be buried alongside two of her grown children who were killed in what police call a domestic violence murder by a man with a long record of violence, including complaints by at least two women, records show.
The paper trail for 41-year-old Shawn Peterson details painful moments for women in his life. But the violence he now stands accused of -- a triple murder that took the life of George, 39, her daughter, Trisa George, 20, and Peterson's son, Leonard George, 18 -- is something no one could have predicted.
Peterson's history includes stints in prison, and some hard-to-understand twists -- such as the 265-pound, 6-foot-4-inch man taking out a restraining order against George, and one woman, who once sought protection from his violence, now speaking up in his defense.
Police arrested Peterson on Sept. 18, seven days after the Georges were found dead in the garage of their home.
"Why do women stay? Because they're terrified. Because often batterers threaten to kill them and their children," said Tania Tetlow, a law professor at Tulane University and director of the university's Domestic Violence Clinic. "And as awful and as counter intuitive as it is, this is sad proof that those kinds of things do happen."
Peterson was arrested in two separate domestic incidents in 2008, municipal court records show.
The first to throw a legal stone, however, was Peterson, and not George.
In March 2007, Peterson filed a petition asking for a restraining order from George, who he said was harassing him, his mother, and this then fiancée. His strategy was not uncommon, experts say.
Tetlow, who also is a former federal prosecutor, said men who show a pattern of committing acts of domestic violence often single out the victim first and file claims against them in an effort to sabotage any further actions they might try to take.
"Unfortunately, it's very common for batterers to take the offense and to accuse their victims of crimes before they get the chance to do so themselves," Tetlow said, adding that in New Orleans the number of women arrested on domestic violence charges is high.
"Roughly one-third of all domestic violence arrests are women. That's not to say that women never commit acts of domestic violence themselves. But his petition against her is very common. They act by gutting their victim's credibility before they themselves get the chance to do it first," she said.
In the case of Peterson, he reported that George had been harassing him, stalking him and had left him threatening voicemails and phone calls.
Peterson said that she broke his car windows and slashed his tires.
On March 24, he said, George called Peterson's mother and threatened to punch her in the face because "she was the reason that her and Shawn are not together."
Just a couple of days later, George reciprocated and filed a petition of her own asking for a protective order to keep Peterson away from her and his son, Leonard.
George wrote in the petition that neighbors and family members saw Peterson driving by her house at all hours of the day. She complained that he had beaten and kicked her on several occasions.
One time, she said, he dragged her body just three days after she had had a medical procedure.
A year later, in June 2008, another woman who said she was married to Peterson at the time, filed a restraining order against him, claiming she also had been violently abused, both physically and verbally.
Peterson and the woman had two children -- twins -- together, records indicate, and she too petitioned for a protective order to have Peterson stay away from all three of them.
The woman wrote in her petition that she was in her bedroom sitting on the bed with one of their children in her lap when Peterson attacked her. He punched her repeatedly, she said, so badly that she pretended to be knocked out so that he would stop pummeling her.
Peterson, who was freed from prison for good behavior after a conviction for attempted second-degree murder, boasted that he had a gun and threatened to kill her and whoever else he found her with, the woman reported. He said he was going to call her sister and shoot her in the head, she wrote.
That woman filed for sole custody of their children and also for a divorce from Peterson, but it was not immediately clear what the outcome there was.
"Peterson has a long history of domestic violence against women and numerous arrests for domestic violence," lead NOPD Detective Darrell Doucette said when the department announced Peterson's arrest.
When exactly Peterson and Christine George resumed their relationship isn't clear. But friends and family members recall the pair as being in an on-and-off volatile romance, constantly fighting and breaking up before patching things up again and getting back together.
Relatives said that up until just weeks prior to the Sept. 11 slaying, Peterson had been living with George, but was kicked out by her after the two had an argument.
Then, on the night before George and two of her children were found shot dead inside the garage of their Gentilly home, Peterson called George repeatedly on her cellphone, police said in arrest papers. She didn't pick up.
Moments later she and her two children were dead, all shot multiple times at point-blank range inside the SUV they had just returned home in seconds earlier.
Nowhere to go
The recourse for domestic violence victims, Tetlow said, is just not as simple as it seems.
"It's not like you see in the movies, where someone dyes their hair another color and simply skips town," Tetlow said. "You run away and you have a child in common, that's called kidnapping. It can be very difficult to get custody away from a batterer."
The biggest issue for Christine George, Tetlow said, her options were simply not enough to ensure her safety.
"She couldn't just call the police and be safe. It's not so simple, you don't get to call police have them post a guard at your door."
The way the Orleans Parish handles domestic violence reports is also problematic, women's advocates say.
In New Orleans, a domestic violence arrest is typically charged as a misdemeanor, and is therefore handled in municipal court where the maximum sentence for that offense is six months.
In order for the offense to be considered a felony and moved to Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, the crime must involve a weapon, or have caused the victim to suffer "severe bodily injury."
Strangulation, not an uncommon reason for a report, is also considered a felony, but it's often misclassified during arrests, Tetlow said.
"A lot can happen to a person before they're considered severely injured," she said.
Peterson's ex, the woman who filed a restraining order against him in 2008, was represented by Project SAVE, an organization that offers civil legal services to domestic violence survivors and operates under the umbrella of the New Orleans Family Justice Center, along with 13 other agencies. It's a saving grace for many.
Mary Claire Landry, director of the New Orleans Family Justice Center, said that the services offered are free to all survivors of domestic violence and called the organization a "coordinated, comprehensive system" that includes both public and government agencies.
Landry said that while she was familiar with Shawn Peterson's history, she could not discuss the case because of privacy concerns.
She said that just like so many other domestic violence incidents, it was "very complicated."
"It's sad and it's complicated," Landry said, speaking generally of the situations that women who seek help find themselves in. "It doesn't magically happen that one time you seek services and you can simply extricate yourself from the problem. However, we're here to offer full support to the true victims in these cases, and to see beyond the tactics that these batterers might use."
The mother of Peterson's twins agreed to speak with NOLA.com |The Times-Picayune on the condition that she remain anonymous. The woman, who is in her 40s and is a beautician, wouldn't discuss details of her relationship with Peterson except to say she has forgiven him. She called him a good dad.
"What he did in the past? God has removed that from my heart," the woman said.
"I won't talk about his past, I'll only talk about his future," she said. "He's a good dad -- he helps his kids with their homework, he reads to them all the time."
Since the night of the murders, the woman said, Peterson has professed his innocence many times.
"He's been saying that the whole time, and I stand behind that 100 percent. I believe him, all the way. I know he didn't do it."
Police immediately questioned Peterson after the shooting. He told detectives he was with a women in eastern New Orleans.
That alibi, detectives wrote in arrest papers, fell apart quickly. Cell phone records show him near the murder scene, police said. Peterson was also identified on surveillance camera near
Christine George's Gentilly home, which police say show him fleeing the scene.
Peterson is being held at the Orleans Parish Prison on three counts of first-degree murder.
He could face the death penalty if the Orleans Parish district attorney's office pursues capital punishment. He otherwise faces mandatory life imprisonment without the benefit of parole or probation, if convicted.
Peterson was initially appointed a public defender, but as he could be facing the death penalty, it is likely that he will be assigned to a law office that specializes in capital defense.
His next court appearance is scheduled for January 2014.
Christine George, who leaves behind two other children, will be buried Friday with Trisa and Leonard George.
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