teri williams domestic violence survivor shelter story
Photography by Anastasia Walborn

On Her Terms: A Naples Woman Speaks Out

After a 2024 attack and 25 years of marriage, Teri Williams found support through The Shelter for Abused Women & Children and began rebuilding her life.

by

People

One Monday afternoon in July 2024, Teri Williams was sitting on her bed in her Naples home, freshly back from a friend’s birthday lunch, when she heard her front door click open. She froze. It had to be her husband. 

They had been living apart for five months, but he would periodically show up, unannounced and uninvited. She’d attempted to change the locks, but a locksmith refused without proof of ownership. The house was in her husband’s name. 

In Teri’s account, he had spent the weekend swinging between insults that cut to the bone and pleas to restore the marriage. For the first time in their 25-year marriage, she’d held firm and stayed away. 

Now, as his broad-shouldered frame filled the doorway, she braced. Teri says she had weathered his insults for years, but this time it felt different. In his voice, she heard a loathing she’d never detected before. It scared her. 

Over the past few years, Teri had begun pulling away. She’d joined a church, tried starting a home organizing business and trained to become a wellness coach. Her therapist warned her that abuse often escalates when a victim asserts independence and urged her to make a safety plan. She didn’t. 

Now, in the bedroom they once shared, Teri felt vulnerable and afraid. Her husband, she says, had vowed to leave her penniless if she left him for good—a threat that had underpinned their fights for years. They had worked side by side throughout the marriage, although she held no title, drew no salary and had no official standing in their business. In the beginning, she didn’t worry about the arrangement—she had access to their joint account and her labor meant they didn’t have to hire extra help. Over time, she realized she was financially tethered to him and worried he could cut her off at any time.  

Hours later, Teri logged into their shared bank account and gasped. It had been drained, she says, of everything except the amount they’d agreed to put toward bills. She raced to stop payments. She would need money for groceries, gas and day-to-day expenses. Unable to sleep, she checked the account hourly to see what had cleared, then transferred the remaining money into an account beyond her husband’s reach. She dozed off, phone tucked beneath her pillow. 

Around 7:30 a.m., she awoke to his silhouette at the foot of her bed. He had seen the money transfer. He was fuming.

She tried to stay calm. Let him rant, she told herself. Don’t say anything to make it worse. 

He edged closer. She reached under the covers for her phone and entered 911. “You have three seconds to leave,” she said, thumb hovering over the “call” button. 

That’s when he lurched. According to the police report and Teri’s sworn testimony, he smashed her phone and shoved her against the wall, fingers curling around her neck. She broke away and ran out the front door. Ring footage shown in court shows her husband grasping her and attempting to force her back into the house. She screamed, but no one heard her.

Before the attack went any further, he left. Teri drove to a friend’s house and called the police. Four days later, her husband was arrested on charges of battery and obstructing justice for barring Teri’s attempt to call 911.

The day after the attack, Teri filed a petition for a restraining order at the Clerk of Courts, where a female volunteer helped guide her through the exacting forms. Teri doesn’t remember the woman’s name, only her calming presence and her affiliation: The Shelter for Abused Women & Children, which stations a paralegal at the courthouse. 

Teri felt alone, unaware of how many other women faced similar circumstances. In Collier County, law enforcement answered 1,356 domestic violence-related calls in 2025. That same year, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office responded to 2,056 domestic violence-listed calls. Nationally, as many as one in four women are victims of domestic violence, according to federal records. The statistics are undercounts, experts say. “Just because people aren’t calling 911 doesn’t mean violence isn’t happening,” says Linda Oberhaus, the Shelter’s CEO. Behind closed doors, victims are emotionally, psychologically and physically battered by partners who profess to love them. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, when experts like her try to make people understand the behavioral patterns and denial that can escalate into violence. 

The Shelter operates from an undisclosed address on a little-traveled Naples street, with a second location in Immokalee. Teri knew the organization existed, but had never given it much thought. Inside, however, someone was already thinking about her.

Kourtney Arrowsmith, the Shelter’s InVEST (Intimate Violence Enhanced Service Team) advocate, reviews police reports for signs that a victim may be at risk of homicide. Kourtney identified several in Teri’s report: a hand around her neck, an attempt to prevent her escape, a smashed cellphone.

Teri remembers Shelter representatives calling three times to ask if she had a safe place to stay (she did), whether she needed an attorney (she already had a referral) or if she needed other help. I don’t need a shelter, Teri thought. 

She didn’t realize the Shelter was more than a place to stay, or that she would need some of its other services. In fiscal year 2025, the nonprofit served nearly 12,000 individuals through court and legal advocacy, counseling, healing arts programs, economic empowerment classes, emergency shelter locations and other prevention initiatives—all free of charge.  

After a brief stay with friends, Teri moved back into the three-bedroom home she and her husband had shared on the edge of a golf course. In the silence, she spent long hours reflecting. Without him, who was she? Her world, her identity, had centered around him. How did I get here? Teri asked herself. What do I do now? 

“I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have anyone to talk to. No one knew what I was going through.” — Teri Williams 

Teri composes herself with care: Even on weekends, in shorts and T-shirts, she is put together: matching accessories, long brunette hair styled neatly, nails painted, house meticulous. A lifelong athlete, she walks with confidence, even when it’s the opposite of how she feels. 

Four months after the attack, she bumped into her friend Karen Colgain. Unaware of what Teri had been through, Karen chatted about her summer travels. Mid-conversation, Teri broke into sobs. “Are you OK?” Karen asked, stunned. 

Teri told her everything—the attack and its aftermath: unpaid bills, mountains of paperwork and lack of income. Teri could no longer afford her therapist, but she desperately needed support. 

That’s when Teri found out Karen was then-president of the Shelter Guild, the organization’s fundraising, advocacy and volunteer arm. Karen called the Shelter on Teri’s behalf, and told her friend that someone would be in touch soon. Days later, counselor Kim Storfer greeted Teri at the Shelter’s front door. Kim recognized Teri’s hesitancy. Women like her—educated, socially connected, well-off—often struggle to see themselves as victims. “Their perception is, ‘I should have known better,’” Kim says. It’s a false perception. The Shelter’s 911 call tracking shows that police respond to domestic violence calls across neighborhoods and income levels.

Once Kim disclosed she was a survivor herself, Teri’s body softened and her story tumbled out.   

Teri met her husband-to-be one night at a bar. She was 23, divorced, and the single mother of a 4-year-old son. When Dallas was about 2, she married a childhood friend who loved her, then ended the marriage when she realized her feelings didn’t go beyond friendship. If she married again, she promised herself, it would be “until death do us part.” 

The man she was chatting with was 12 years her senior, divorced and a father of three. She thought him well-built, charming and successful, and agreed to see him again. He would take her to motorcycle rallies, on spontaneous trips and shopping sprees. 

Teri’s teen years had been marked by a pair of traumatic episodes that preceded the early pregnancy and a fractious relationship with her emotionally distant parents. Eager for connection, love and a little joy, Teri fell hard. “He was a lot of fun,” she recalls. “Everything seemed to click.”

She recalls first experiencing his temper when they were still dating. Amid what she describes as an onslaught of hateful, degrading words, she grabbed her things and left his house, intending never to return. Back then, she was as steely on the inside as she was poised on the outside. A few years before, she’d stood up during a chapel service at her Christian college and announced her pregnancy. She wanted to persuade administrators to let her continue her studies and show her peers how to live with the consequences of a decision, openly and without shame. Surely, she could hold firm against this man. 

 “I wish that I had read my own story 30 years ago.” — Teri Williams

But the man she would marry wooed her back. It was the beginning of what Teri describes as a terrible cycle: He would apologize in “grandiose” ways and shower her with affection, a pattern that Shelter staff often see. Somehow, after their fights, she would end up feeling bad for him. She wanted so much to make the marriage work that she refused to acknowledge it was broken. 

Teri had already drifted from her peers and parents after having her son. Increasingly, her social and professional life revolved around her husband—his friends, his family, his work. If there had been early cautionary signs, no one in her circle would have been close enough to notice. From the outside, the family’s life looked charmed—beautiful homes, expensive cars, enviable excursions.

She didn’t like her husband’s male-dominated industry, but she stayed on for the family’s sake. Armed with a business degree, she could manage administrative tasks from home while caring for their children. “I wanted to be needed. I wanted to be appreciated. I wanted to be valued for my efforts,” she remembers. At first, she felt all those things.

But after the kids moved out, she says the marriage got steadily worse, with the smallest triggers exploding in fights, which she says were often intensified by his drinking. Teri confided in her sister, a social worker. She begged Teri to see her situation for what it was. “My sister called it ‘verbal abuse,’” Teri says. “I thought, ‘That’s not me. That’s not us.’ I didn’t feel I could use that term.” 

Besides, if she used it, she’d have to “own it.” And if she owned it, she’d have to get out. 

“Why did you stay?” Between swings on the golf course, the question came from a well-meaning friend, one of the few Teri trusted to know the whole story. Teri inhaled and searched for the words to explain.

Teri had tried to leave—several times. After explosive arguments. After she suspected affairs. Especially in the aftermath of a 2013 incident, after she learned her husband was charged in another state following a coworker’s allegation of sexual assault, an incident upon which that state’s press had reported. (He pleaded not guilty, and a judge later dismissed the charges because the case was not brought to trial within the required period.) “I didn’t have a plan,” she explained to her friend. “I didn’t have anyone to talk to. No one knew what I was going through.” 

But it was more than that. When you leave an abusive partner, Teri says, you leave everything. “I’ve lost every part of my family on his side. I’ve lost my income. I’m losing my home,” she says. “I’m now known as a ‘domestic abuse survivor.’ I don’t want that label.” 

And so she came back again and again—until one day, after what she described as a miserable 25th-anniversary weekend and worsening strife, she stumbled upon a string of messages from another woman. That’s when she asked for a separation.

It’s a common pattern, Kim says, one she saw all the time when she worked for the Shelter. Women return to their partners an average of seven to nine times before breaking away for good—if they do so at all. “There are so many reasons,” Kim says. “Financial reasons, children, a belief that they’re going to change—most men who do those things are not going to change.”

Those two days in July broke the cycle, but not the brokenness Teri felt inside. 

Kim pressed her. “What do you want to do?” she asked, time and again over the months they worked together. Teri couldn’t answer. She’d long ago buried her own ambitions. In 30 years, she’d never written a résumé or gone on a job interview. “Everything I did was for him, with him, because of him.” 

A year after the attack, Teri took a job at a local resort. She liked it, but it was an entry-level position for entry-level pay. Job postings for higher-level positions intimidated her. She wanted to start a business, but she didn’t know where to begin. She was still haunted by the words she recalled hearing from her husband, saying she’d never be anything without him.

Meanwhile, others worked to build her up. One acquaintance offered her an opportunity to try sponsorship sales. A bar manager offered to help Teri host a fundraiser for the Shelter. Another friend pushed her to apply to a position as development director for a nonprofit—and pushed back when Teri insisted she didn’t have the qualifications. “Yes, you do, Teri,” he said firmly. Her sister, the social worker, agreed. 

Teri didn’t get the job, but the experience planted a seed. “I need to put myself out there,” she decided, realizing how limited her world had become. The attack and her husband’s subsequent hearing—he pleaded no contest and was adjudicated guilty on a charge of domestic battery causing bodily harm—were well behind her.  

So one night, she went to her favorite restaurant. She stepped through the front door and froze. Her husband had always led the way, and she was used to walking behind him. “I’m literally just standing there having an internal dialogue. What are you going to do now? Are you going to get a drink or just stand there?” she remembers. 

She crossed the busy dining room to the bar at its center.  

Linda watches women like Teri return to themselves as they work together toward healing. “She’s beautiful, she’s capable, she’s intelligent, she’s an amazing human,” she says. “She forgot she was those things because somebody was telling her that she wasn’t.”

After Teri’s divorce was finalized in May, she took ownership of the house and put it on the market, needing equity to start anew. Her life was still filled with uncertainties, but how she managed them was entirely up to her. “He doesn’t have control anymore,” Teri says. 

In August 2026, a friend offered her a managerial job at a country club at nearly twice her resort salary. Teri brimmed with gratitude—and hope. When she gave notice, her boss hugged Teri and remarked on how far she had come. “You’re a completely different person from when you came in here,” she said. 

Teri’s resurrecting her once-scrappy self, the one who stood up in that college chapel service to face her professors and peers. Speaking up had led to good: several other young women, pregnant and scared, came forward, and the administration ultimately instituted services to support them.

That’s why she’s telling her story now. Once, she thought her abuse was unique. Now, she knows that’s not true. Each woman’s story is different, but the patterns are largely the same. Maybe, Teri hopes, another woman will see them, overcome her shame and seek help to break free. “I wish,” she says, “that I had read my own story 30 years ago.”  

Editor’s note: We are not naming Teri Williams’ ex-husband because this story centers on her experience. However, we did contact him for comment. Through his lawyer, he disputes Teri’s account of their relationship and his treatment of her, including, among other things, her account of the July 2024 incident. He also contends the pair was not separated at that time and that Teri had withdrawn the funds from their bank account, not him. In addition, he claims he had “encouraged [her] to pursue her own interests and career.” He acknowledged the pair “worked side by side in the family business for many years.” As for the 2013 out-of-state incident, he says it did not result in a conviction and the records were expunged. When contacted, the local court clerk would not confirm or deny the records had been expunged, but the case does not appear in the online docket.