(July 17, 2012, Star Tribune)--On paper, Woynshet Woldemariam was the aggressor. She was the one
arrested for hitting her husband, violating two orders for protection
and convicted on domestic abuse charges.
Over a two-year period, she was alleged to have slapped her estranged husband, Anteneh Tsegaye, spit in his face, possibly scratched him and at least once threatened to kill him while violating orders for protection he had taken against her.
But on Sunday, the day after the 41-year-old woman was shot to death in an Apple Valley
parking lot by Tsegaye, also 41, in what police described as "a
straightforward murder-suicide," a different picture is emerging; one in
which friends and acquaintances say the Ethiopian immigrant, a
naturalized citizen, is the victim on a variety of cultural, judicial,
emotional and physical levels.
"She was the victim ... from Day One, there is not one shred of doubt
on my part," said Evangelina Aguilar, a former guardian ad litem in
Dakota County who worked for months with the family. "But he did
manipulate the system, and he was very clever. He wouldn't let up, and
she would threaten him. He would record it, but without context -- and
there was always context." Aguilar said she recommended that the children end up with the mother
because of Tsegaye's emotional and physical abuse, including forcing
his estranged wife to have sex with him at hotels in order to see her
children.
"It is my opinion," Aguilar wrote in a June 9, 2010, report to District Judge Tim Wermager, "that emotional and verbal abuse and manipulation was a 'normal behavior' used by Mr. Tsegaye towards Ms. Woldemariam. It is my opinion that Ms. Woldemariam was the victim of ongoing physical, emotional, sexual and verbal abuse by Mr. Tsegaye and not the other way around as Mr. Tsegaye has alleged."
Wermager awarded custody of the couple's two children, now orphaned
at ages 5 and 4, to Woldemariam despite her convictions on domestic
abuse charges and violations of the orders for protection. Apple Valley
police, who are investigating the case, said the killings over the
weekend look like a "straightforward murder-suicide," police Capt. Mike
Marben said on Sunday.
The couple was married in 2007 in Colorado and moved to Minnesota
because Tsegeye was transferred here by his employer. In court filings,
Woldemariam said the troubles with her husband started almost
immediately after the move. Macaulay said the biggest obstacle Woldemariam had to overcome
was her inability to tell police what was going on or to press charges
against her husband. Ethiopian women,
Woldemariam said in court testimony, are expected to fix any problems
with their husbands themselves or with the help of their families.
"They are not supposed to talk with the police," Macaulay said. "She
thought if she talked, this would make her less of a mother, less of a
woman." Read more from Star Tribune »
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