Help Irena get the Legal Help she needs

Hi, my name is Irena Leibowitz.

I have left an abusive marriage after almost 10 years (12-year relationship) and having two children (ages 9 & 5) and am trying to fight for my freedom from their abusive father.

Let me take you back to September 2012 when we have met, I guess I should have trusted my first impression of him, I have thought that he was the creepy loud guy in college. We started to talk despite both being in a relationship at the time, I guess this should have been my other red flag for him. He claimed that he was in this on again off again relationship with his ex while I was dating a rebound guy after my 1.5-year relationship has ended. As we have started to spend more time together and with his friends, I started to spend less time with my friends and eventually his friends group became my circle as well. I was never allowed to touch his phone or know his password, if I so much as picked up his phone he would freak out. During one of our arguments while we were dating there was a screaming match by my house, and he broke my favorite cow mug which he has shuttered into pieces. I'm sure you could have guesses that my family was not happy with the relationship, but what 19-year-old listens to her parents?

Fast forward to March 2013 when we got engaged and things have seemed to be going semi okay, after all we have been dating for over a year now and thought we knew each other well and what we wanted. We had a wedding date set for 8/6/2013 and my family in Israel had bought their tickets to come to the wedding (my grandparents, uncle, aunt and my cousin), but little did I know that in June things would change. We got a call from his parents after the wedding venue, invitations, musicians and florist have been taken care of and things were in motion to happen, that they want to sit down with the two of us and talk. Well, this was one of the conversations I was not prepared for. They have told us that they don't support this marriage and won't pay for it unless we pushed it off and he went to Israel. I had to learn to keep my mouth shut not to cause issues and let things go. He was then sent off to Israel by his cousin to a yeshiva to study and our wedding was pushed off indefinitely. During his time in Israel, he mostly spent time in Ben Yehuda with his new friends smoking hookah and getting drinks. At one point he has told me that he had so much alcohol that he doesn't even remember what happened that night. I have also been paying his credit card while he was in Israel, and I was back in NYC working in an office trying to save up some money. I had a fiancé that was halfway across the world and still didn't know when our wedding would be, and I had my family coming in from Israel for what was supposed to me my wedding and a time to celebrate. I had called off the wedding on his 21st birthday and returned the rings to his father at the time. He had begged me not to do it, and with my family coming in from Israel I felt weird to let everyone down (I guess I should have trusted my gut).

I had to set an ultimatum as to when the deadline was for us to get married, as it seemed that he was in no hurry to set a new date, and it was the day we got engaged a year prior. Which of course ended up being our wedding day. Everything seemed just fine, the usual arguments and problems but nothing too major other than him leaving his Facebook open and me stumbling on a chat with a friends sister that I knew and her telling him that she doesn't really talk to married guys because it's inappropriate and she sometimes gets carried away, to which of course he had no issues with, which should have been a red flag for me. In August we have decided to try for a baby and in October I have found out that I was pregnant. Things were going as usual, at the time which wasn't much to say when control and verbal abuse is what you have been used to for a few years by now. When our daughter was 2.5 my husband kept asking me to have another baby, I have told him that I was okay to wait as she wasn't even 3 yet and that I was more than okay with one child at the time. I should've known who I was dealing with by that point, but yet I still let it work on me and he managed to convince me to have another one. My second pregnancy was a challenging time for us, we found out that we were having a boy (which petrified me), my husband has decided to switch companies and no longer work with me, which was putting my job at jeopardy, I was also still in school which was very stressful which all lead to me spiraling into a depression and no one even noticed it. I ended up failing that semester and my husband pushed me to take summer classes because I was due before the fall semester would end, which put additional stress on me. Once I had our second baby, I was very much in a depressive state, but over the years when you learn how to hide behind a smile when there are issues it simply becomes a part of your life. I didn't know or understand much at the time, other than simply trying to survive day by day. I didn't have motivation or energy to do anything related to the housework and I was very much not interested in things that I used to love, by this point the only thing that was giving me any sort of joy was our Disney trips and the feeling I had when I was in the parks. It was a place to forget all my troubles just for a little while and escape (which is why I love my job so much; it gives me the opportunity to help people create unforgettable memories and hope that no matter what is going on in their personal lives they can still enjoy little moments of happiness).

I have almost left him back in 2020, when he was involved (for over 9 months) with a female coworker overseas and claimed it to be a "friendship" with someone that is 10 years younger than him whom he spent many hours on the phone via phone calls, messages and facetime, including spending our 6th wedding anniversary chatting with her while we were on a trip with his close friends. I have tried to work out the marriage and offered to go to therapy together, but he has declined it many times. After finally agreeing to a therapy session, the therapist has told me that she would like to continue seeing me as he is not interested, and it will do no good. I have gone to therapy for a few sessions before he has told me that the therapist was "prepping me to be a single mom" and he didn't like that.

In September 2020 we have decided that we should move out of NYC to Florida as we have been talking about moving out of NYC and it was a good time for the move. We finally moved to Florida in November 2020 and things were still kind of rough between us, but we somehow learned to live together despite the disconnection that has previously happened between us. I have found a job from home but unfortunately, I was let go from that job 6 months later, and finally was able to find employment with the Disney Company in July.

We have discussed that me working for the Walt Disney Company was going to be beneficial as they do offer some perks for their employees like paying school tuition which was a very big deal for me since I have wanted to go back to school, and this would help tremendously with that. Plus, some of the other benefits are quite great so it made a lot of sense.

My husband has been working for a company overseas which paid him really well, so I never really had to worry about finances although it was always thrown in my face since I started to work for Disney how my husband "is letting me work there" and how "it's a fun job" and "I don't do anything at work" and how he doesn't understand why I am so tired when all I do is play all day. I have to be in the theme park for anywhere between 6-8.5 hours a day plus commute time while my husband works from our house. Where I have certain policies to uphold when it comes to work.

In Spring 2023 we had a huge fight in front of the kids, despite me asking him not to yell and curse me out in front of the kids and wait until they went to bed for the night. I remember turning to my daughter at that time and telling her "If you are in a relationship with someone be it your boyfriend/fiancé/husband, I do not care, if they ever speak to you like this, I want you to pack up your things and leave right away". Unfortunately, I was not strong enough to leave at that time, but the thought of wanting to leave has been growing stronger since.

Fast forward to the summertime when he has convinced me to try and have another baby, because why wouldn't another child fix issues in the marriage that was barely holding by a thread. I was also sexually abused by my husband in August 2024 after we got home from a friend's house and he kept pouring me wine which got me quite tipsy, to which his excuse was "I was also tipsy" and despite that I was still willing to move forward with the idea of having another child with this man. Thankfully that idea wasn't in my head for too long, because I have made a friend that I would talk to and who gave me confidence and support to help me realize that I was not happy in my marriage (I haven't been happy in this marriage for a while now) and helped me leave this abusive marriage with their encouragement and advice. I have told my husband that I wanted to leave him, because we have had issues for a while now and I am not happy. As you could assume that conversation didn't go too well with my husband, I was then called a "whore" in front of our 8-year-old daughter along with being called a "cheater" and a lot of other very colorful names that I will leave to your imagination. I have moved my things from the bedroom into the guest bedroom because I was simply done with my husband and his demands, to which my husband responded by asking for my rings back. I have told him that if I take them off, they are never going back on my finger and he said that he didn't care, he just wanted the rings, so I gave them to him. Two weeks later I have found out that I was pregnant, and it was a shock as I was not expecting it at all considering that the other pregnancies took much longer than a month. But here I was at 7am with a positive pregnancy test freaking out and the first person I reached out to was my friend, because I had a difficult decision to make. On the way to work I have made some phone calls trying to figure out what to do, as I have just told my husband that I am leaving him and now I am pregnant. My mind was spinning, and I didn't know what to do or expect. Over the course of the next three days things were extremely tense and I ended up having a miscarriage, which happened for the best. My husband kept trying to tell me that he will change, and that he will not call me names again and that he would do anything I wanted just so I don't leave him. I agreed to go on some coffee dates with him but at heart I knew I wanted nothing to do with this man, he was leaving for a work trip in a few weeks, so I just had to survive until then. Then I wouldn't be love bombed and bombarded with dates and all of a sudden caring how my day went and spending time with me when I have been asking for those things for over a year now.

After his trip overseas came the breaking point, when I was at work and was ending work at 6:30PM and the kids knew I was going to be home before bedtime. By the time I finished work I had missed calls from him, my mom and my brother a ton of messages from them all checking to see if I was okay. Apparently, he thought that I had gotten into a car accident on my way home. When I got home and greeted the kids first and only said hi to him it was an issue, he proceeded to follow me into the kitchen and sit on the stairs and argue with me. Then I went upstairs into my room, and he proceeded to follow even after I have asked him to leave me and let me shower and change after work. Eventually he came back and continues to argue, and I told him that if he doesn't stop, I would message my friend and ask them to come pick me up, which of course turned into yet another fight. After I left him, and was supposed to come back to the house a few days later and was told that I was not allowed to move back in and that I had to find a new place to live, he was also controlling when and how often I could see my children, whom he allowed me to see once a week and take to my apartment every other weekend (once I was finally able to get an apartment with the help of my parents), or how much I can speak to them (even these days when they are with him I am barely able to communicate with my children as he is controlling every aspect of their lives).

He is not only dragging out the legal divorce process (which he has been doing with the help of his attorney) but also isn’t giving me my GETT despite me asking for one since December (and asking Rabbis to get involved with no one actually telling him to give me my GETT). I am in desperate need of Legal Representation that I cannot afford, I am barely surviving living paycheck to paycheck trying to keep up with my rent and electric bill along with gas/food. I have no family support as they live out of state and the days that my work schedule doesn't align with the kid's school schedule/calendar I have to either miss work or hire a babysitter which I can barely afford because it requires me to workdays straight without having any days off just to keep paying for the help I need. I have tried to get in touch with many different organizations that I should be able to qualify for but due to the nature of the job of my husband (who has a business) none of the free legal help places are able to help me.

This is painful and embarrassing to be asking for help as I am not someone that is used to asking for help or accepting it very easily. But I am desperate right now and have no other choice than to turn to the people and hope that someone is able to help.