CHICAGO — For more than an hour last Friday, a South Shore woman said she lived in fear of a violent death at the hands of her former boyfriend, who allegedly had forced his way into her apartment, brutally beat her and threatened her life.
The woman said she received a literal lifeline during the afternoon attack as she was punched in the face, beaten with a mop handle and received a broken right hand and nose. Someone from the Cook County state’s attorney’s office called to warn her that the ex-boyfriend — who had been ordered to stay away — hadn’t shown up at a scheduled court hearing that day.
“At the time, I had two thoughts in my mind: I said either I’m going to die or I’m going to get out,” the woman, who asked to remain anonymous, told a Tribune reporter in a telephone interview several days after the latest attack. “And I got out,” she said, her voice cracking.
Though badly injured and bleeding from repeated blows to her head, face and mouth, the woman said she played it cool over the phone, pretending to be speaking with someone for a job offer so as not to tip off the angry man. Her short, cryptic responses were enough to trigger the official to send police to her apartment.
The move, she said, likely saved her life as the ex-boyfriend, Joseph S. McDonald, fled out the apartment back door when she ran to a window to get the responding officer’s attention.
What the woman said she didn’t know at the time was that a simple error freed McDonald from jail custody for a similarly violent attack he allegedly made on her in mid-March. He was released without having to post bail or be outfitted with a GPS monitor.
McDonald, a 52-year-old with a history of domestic battery cases, now faces separate felony charges of aggravated domestic battery in Friday’s attack, which left the woman, 35, bandaged and bruised, unable to take her young son for Easter.
Still healing from the recent attack, the woman explained that she was speaking out to prevent similar blunders from happening again, though she said that the attack left her mentally and physically traumatized.
Meanwhile, offices within the Cook County court system blamed each other for the error. The sheriff’s office claimed it didn’t receive vital paperwork showing a new felony case against McDonald had begun the very same day his domestic battery case was dropped, while a spokesperson for Clerk of the Circuit Court Iris Y. Martinez said records from McDonald’s cases the day of his release were properly forwarded to the jail.
“There was human error, but not on our part,” the spokesperson said.
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment.
Nevertheless, the error has outraged advocates for domestic violence victims, who say that it points to a failure in a system meant to “safeguard survivors.”
“This is near a worst-case scenario or worst-case outcome for the survivor,” said Amanda Pyron, executive director of The Network, a 40-member organization working to end gender-based violence. “While I appreciate what the (caller from the state’s attorney’s office) did, … this person could have been killed, and we can’t have mistakes like that in a system where survivors are really reliant on our criminal justice system to keep them safe.”
History of alleged attacks
The full scope of the error that released McDonald from jail custody without paying a court-ordered bond or receiving a GPS bracelet to track his movements was revealed Sunday during a bail hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building broadcast on YouTube.
Before Judge Maryam Ahmad, prosecutors described a domestic battery victim’s worst fear: an abusive mate released from custody in error only to return and cause further injury to the victim.
The mistaken release of McDonald, an imposing food processing sanitation worker with multiple arrests and convictions for domestic battery and violating court orders of protection dating back to 2011, could not be more chilling for victims of domestic violence who live in fear of further abuse — or even death — for lodging or cooperating with a criminal investigation.
The origin behind the release appears to be an overlooked case number when McDonald’s domestic battery case was upgraded to a felony on March 20.
After exiting Cook County Jail on March 20, McDonald remained free for 18 days, until April 7, when he allegedly showed up at the woman’s apartment demanding to be let in. That same day, McDonald had missed a court hearing and the judge overseeing his March felony issued a $10,000 warrant for his arrest.
Court records from that judge note that McDonald was “released from jail in error,” something that Judge Ahmad called attention to during the Sunday hearing.
“Somehow (McDonald) is released from custody (and) goes right back to the residence where a judge told him he could not go and then picked up this case that’s before me now? Am I understanding that correctly?” Ahmad asked prosecutors.
“Yes, your honor,” Assistant State’s Attorney Sarah Dale-Schmidt responded.
McDonald must now pay a combined $70,000 cash to be released from jail, according to jail records. Judge Ahmad doubled his $10,000 bail related to the arrest warrant and added $50,000 bail for the charged attack against the woman, citing the victim’s injuries and McDonald’s criminal record.
McDonald has not yet entered a plea on any of the recent charges, and an attorney for him could not be reached. His next court appearance is scheduled for April 17.
Cook County sheriff’s officials attributed McDonald’s release to a simple miscommunication between county offices, claiming their office didn’t receive the paperwork showing that the charges against McDonald had been upgraded to a felony when the domestic battery case was dropped.
In a statement, sheriff’s officials blamed an antiquated file transfer system where vital court documents are manually shuffled between courtrooms and the jail’s record division, instead of electronically.
“The records the jail received should have indicated that McDonald would subsequently be charged with a felony related to the same allegations on the same day. If the records included that important information, McDonald would have been held until his new bond amount was paid,” the statement said. “Paper records of the new felony charge did not make it to the jail’s records division following court.”
But the spokesperson for the clerk of the Circuit Court said records from McDonald’s cases on the day of his release were properly forwarded to the jail, adding that sheriff’s officials have online access to all court records and could have checked the files with clerks.
Martinez later released a statement calling domestic violence a serious public health problem: “Violence disproportionately affects vulnerable populations. I fight for their rights, including women, children, and impoverished people. The courts must invest the time necessary in managing complex processes delivering justice while ensuring the safety of victims.”
Martinez’s office said a new electronic transfer system is proceeding to completion after being slowed by the pandemic and new court protocols.
In the meantime, such bureaucratic blunders can be devastating to battered partners who are slowly trying to mend their lives after violent trauma, experts say.
Survivors “live in fear almost constantly,” which doesn’t just go away when a person is no longer in a domestic relationship with their abuser, said Stephanie Love-Patterson, executive director for Connections for Abused Women and their Children, a local nonprofit that claims to have started the city’s first 24-hour domestic violence hotline, which can be reached at 773-278-4566, and emergency shelter.
“Oftentimes they are very, very fearful of not only the consequences of staying in the relationship but then even after they’ve left the relationship,” Love-Patterson said. “What we know in the domestic violence community is that leaving doesn’t always equal safety.”
“The very nature of domestic violence” is to have a person who caused harm come back and target their victims when they are released from incarceration for any reason, which leaves survivors in “significant fear,” said Pyron.
“It is absolutely realistic that the threat would still exist after a period of incarceration, especially because there’s certainly no services offered to help someone while they are incarcerated with the type of violence that they’re perpetrating and to begin addressing the harm they’ve caused,” Pyron said. “There’d be no real expectation that the period of incarceration is going to change much in terms of a perpetrator’s fixation on the survivor.”
‘They let a monster out of jail’
The woman at the center of McDonald’s case said she met him last year and that the two started dating in July. “In the beginning it was great,” she said, recalling how charming he was. But soon, she said, he began to show her a different side of his personality that veered toward violence.
That August, surveillance video at the victim’s apartment captured the 6-foot-tall, 210-pound McDonald dragging the smaller woman from her apartment and slamming her to the floor before dragging her out of the camera’s view, according to prosecutors. Still, the domestic battery case was eventually dropped.
From there, she said McDonald became an unrelenting abuser, applying beatings no matter how much she screamed or bled. “Like, who does that?” she asked of a bigger man beating a smaller woman. “A monster. They let a monster out of jail.”
Early in the court process, she said she learned of years of prior allegations of violence against McDonald, including a 2016 allegation that he struck a woman on the side of the head with a glass bottle, authorities said. That case was eventually dropped.
Some hours after McDonald was released from jail on March 20, he showed up at the victim’s home in the middle of the night, banging on one of her doors, attempting to get in, she said. After unsuccessful attempts to reach the victim, McDonald allegedly lay in wait for her outside her apartment on April 7, accosting her upon her arrival home.
The woman said authorities had assured her that he wouldn’t be released pretrial. “They promised me that he was not getting out,” she said. “He had a $50,000 bond and got out and did the same thing all over again.”
Pyron said “there’s no excuse” for what happened, and that someone needs to be held accountable, since the system is not accountable to survivors.
“We want people to feel that the systems we invest in and dedicate our resources to are prioritizing us and our well-being,” she said. “This is absolutely inexcusable because the system told this survivor not to worry, and yet, look what happened. She put her confidence and trust in a system that wasn’t really worthy of that, and we have to make that right for her and for the other victims who are going to look to these systems for safety.”
While stories such as this may deter survivors of abuse from speaking up and taking action, Pyron said domestic violence advocates are always available to help guide them through the process and “reassure survivors.”
“We have resources that we can use to support survivors through issues like this and to avoid issues like this,” Pyrson said. “It is possible to safeguard yourself, and I want survivors to know that they are worth it.”
The Network also runs Illinois’ statewide domestic violence hotline, which can be reached at 877-863-6338.
The victim said she is having difficulty coping with the tremendous trauma of the incident as her body heals.
Love-Patterson said recovery for abuse survivors can progress once they’ve unburdened themselves from the negative emotions imparted by their abusers. One of the first steps in battling the anxiety that many survivors carry is to listen and “validate their experiences,” Love-Patterson said, followed by communicating that whatever happened wasn’t their fault.
“There is a whole laundry list of things that abusers use to kind of blame the victim as opposed to taking responsibility for themselves,” she said. “We let them know that the abuse is not their fault and that this is something that the abusers are choosing to do based on power and control.”
Safety planning is key for survivors, Love-Patterson said. The nonprofit helps provide victims with safety planning options based on their specific needs and wants, such as filing for court orders of protection or finding other living accommodations.
Speaking by phone one day after she was released from the University of Chicago Medical Center, the woman said she’s committed to moving on with her life, but admitted that she hasn’t had time to process the pain of the prior three days, much less understand how such a violent man managed to walk free for jail.
Hospitalized with a heavily bandaged head and right hand and suffering pain in her jaw, she was unable to spend Easter with her young son. Her front door jamb looks damaged.
“How did this happen? The state’s attorney? The sheriff?” she asked in a quiet voice. “He’s been locked up dozens of times. He’s a very violent offender. That’s heat!” she said, her voice rising. “Nobody took heat. There’s no way in H-E-double-hockey-sticks that he should have been able to walk out of there.”
She said she is sharing her story to prevent such failures from hurting other abuse survivors. She said she wants assurances that such an error won’t be repeated, jeopardizing another woman’s life. Whoever dropped the ball in her case “should be held accountable for their actions,” she said.
“I want my story to be told. This shouldn’t have happened to no one,” she said, sobbing. “I could have died in that house if they didn’t let him out.”
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