“Open your eyes people, it happens every day,” said Heather Anderson, breaking the silence with a Facebook video three days after her husband was arrested for pinning her down and holding her by the neck, according to criminal complaints.

But she wasn’t referring to domestic abuse after Calhoun County Sheriff Scott Anderson’s Saturday arrest. She was referring to the coordinated “witch hunt” she believes is happening in an election year to smear Anderson’s chances at re-election.

“She can’t open her eyes to what’s really happening,” said her son, Dausin Olberding, as he reached out in response to the video, calling out Scott Anderson, described as a recovering alcoholic, “incredibly controlling” and “very violent” when intoxicated.

Risking tension with and alienation from his family, the 17-year-old has spoken up out of fear for the mother he loves but doesn’t recognize anymore, hoping she’ll hear his voice to recognize what he believes is a dangerous situation before it’s too late.

Scott Anderson was suspended from office Tuesday by a district court order after being charged with assault on persons in certain occupations, a serious misdemeanor, and domestic abuse assault, a simple misdemeanor. Criminal complaints depicted a difficult scene where multiple officers struggled for about nine minutes to handcuff and carry the defendant to the patrol car. One officer was head-butted in the process.

The suspended sheriff has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Heather Anderson disputed the head-butting of Manson Police Officer Israel Swanson alleged in criminal complaints, saying that Anderson was simply trying to take a drink of water while cuffed.

“He became obnoxious,” she conceded, after saying that Anderson started drinking “to be social” after 25 years of sobriety.

But in acknowledging parts of criminal complaints and refuting others alleged by law enforcement witnesses after her oldest son called 911, County Attorney Tina Meth-Farrington said the mother of seven confirmed “much of what happened that night.”

Meth-Farrington called Heather Anderson’s account of the night in question through the 11-minute video “an unfortunate after-effect of domestic violence.”

“That’s a survival technique,” she told The Messenger, referring to techniques of denial, minimization, deflection and manufacturing a different version of events that domestic violence victims often employ. “She is only trying to survive and saying these things, she feels, will protect her.”

It’s part of what makes domestic violence so difficult to prosecute for county attorneys–even ones with special training to prosecute those crimes, like the Calhoun County attorney.

“By the time you get to trial, due to the dynamics, you don’t have a victim to testify,” she said.

If they are still willing to testify, the story often changes to the point of perjuring themselves, making them unreliable witnesses.

“That’s one way they survive,” she said, as abusers readjust their grip between the arrest and trial.

Sometimes, victims are just afraid to speak the truth. Other times, they start to believe the story they’re telling. Often, it’s a combination, Meth-Farrington said.

“It’s not an easy concept to explain to the general public,” she said, because most just ask why victims don’t leave.

Much like that concept, leaving “is not that easy.”

After involvement in prosecuting about 45 cases of domestic abuse since 1998, she recognized the red flags instantly in the video. But Olberding, an early high school graduate and marketing consultant in Carroll, started seeing signs months ago, even before his mom and Anderson got married in October.

“The recent arrest is something that I saw bound to happen eventually,” he said in a public statement.

Among the first signs, he said, was Anderson not allowing her to work a full-time job. The former paramedic and community college instructor left her county position last summer and stopped working altogether after Iowa Central Community College eliminated her position.

“She’s had job offers, but (Anderson) says he doesn’t want her gone that long,” he said. “She hates sitting at home doing nothing, she’s wired to go, she’s independent.”

The decision to no longer work seemed strange to her child, who had watched his mother strive, single for much of his life after a divorce, to provide the best childhood possible to her kids.

He knows her for the joy she’s brought to his life through the hobbies they shared–dirt biking, hunting and supporting the Hawkeyes, namely. Attending concerts and having deep conversations while just driving around aimlessly are some of his fondest memories before he left home at 16. Her love language was doing anything the kids wanted.

“We were never home, we were always out doing something,” Olberding said.

But since she married Scott Anderson, her son said he has watched her fade into “someone I don’t even recognize” he said, fearful for her safety.

Meth-Farrington and domestic abuse experts widely say isolation–used as a form of control–is often the first warning sign that domestic abuse may be escalating.

Much of the distress he’s witnessed in his mom, Olberding said, has been inflicted verbally or emotionally.

“Domestic abuse isn’t only the physical,” he said. “I know she’s going through a lot that no one should have to go through now.”

He didn’t realize that his step-father’s controlling personality, a lifestyle of “his way or the highway,” with control of “everything to the T” could escalate into the aggression he sees now.

Until it did.

Heather Anderson said in her video that Anderson didn’t hurt her, calling the allegations her husband faces “bold-face lies.” Olberding said that she’s told him similar things, as well.

“But I’m scared,” he said. “What if he does?”

“We want answers. We want to know the truth. We want to know what happened, and we want justice for what he did do,” Olberding said. “It’s wrong and it needs to be addressed.”

As he feels helpless in Carroll, he hopes a story reaching Rockwell City will open her eyes “to what’s really happening.”

“I love my mom to death, that’s the hardest part about this,” he added, with a renewed urgency to speak up before she is hurt more. “I feel like I have to do the right thing here.”