UPDATE: Mary Winkler Regains Custody of Her Three Daughters
Aug 5th, 2008 by womensspace
UPDATE: Mary Winkler has regained custody of her three daughters and has taken them home. Over the past two years the girls have been living with Matthew Winkler’s parents, their paternal grandparents, who have been attempting to get Mary Winkler’s parental rights terminated so that they could adopt the girls. For a time via various legal actions and maneuverings, the grandparents were able to keep Mary from having even supervised visitation with her daughters, but recently the Tennessee Supreme Court ruled it would not intervene. Mary’s daughters have been returned to her after an agreement was reached between her and the grandparents, who will still have visitation.
Online misogynists unhappy with this result say it sends the message that a woman can kill her husband and “get away with it.” I say this sends the message that it might not always fly to ignore, minimize or dismiss the way women are affected by abuse, rape, sexual violation and battering by their husbands, including in the legal system, and that it might be wise for husbands who batter and rape their wives to give this some thought.
The Terrorizing of Mary Winkler
Winkler Verdict
Winkler Sentencing
Outrage! Winkler Filmed (by Creepy Stalker) Having a Beer at a Bar (and Smiling!) on New Year’s Eve!
– Heart
_____________
Originally posted July 18, 2007: Mary Winkler, the pastor’s wife who shot and killed her husband and about whom I’ve blogged about here and here has been on trial this week. Yesterday a psychologist testified that Matthew Winkler regularly forced Mary Winkler to watch pornographic movies with him, forced her to have anal sex and didn’t stop when she said “no.” Defense attorneys have introduced images from the Winklers’ computers into evidence and an expert has testified as to the number of similar images on the computer. While jurors and those attending trial have been forbidden to discuss the images, it seems likely they are pornographic. There are hundreds of them.
Matthew Winkler was, according to testimony, a classic abuser. Besides raping and sexually abusing his wife, he regularly threatened her with a gun, cuffed her around, pinched and bruised her, and routinely humiliated and demeaned her. He criticized her weight, attempted to control what she ate, and forbade her to eat chocolate in his presence. He consistently berated and dehumanized her, including in front of church staff members. He told her he was disappointed that their third and last child was a girl instead of a boy.
Matthew Winkler was also a bully, in the way abusers always are. A neighbor described him as completely out of control one day because the neighbor’s dog was barking. Church employees said that while at first he seemed nice, he mistreated Mary and mistreated them as well, behaving as though he were better than them.
Mary’s psychologist testified that Mary responded as those of us who have been sexually, physically and spiritually battered do. She dissociated sometimes, stopped feeling things, stopped being aware of her surroundings. She didn’t try to leave because she feared it would make things worse.
Matthew Winkler also abused his children. The evening before Mary shot him, he had done something he regularly did to their kids when, as babies, they cried or were noisy. He put his hand over their nose and mouth until they stopped. The night before the shooting, Matthew had covered the mouth and nose of his then 1-year-old — the one he wished was a boy and not a girl — because she was crying. Mary Winkler says she got the gun out in an attempt to confront Matthew for what could easily have become a suffocation.
Mary doesn’t remember shooting her husband. She remembers bits and pieces of the events which led to the shooting.
What I know is, her story rings true, and absolutely, I believe her. Matthew Winkler terrorized her, terrorized his family. I am not at all surprised. Her story is the story of countless hundreds and thousands of women married to conservative religious men who abuse, bully and sexually assault them and all with the blessing of church members who do not even agree that it is possible for a wife to be sexually assaulted by her husband. If they speak up, if they protest or, god forbid, complain, they will be called “disobedient” and “unsubmissive,” a “shame” to their husbands and to God, bad mothers, and in some instances they will be subjected to church discipline and shunning. In that world you don’t talk about the sexual brutalities your husband is inflicting on you regularly– especially if he is the pastor. It isn’t “discreet.” It isn’t “chaste.” It isn’t “reverent.” You will be told you are a “foolish woman” who is “tearing down her own house with her own hands,” instead of “building it up,” like the “wise woman,” by agreeing, for example, that being anally raped, or raped in any way, isn’t “really” rape because, after all, your body belongs to your husband. You should be praying and reading your Bible more, you would likely be told. To complain about being forced to watch pornography wouldn’t have been helpful either. She watched it, didn’t she? She would have been adjuged one of those Jezebel types, leading her husband down the primrose path, because surely this man of God, this man of the cloth, wouldn’t otherwise watch pornography.
So Mary Winkler endured. She smiled. She took care of the children the best she could. She lied about the bruises. She told herself tomorrow things would be better, God would “change her husband’s heart,” he would stop smothering the kids, he would stop raping her, stop pinching her, he would stop being revolted when she ate in front of him, he would treat her, maybe, like a human being. One day. If she was just a good wife, and prayed, and kept on serving him and above all, kept quiet about what he was doing to her.
Heart
I meant to post here.
It is absolutely detestable that someone could use that sort of power for negative instead of positive. It’s this sort of thing that turns the church into an ominous,scary, intimidating thing. I am not religious, but perhaps I would be if things like this weren’t so prevalent.
I hope she gets off. She deserves to be able to have her life and to raise her children. His control and reign has consumed her life, she did not pre-meditate this action, and even if she did, who can blame her for wanting to defend herself and her children.
There has to be a special place in hell for men like this.
Its good she took the decision to get out of that situation. No religion condones that kind of behaviour or treatment.
Fucking sick sleazebag - if only ’solid evidence’ was behind every woman who’s ever killed her life-threatening (or not) abuser.And GOD (har har) I hate these fucking religions that dominate people’s minds - this may probably not be the most sensitive response to a story like this but as long as you’re reading it in terms of what Matthew, in his mind, thought it acceptable to do to Mary Winkler and her children, and the incredible ego-inflating response (basically, ignoring it) his behaviour invoked in his peers - just thinking of the over-blown image this man must’ve had of himself makes me laugh.He was a whiny, deluded moron who needed the cover of the most violent, patriarchal and widespread religion in the world to make himself feel good, in charge, in control.
I know and see and my response as anomalous - probably as I’ve been lucky enough to not have had to endure the worst of what patriarchy doles out to women in terms of psychological abuse mixed with physical violence - but stories of this kind of abuse in religious communities make me see men and patriarchal religion as incredibly weak, infinitely insecure, and laughably ridiculous.Not that I don’t seethe at these men’s feeling entitled to do what they do to the women and children in their ‘communities’, but it all the more exposes the organizing (and doctrine) of the Abrahimic religions as nothing more than men having an existential crisis.So what do they do?Invent huge, brainwashing, psychologically,emotionally, and physically damaging religions and social systems where they finally have a big, huge, all-important 24/7 purpose:control over everything, lest everything go awry and somebody wises up.That’s what it is.Their hand-wringing rage and insecurity makes me laugh.There have been plenty of societies without this particular mind-fuck in the men.I believe that the cause and origin of patriarchy lies with men’s minds, not women’s reproductive capacities or ‘role’ as some would have it.They get fucked up in the mind somehow, and then expect women to reassure them of their usefulness and their purpose.Some mommy complex.Think of the Musuo in China, for instance (I’m quite positive everyone here’s heard of these lovely people) where the concept of fatherhood is nonexistent and men play the role of father to their sister’s children.Perhaps men’s mindfuck lies in their entitlement to children.”I’m gonna have kids when I grow up” - if you don’t find somebody to incubate your precious seed, well the whole statement implies rape, really.Only girl children should ever think that thought.Naturally speaking, women are in charge by default.You have a little human slide out of you, it’s ‘yours’.You feed it, teach it how to live (tell it what to do).But it seems men take that important biological fact, twist in their own importance in producing some dna for the child, and take it to mean that THEY ought to be doing all the ‘providing’, the living, the having fun whilst trying to keep all women in a perpetual state of pregnancy.Fucking MORONS.And I bet they’re going to look to us to salve their little consciousness and solve their problem for them, if they ever feel like it.Well fuck that noise.YOU fix it, and I suggest you do it now before women really, REALLY crack and decide to wipe your sorry asses from this planet.With women being able connect all over the globe and with the increasingly hideous way men are abusing women, it just might happen.
Well jesus christ in a fruitwagon, talk about going off on a tangent.Forgive me, Heart?What I really wanted to say is, believe or not, Hi.I’ve been reading your blog for over a year but haven’t commented as of yet.I actually wanted to, if I could, make a suggestion about the pictures that accompany your posts of cases of men’s abuse.It occured to me that most posts have a picture of the women or girls that have been victimized, but rarely of the victimizer himself.That may be because pictures of them are sometimes hard to find especially when posting during a pending trial.Is there a reason you do this, or, hell forbid, have discussed it somewhere here that I’ve missed? I only think that, considering how women are generally blamed for their own vicitmization, and how mainstream articles are written about it (” she got raped” for instance), posting a picture of the abuser, right there for everyone to see and to connect what the abuser’s done (which is usually all that gets written of him) to an actual person, would be very countering to that mainstream attitude.Not that you shouldn’t have a picture of the victim as a person as well if you wish, maybe as it helps women who have been through similar situations to not feel alone and inhuman.
Well those are just my thoughts, I love this place any way.Thank you for the safe space and the important words.
Makes me sick! Do you believe in capital punishment?
I really hope that Mary Winkler gets off. She has been through more than enough already.
A scum-sucking, repeat wife-beater and child-smotherer, who used twisted religious ideas as justification for the torture of his own family, is dead by the hand of the Woman he abused, in defense of herself and her children. This is NOT a crime, it is DIRECT ACTION to protect innocent lives in the face of AN ONGOING THREAT OF GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM AND DEATH.
ALLELUIA!!!
First I heard about this case, I KNEW she was being abused, just from the way she carried out her “crime”. I just knew.
This is NOT a crime, it is DIRECT ACTION to protect innocent lives in the face of AN ONGOING THREAT OF GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM AND DEATH.
Absolutely. It is strange how women are not ‘allowed’ to protect themselves, nor claim self defence, but if a man was in the same position, with the same threats against him, suddenly it becomes ‘justifiable’.
I made a comment to this thread as soon as it was posted but the comment never appeared, so I’ll make it again.
She should get an award for killing him.
Akkari, I cannot help but wonder just how people would’ve reacted if he had KILLED HER AND THEIR CHILDREN… I can just picture the fucking headlines “Wife and children slain in lovers spat” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I just want to #$%$%#$@$%$$#%% (too harsh to type believe me. ;))
Ok deep breath… return to “normal” calm appearance… She is no criminal, she defended herself and her children, but no DOUBT ABOUT IT, they will say she didnt go through the proper channels set up for women in her “situation.”
Go! Branjor!
(It is what I was thinking, but wouldn’t say it.)
The point is, even if she managed to get away from him successfully (and we know that is rarely easy/fast), he would have taken up another women who would have been his next victim. Abusers go from victim to victim — that is quite often the only time that the first victim gets any peace, once he has taken up with his next.
typo -’another women’
should be - ‘another woman’ singular.
*slaps wrist* must proof read BEFORE hitting button. Doh!
Well, I don’t know what happened to your first comment, Branjor! Sorry about that. :/
Gonne, I’m glad you finally came out of lurkdom, and thanks for your good thoughts and words! I hope you keep on commenting. As far as photos go, in general, I don’t post men’s photos unless there is a good reason for it, because this is women’s space.
I like to see the lovely faces of women here as often as possible. 
But I hear you– sometimes it does seem right to post men’s photos, and so I do. But sometimes I really just don’t even want some abuser’s face on the page next to the woman he abused. 
Sometimes I don’t want to give him that level of attention, which some guys actually want and get off on.
If people could imagine what a woman like Mary Winkler faces, or any woman in that world, in that situation. The guy presents this wonderful face to everyone and even people who see him in bad moments give him a pass because he’s a pastor or righteous dude and they figure everyone has a bad day. People WANT to believe pastors are spiritual people, wise, close to God, they WANT “holy men” to be holy, and so they see what they want to see a lot of the time.
So there is Mary, charged with being the supportive pastor’s wife, the good Christian mom and a good example to the women in the church. But the guy is raping her anally. He’s forcing her to watch pornography. Even if she does manage to leave, imagine having to explain WHY, and particularly in a milieux in which you are required to be modest, chaste, discreet and reverencing your husband, submitting to him. When people ask why you left you’re going to tell them? What about your kids? Do you want them to know you left their dad because he was a pornhound who raped you? What about his folks, whom you may care about and love, your in-laws, your couple friends? Maybe you’ve said all the right things, that you have a great relationship, hot dang, isn’t it the most wonderful thing, this “Christian marriage,” thing. Maybe she’s talked him up because she’s supposed to, she’s said what a great dad, man, husband he is, in moments when he was treating her well, or at least wasn’t abusing her.
If she leaves, she’s going to be called a liar because if he was so bad, why’d she say he was a great husband and father? If she explains why she left, he’s going to deny it or say it was all her idea and again, she’s the liar. If anybody DOES believe her, she’s going to be told (1) God hates divorce; (2) she should have sought “spiritual counsel” (which counsel usually amounts to telling the woman how to be a better wife and that her husband probably abuses her because she is failing in some way); (3) she should pray and read the Bible and ask God for grace to get through whatever he put her through.
So she bears up under it and hopes God WILL change him. Until she breaks.
Heart
If she leaves, she’s going to be called a liar because if he was so bad, why’d she say he was a great husband and father? If she explains why she left, he’s going to deny it or say it was all her idea and again, she’s the liar. If anybody DOES believe her, she’s going to be told (1) God hates divorce; (2) she should have sought “spiritual counsel” (which counsel usually amounts to telling the woman how to be a better wife and that her husband probably abuses her because she is failing in some way); (3) she should pray and read the Bible and ask God for grace to get through whatever he put her through.
Heart, that’s an over-familiar scenario to me, and very likely what she *believed* would happen if she left.
But sometimes people are better than imagined. My mother expected universal hatred when she filed for divorce. In fact she was given a lot of support. Even so, it was a black time, and I don’t know how we would have coped without those few friends of hers to remind her she was doing the right thing.
Stormy
The point is, even if she managed to get away from him successfully (and we know that is rarely easy/fast), he would have taken up another women who would have been his next victim. Abusers go from victim to victim — that is quite often the only time that the first victim gets any peace, once he has taken up with his next.
Nods. Seeing history repeated now with my father’s new girlfriend, and I can verify that exes don’t quit harassing until they’ve successfully chased down a new victim.
One thing I find disturbing about my parent’s case is that after the decision to divorce, stories started crawling out of the woodwork. Everyone had confirmed for years how wonderful our father was, then they were saying they’d always known there were problems but hadn’t wanted to ‘upset the applecart’. Practically no-one ever told Mum about his anti-social behaviour.
I do hope common sense prevails in Mary’s case.
Yes, Stormy and Divine Purpose–
If a Woman shoots her abuser- usually after *years* of sying nothing in the face of horrific attacks- she is dragged through the courts because slaves are not allowed to fight back, and the men are thinking ‘Gee, if one does it and we say it’s okay, the rest of them might start to get ideas’…
You can bet that if a male cop had ‘rescued’ her by shooting her abusive husband, he would have been given a medal. It’s the old ‘Women are supposed to wait for rescue’ CRAP. Most of the time, there is no rescue, just more beatings, until the waiting Woman dies.
I suggest that Women follow Nature, Our Great Mother. When a badass male Grizzly Bear tries to come after a Grizzly Sow to get at her cubs for snack-time purposes, the Sow unloads on him with tooth, claw and Female Fury until he is beaten back. She goes after him again and again, until he not only knows to leave Her and her cubs alone, but also until She is able to completely drive him out of the area where She and Her cubs are. She fights like Hell, Destruction and Death, with every ounce of Power and Viciousness She can muster, because it is She and all other Sows– not the males they breed with– who are the True Guardians of the future generations of the Bear Nation.
This being said, I hereby nominate Mary Winkler for the ‘Great Bear Mother Award of Valor’ for acting with the bravery of a She-Grizzly in standing up to the cowardly shit-stain who tortured her and her children.
The Mother hath Judged in Her Daughter’s favor, and the attacker is dead.
SO MOTE IT BE!
DP: Akkari, I cannot help but wonder just how people would’ve reacted if he had KILLED HER AND THEIR CHILDREN…
The reactions would be something like these:
Whey didn’t she leave him?
She’s as bad as he is for not protecting her kids.
Some women will do anything to hang on to a man, even put their kids’ lives in jeapordy.
I wonder what she did to make him, a good man and pastor, so crazy. He must have discovered that she was cheating on him.
It’s always the woman’s fault. Always.
Evil comes in many forms
Evil presents comes in many forms, whether it be Hitler and the holocaust, Seung-hui Cho and the Virginia Tech shooting, or a Church of Christ preacher named Matthew Winkler. Mary Winkler testifies about a wig and shoes she says her
CoolAunt, as much as I have those reasons, I have to say thank you for pointing them out. It makes me so damn sick, I too grew up in a christian home, i DETEST the church and its perversions. My mother was told that first is God and THEN is her Husband and then her Children. So my father’s abuse, addiction, theft was excused, his being passed out stoned with his male friends in the house and ME IS 13 YEAR OLD DAUGHTER as the sole guard of the younger 3. To keep these MEN from entering their room and killing their innocense. THE WOMEN IN THE CHURCH TOLD HER THIS IS HOW IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE… she was a sinner because she had 4 children out of wedlock, she had to pay for her sins and that his ABUSE was just some sort of fuking punishment for her “crimes.” (My name: Divine Purpose, is sort of a mock if you will of my experience. I use that as my pen name just for clarity. I havent been to church since I was old enough to say NO and not be beaten aka 19) I cannot blame the church for these men, but I can say that that experience DOES NOT HELP. It gives these cowards the “RIGHT” to act as they do.
I’m going to stop because I am getting very emotional and I dont want to ramble.
because of my families good name and sensivity of the thing i will be anonomious here. i am a muslim by birth and when i was 12 my mother who was a 35 year old widow got married to a muslim pastor or mullah because she was forced by her parents. soon we were at uk and life was nothing but hell. the mullah supposed to be a man of god but he sure do have a wicked brain of a devil.as a conservative indian woman my mom was very obedient of her husband and this mullah abused her in all sort of ways. he was very poor so we had to live in a one room apartment and he forced mom to wear provocative dresses at house often bra and petticot for his viewing pleasure , that i am also at the room never bothered him a bit. he was abusive in nature and despite being a kid i was forced to work in a grocery store ran by some other immigrent for no money as he took it from me. instead of sending me to school he told mom that i am going to be home school and that it. my mom an uneducated woman tried her best to persue him to give me some education which he mostly did in gibberish manner .i begged the grocery store owner and his wife enrolled me into a school and thus i got some education, but at house things were as bad as ever. in a one room i had to live with them and often at night i could hear him talk about sex and etc and even some nightes i had the misfortune to see him fondling and mounting mom, it was vile. his perversition was such that to prevent mom making loud noises at night while love making or fondling he would often tie her mouth to prevent sound. when i turned 18 i jet off and i have no respect for these vile man of god’s.
annonomious, I am so, so sorry for what you have gone through in your life. I have just finished responding to Tam, whose husband and father went to strip bars, then came home and raped her. And now I am reading about this “man of god” who abused you and your mother so relentlessly. I feel such anger and such grief and I am just so very, very sorry. I’m so glad you got away from him and I hope that you never encounter this kind of man again, that you are able to create a life for yourself that is full of people who love and respect you and would never hurt you. I’m glad you could write about your life here because I know there are thousands of girls and women who have had your experiences and who will feel less alone because of what you have written.
My very best to you,
Heart
Thanks for the update on Mary Winkler. I remember when she shot her husband, and they had all this phoney stuff on the news.
“Oh, they were the ideal christian couple, he was such a perfect pastor…how could this have happened??” Blah blah.
But in my mind, when women finally kill their husbands, something clearly is up, and it is always a story of abuse and contempt that I have come to associate with all these right wing pastors.
It is so painful to read about women in these rotten marriages, and in fact, I get freaked out at the idea of women marrying any men period, much less living with them.
So I hope that evil abusive pornified pastor gets raked over the coals during the trial, and I hope there are a lot of women on that jury who will declare this murder self-defense, which it almost always is with women. Because men define self-defense from their point of view, this slow burn that women go through is unknown to the male mind. I don’t believe that just because it takes a long time for women to finally destroy their oppressors and abusers that it is not self-defense.
O.J. has taught us that moving out or getting a separation will not protect you either. If women started killing their abusive husbands by the hundreds of thousands, perhaps this aspect of male behavior might be held in check. Since I don’t believe men ever GET anything about the wrong they do or about the monsters that they are in the home, I see slim hope of legal solutions.
We have so much information about these abusive men now, that we should develop a profile for women to look at. What are the general characteristics of abusive men? How can you spot them?
Collectively, we should be able to put a red dot on the foreheads of all these guys.
And I’ll end with a quote here from Monique Wittig:
“If we as lesbians are fighting oppression, we cannot reproduce the gestures assigned to the class of women, because the gestures designated to the class of women are the gestures of slaves.”
Clearly Mary Winkler stepped out of the “gestures of slaves” and into the moral authority of free woman!
True-crime author Ann Rule has a section on Mary Winkler in one of her latest books. Mary grew up in a fundamentalist home and was brow-beaten to think very little of herself and her capabilities. Although she went to college, she went to a fundamentalist college run by the Church of Christ (the very fundamentalist denomination that forbids musical instruments during services, women preachers, etc. etc.) where she met her husband. People in the town where they lived at the time of the killing told Ms. Rule that Mary’s husband was notoriously cheap, bossy, a bully, and would do noticably unfair things like buy himself large lunches in restaurants, only allow his “fat” wife a very small portion, and not buy any lunch for his children, who generally would be there and begging for some. He threatened to kill a neighbor’s dog. He was an egotist who probably didn’t realize other people could see through his “holy” preacher facade–but they certainly did. His penchant for pinching off his baby’s breathing to quiet it was the last straw for Mary. She was extremely disoriented when she was found after the killing, and obviously she was driven to the very limits of her sanity by years of sexual and emotional abuse by her husband. I hope she has a peaceful life from hereon out.
Yeah, Level Best, and you know, I’ve known so many women who have suffered at the hands of religious men in exactly the way you describe.
Satsuma, I know there are a lot of links, etc., in my post and it probably is confusing for those who haven’t been following the story, but Mary Winkler has already been tried. Although she was originally charged with first degree murder, ultimately she was found guilty of manslaughter, and in the end, she served only 12 days in jail. She was also hospitalized in a mental institution for two months. But, she’s been on her own for some time now, working, and so on. The last thing that had to be decided was custody of the children. Her in-laws did everything they could to take her daughters from her. So this is such good news– it means at last she really can move on with her life for the most part, though it will be difficult for her to have to deal with the grandparents having visitation. Still, it could have gone so much worse for her.
“Satsuma, I know there are a lot of links, etc., in my post and it probably is confusing for those who haven’t been following the story…”
Yeah, I’ve followed the story and it confused me anyway. I saw my name on a comment and thought, “Hey, I didn’t comment on this. Oh, wait, that was last year.”
Same here CoolAunt, “what, I haven’t commented on this … oh last year … [and hey, complete with typos! nah, I still don't proof read!]”
That is good news for Mary Winkler. I hope her life takes a turn for the better now.
Thanks Heart! I don’t know how I missed out on the fact that Mary Winkler is now free, the trial is over, and she won! There are so many things going on… so this is very good news, and I hope it is a clear warning to other men who think they’ll be able to get away with this!
And best news of all, the evil husband is dead as a door nail and won’t be out there trying to marry some other woman and have the cycle start all over again. They must die, or they will go after other victims.
We have that lovely rarity….. a happy ending for a woman of courage!!