Playing the bully, and playing for keeps

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By MARY JO MELONE

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 21, 2001

Men who beat women have one common characteristic, if you ask counselors who work with them.

Secretly, they see themselves as little people.

So they act big and seek to control their women.

Twice now, Christopher Vietri says he has done no such thing.

First it was Natasha Gawronski, his girlfriend, who lied to Vietri and an adoption agency about what happened to the child of theirs she carried, the child the world christened Baby Sam.

It was wrong to lie, but lying is the back door out of a desperate situation. Gawronski said she was sick of Vietri's abuse. She didn't want him raising their child. She wanted the baby adopted.

Now Vietri's wife is talking like Natasha Gawronski.

Erika Vietri got an injunction in Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court last week to keep Vietri away from her. She has moved out of their New Port Richey home and into a Tampa apartment with friends.

"I knew it was progressing," she said of Vietri's outbursts, "and I had to get out of there."

She could not take their own son, Nicholas, with her, she said. Vietri wouldn't let her.

It was a different woman this time, but the same drive to control.

In Hillsborough County, for example, most men charged with domestic violence go to an outreach program run by the Spring, Tampa's abuse shelter, for counseling. Up front, many admit the latest victim isn't the first.

"Probably 30 percent of the people we talk to have had relationships like this, in which they say they have beaten other people before -- and that's a low number," said Gabe Venero, the former Tampa police major who manages the Spring's counseling program for men.

Once they get into group therapy, Venero said, it becomes clear that even more men are repeaters. But denial is a powerful engine. "A lot of them will not admit to it," Venero said.

"It's a power thing. The whole deal is, you're going to do things my way when I want them done. If you don't, you know what the consequences are."

These are the consequences of Vietri's inability to give up control. He has cast an enormous shadow over the life of one child, maybe two. He has even the Florida Legislature and Gov. Bush under his thumb.

Last spring, the Legislature rewrote the state adoption law. Rewriting the law had been in the works for some years, but the Baby Sam case pushed the cause over the top.

Vietri successfully cast himself as a misunderstood man, eager to be a good father. He fought and fought and fought. Any hint he may have abused Gawronski -- who decided against testifying against him -- was lost in the battle.

Vietri played his part so well that the Alabama Supreme Court overturned the adoption of his baby by a couple in that state. A court in Tuscaloosa now has to decide custody of the child.

This incident involving Erika Vietri will likely play a part in the case and, if fairness counts just this once, in the future of Sam Johnson.

Until now, Chris Vietri has had a symbolic presence in Florida's adoption debate. He stood for a certain group of men who had been deeply wronged, even falsely accused.

So the law was rewritten to give them a break.

Before the law was changed, men who abused their women, emotionally or physically, could not claim custody of their children. But the changes took emotional abuse out of the picture.

In other words, if a man wants to block an adoption and lay claim to a child he fathered, he can still hurt the mother -- he just shouldn't leave marks.

For this step forward toward domestic tranquility, you can thank Chris Vietri.

He may be a little man within, but his reach is huge.

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