“Nearly all of Arlena’s adult life had been defined by someone else’s control over her. It started with her boyfriend, Alonzo Turner, whom she met when she was a 20-year-old single mother. A few months into their relationship, he started hitting her, and then he started hitting Titches. She tried to escape once and he threw her in the trunk of his car. She tried to escape a second time, after he whipped Titches with a belt and threw him against the wall. He snatched her son away from her and threw her out of their home.” Buzzfeed’s Alex Campbell on women who are locked up for decades because their children were abused — not by the women themselves but by their boyfriends or husbands. The woman described above was sentenced to 45 years in prison.