“Lots of people who’ve been in an abusive relationship have had pets,” she tells Selection. “I wouldn’t have been in a position to get via numerous instances with out my canine. However then, on the identical time … animals can be utilized as a manipulation and used as a tactic as properly. Their lives are then, due to this fact, placed on the road [to] attempt to damage somebody via an animal.”
In 2014, Sarah obtained a everlasting restraining order towards her then-boyfriend of 4 years and Geek Charming co-star Matt Prokop. The court docket order, which prohibits Prokop from contacting or going inside 100 yards of Sarah and her house, additionally prolonged to her canine, Barkley Bixley.
Prokop has not publicly commented on the restraining order.
As a part of her ongoing advocacy, Sarah is looking to finish the silence on home abuse. “For 1000’s of years now, we didn’t discuss it,” she tells Selection.
“The neighborhood hasn’t shared sufficient, I imagine. And I really feel that if we discuss it extra, extra girls — and males and simply human beings usually in abusive relationships — will really feel extra snug to have the ability to discuss it with their family members as a substitute of letting their abuser isolate them from everybody, which is the very first thing that they do, so that you just don’t have that neighborhood. So we have now to maintain speaking about it. It’s actually necessary to have the ability to assist these in want.”
She highlights that the ramifications of home abuse proceed lengthy after the violence has stopped. She says that post-traumatic stress dysfunction from abuse can keep “in that abused place of your soul, the place you suppose it’s your fault the entire time and you might have completed higher, you might have gotten out sooner, you might have informed individuals.”