This painting depicts the destruction of my home by the perpetrator, Stanley Amir Elivert, after I escaped his violence and did not return. It was made in response to the harassment and intimidation that followed, as coercive control took new forms through third parties—specifically, through two women closely associated with him: the mother of his child and his business partner. I reached outward to these women for help while trying to locate the perpetrator after leaving him.
What came back was something else.
I contacted the mother of his child, Julie Laurence, because I believed she might know where he was. Her own description of her work made what followed even more disturbing. She wrote that she had “spent the last few decades fighting alongside commercially-sexually-exploited girls” and was “currently the Senior Assistant Vice-President at a NYC non-profit.”
I was a woman who had escaped violence asking a woman who described her life's work in this way for help locating the perpetrator. In my March 2021 email, I explained that police were looking for him, that there were open I-Cards, and that the Sheriff's Office was attempting to serve him. I asked for information about his whereabouts. I later made my purpose explicit: “My purpose is to assist authorities in locating the perpetrator.”
Instead of helping me locate him, Ms. Laurence, who identified herself as his partner of 28 years and the mother of his daughter, began sending extensive emails about me to the platform that hosted my website, while copying my attorney. In those emails, the mother and advocate for victims described me and my identical twin sister as “perpetrators,” called what I was doing a “crime in progress,” and announced that her “dossier will widen consistently as needed to include any and all agencies of government.”
And it did widen.
On May 11, 2022, Ms. Laurence sent an extensive email about me and my identical twin sister to a network that included the Brooklyn District Attorney, the U.S. Department of Justice, the New York Attorney General, NYPD personnel, civil-rights and advocacy organizations, elected officials, internet platforms, my website host, my attorney, my sister, and me. The recipient list included government and law-enforcement addresses alongside organizations and platforms including the NAACP, NYCLU, Live Free USA, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Google, and others.
She explicitly announced that she was “writing to press charges” against me and my identical twin sister and stated that she believed the accusations should be prosecuted as hate crimes. She asked law enforcement to file charges and requested written explanations from agencies that declined to act, stating that the problem would not go away without “adequate incentive from Law Enforcement.”
She also pressed internet platforms to remove my work and specifically identified A Mirror of Dread, the body of work through which I document and transform my experience into art.
The email culminated in an explicit demand that my identical twin sister and I be “arrested asap.” She then asked the District Attorney and other law-enforcement agencies included in the email to contact her about moving forward with charges against us. This was no longer simply communication with me. The accusations had been distributed outward—to law enforcement, government agencies, advocacy organizations, corporations, elected officials, my attorney, my identical twin sister, and the platforms through which I made my art visible.
She wrote elsewhere that she expected my “erratic behavior to continue its destructive trajectory as long as she has a platform.”
The language is important:
“As long as she has a platform.”
The platform was my art.
The other woman was the perpetrator's business partner in the “talent” of insects, Jennifer Kanter (#insecttalent)—a venture they formed around insect-based artwork. Ms. Kanter wrote that she and the perpetrator led an art collective together and that she had made “huge investments” in their project.
She, too, turned to law enforcement.
In a separate email sent directly to my attorney at the time, Ms. Kanter stated that she intended to file a police report against me and referred to me as:
She wrote that a search of my online history using “some choice search keywords” had produced “unsettling results,” and concluded:
“I want her to keep away from me.”
So both women closely associated with the perpetrator invoked law enforcement against me. One distributed accusations to an extraordinary network of law-enforcement agencies, government offices, advocacy organizations, elected officials, corporations, and internet platforms while calling for my arrest. The other told my attorney that she intended to file a police report against me.
This was not anonymous harassment.
It came from two women closely associated with the perpetrator.
It reached my attorney, my website platform, law enforcement, government agencies, advocacy and civil-rights organizations, elected officials, corporations, my identical twin sister, and other third parties.
It began after I reached outward for help.
Instead, I experienced their actions as protecting the abuser while turning the scrutiny onto the victim—discrediting me, criminalizing my speech and art, and attempting to enlist institutions against me.
Then I was called unhinged.
This painting is my answer.
Look at the room.
The room existed.
The destruction existed.
I photographed it.
I survived it.
And now I have painted it.
Coercive control did not end when I escaped. It took new forms. It acquired third parties, emails, accusations, institutions, law enforcement, and an audience. The violence that had once occupied my home became an effort to occupy the narrative.
But the narrative is also where I have agency. I've relcaimed my autonomy.
They tried to make my art evidence against me.
They tried to make my platform something that should be taken away.
So I made a new one.
And more art.
And another painting.
They gave me the word.
I ran with it.
And corrected the narrative.
Note: In discussions of narcissistic abuse and coercive control, “flying monkeys” is a colloquial term used for third parties who extend an abuser's reach, including by providing information, carrying messages, enabling, monitoring, or participating in harassment. The term derives from the winged monkeys in The Wizard of Oz, who carried out the Wicked Witch's commands.
One of the most challenging and unexpected obstacles survivors face after leaving an abusive relationship is the emergence of “flying monkeys.” These individuals—whether friends, family, or acquaintances—may unknowingly support the abuser, often questioning or downplaying your experience. At Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence (BTSADV), we believe that understanding this dynamic is essential for protecting your healing journey and maintaining your boundaries.
They are sometimes called “Flying Monkeys” — which in the narcissism world represent the individuals that a narcissist will recruit and then use to do their bidding, typically to isolate, alienate, and harass another person.