Like many others experiencing domestic abuse, 21-year-old Alexis Ruhlen says she could not leave him. "If I tried to leave him, he would break into my house. He would hurt me."
"It's very normalized in our culture to be in a toxic relationship," says 21-year-old Alexis Ruhlen. In her toxic relationship, the New Jersey woman says she endured mental and physical abuse, culminating in being kidnapped at knifepoint from her college's parking lot.
She says she and her ex-boyfriend met on an app when she was a senior in high school. The courtship moved quickly, making Alexis feel like this was her first "grown-up" relationship. But the honeymoon period lasted only a few months. "He was very controlling," Alexis tells Inside Edition Digital, "He'd say, ‘Oh, you're wearing that? Maybe you should change,’ or, ‘I don't really want you talking to this person.’" She says she mistook the need to be in control with caring.
About a year into their relationship, Alexis says the verbal manipulation turned into physical violence. It started "with a push," which led to slapping and punching. "I feel like deep down I knew that it was wrong, and I was maybe a little bit embarrassed," Alexis says. While other people her age knew about the abuse, shame kept her from telling someone older who may have been able to help.
Like many others experiencing domestic abuse, Alexis says she could not leave him. "If I tried to leave him, he would break into my house. He would hurt me." An animal lover at heart, Alexis says her ex would use her animals against her when she tried to protect herself. "He would take my animals out. He would take my cats out of my house, and threaten to hurt them if I tried to leave."
The two had been dating just under two years when the kidnapping happened. Alexis was on her college campus, attending a meeting with an academic advisor to set up classes for the next semester. Because this advisor was male, Alexis' ex-boyfriend required her to record the conversation. "This was normal to me," she says. "This was something I had to do a lot with people. I had to record conversations, and take pictures to prove that I was with who I said I was with, and where I was."
While walking to the meeting, Alexis spoke to her ex on FaceTime. "It's just very involuntary to just look up to make sure that you're not going to run into somebody. And he immediately [said], ‘Who are you looking at?’ She turned the camera around to show the man walking in front of her.
"He freaked out," Alexis says, so she blocked him from calling or texting her. "This was something that happened all the time. He'd flip out, and I'd just block him to get a few moments of peace to do what I needed to do. And then once I was done, I would unblock him, and things would be okay. So, I didn't really feel like anything was out of the ordinary at that moment."
Alexis contacted him after her meeting, but found he had not calmed down, so she blocked his number again. She resumed her day by going to one of her classes. Nothing about the situation seemed out of the ordinary that day. "We would argue all the time, and he would freak out all the time. But I thought that I was physically safe, because I was far away."
During her class, Alexis started receiving multiple emails from her ex. The notes escalated from asking her whereabouts to accusing her of cheating on their relationship. She started to panic when the last few emails became threatening, "I'm on campus. I parked my car. I'm going to be looking in every single classroom until I find you," Alexis describes one of the emails. "And then it was, 'If I find you, I'm going to walk into your class, and I'm going to kill you. I'm going to gut you like a fish. I'm going to kill everyone in there. I'm going to walk in there crying.’"
The last email Alexis received from him appeared to be a suicide note that was sent "to everyone in his life saying that it was my fault. And to his mom, he's so sorry. And to his dad, can he watch the dog for him? And to his friends, he's sorry."
Alexis was truly concerned. "This is still my boyfriend, even though he's acting crazy, this is still my boyfriend. It's still a human. I don't want him to hurt himself."
Once class was over, Alexis approached her vehicle in the parking lot feeling confused and worried. When she opened the door, her ex-boyfriend, who had been hiding inside her trunk, dove at her with a knife. Alexis recalls, "He just pulls me right back in by my hoodie, and he starts screaming at me."
His initial plan was to force Alexis to drive to Harriman State Park. Alexis says he told her that he was "... going to torture me, kill me, and chop me up into pieces so nobody can ever find me. And if I alert anybody on the road, if anything happens to us while we're driving, it's going to be worse for me. While we're driving, he's punching me in the face from the backseat."
It was October and the pair had gone pumpkin picking the day before. The pumpkin that was still in Alexis' backseat was thrown at her head, and a packet of honey left over from that day was poured all over her.
While driving, she says she begged for her life. "He's just punching me, and I'm afraid because if he can punch me so hard that I'm swerving all over the road, he has no care for my life, for his life, for anyone else's life," Alexis says. Though she doesn't describe herself as a religious person, Alexis says she prayed as the abuse continued.
When they reached Harriman State Park, her ex-boyfriend changed his mind and told her to drive to an outlet mall, Woodbury Commons. She says he told her she had to come inside the mall and buy him new ski pants.
On a deserted floor of the mall's parking garage, Alexis says she explained to her ex that she could not go inside the stores with him. "I just said, 'Look at my face. I look like a mess. People are going to be afraid. People are going to say something.' And he goes, "Well, just fix it." And I said, ‘Well, fix it how?’ And he said, ‘With magic.’ So, I was like, 'Okay.' At this point, I think he's just fully lost his mind"
Things turned more ominous at that point. He told Alexis that her murder would be so heinous that a Netflix documentary would be made about both of them. "It's just these specific statements that just really stick out in my head," Alexis says. "And I'll never forget them. I'll never forget the things that he said to me."
According to Alexis, he then took her phone and dumped the contents of her purse onto the floor of her car, telling her to clean it up while he went inside the mall. "And he goes to leave, and he takes one last look at me, and he goes, 'Do you think I meant to do that to you? Do you think that I want a brain-dead…,' and then he says the R word, 'girlfriend?' And then he left. That was the last thing he ever said to me."
Stunned and traumatized, Alexis waited for a minute in the parking lot. She was lucky: Her ex took her phone, but not the keys to her car. Alexis calls driving away "one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make." Bruised and covered in honey, she drove directly to a police station for help. He was arrested later that day.
After the attack, Alexis sought refuge in her parents and close friends. But, as so many survivors can attest to, it was a difficult journey. At first, Alexis says she had a lot of nightmares. Her parents offered her a new car, said they would move to a new home, and installed security cameras outside their house. Her mother even switched jobs so that she worked during the day and was home at night. To keep her feeling safe, Alexis says, "He broke my window, so they're bolted shut." Because of her family's efforts, she says she no longer lives in fear.
Almost two years of intensive therapy helped Alexis cope. Because of her ex's manipulation, Alexis says she had to relearn how to interact with other people. "I had been so sheltered from being social, and having friends, and I couldn't look people in the eye, and it was just so difficult for me," she says.
To save Alexis the trauma of testifying and cross-examination, her legal team decided not to go ahead with a full criminal trial and agreed to a plea deal. He is serving seven years behind bars for first-degree kidnapping. Though the domestic abuse charges were dropped, Alexis says she is comfortable with the outcome. "That's a felony on his record," she says. "Any time he goes to get a job, they're going to say, 'Oh my goodness, you went to prison for first degree kidnapping?' It's not a light charge."
"I wanted people to know my story," Alexis says. Now that her abuser is behind bars, Alexis is using her experience to help others. Alexis believes, "I knew that either I could sit with it, and live with it quietly, or I could talk about it."
"There's a huge stigma around people who experience domestic violence," Alexis states. People have insinuated that she doesn't look like someone who could have experienced abuse. "And it just breaks my heart because it could happen to anyone."
She also says there is a lot of judgment for people who do not leave domestic violence situations right away. "But leaving is the most dangerous time in an abusive relationship," she says. Her wish is that more people understood that before they judged people for not leaving. "If I had left at any point before I did, I probably would not have been here today, or I still would've been in that abusive relationship, because there was no way out for me."
Once she graduates, Alexis' chosen career path will put her on the front lines of helping other abuse survivors. She plans to go into emergency room nursing, so that she can be one of the first to help survivors of sexual and domestic assault.
Alexis often gets asked if she regrets ever dating her ex, and her answer is no. She says her experience with domestic violence has fueled her strength and resilience. Any other hardships that arise, she knows she can overcome them. Alexis Ruhlen is not looking back.
