Wife believes Cedric Youngblood can change
She learns he doesn’t want to
Cedric Youngblood and his wife, Dorothy Hooks Youngblood, were arguing again. They had just returned from a nightclub to their apartment in Americus, Georgia. Their heated words quickly escalated to domestic violence.
Cedric grabbed Dorothy by the neck and slammed her to the floor. The move was right out of WWF wrestling, except it wasn’t staged, it was real. Cedric held his wife on the floor, choking her. But somehow she broke free. Dorothy grabbed a two-pound dumbbell and threw it at Cedric. She missed.
Dorothy ran for the bathroom, grabbing a kitchen knife on the way, and locked herself in. The next thing she knew, there was a knock at the door. It was the police.
Cedric had called 911, saying that his wife assaulted him. When the police arrived, he was holding a towel to his bleeding forehead. Dorothy was arrested, handcuffed and charged with aggravated assault.
“I am not a criminal,” Dorothy protested as she was being transported to the police station. “I don’t understand why I’m being arrested. I didn’t hurt him.” Dorothy spent two days in jail before she could post bail. Cedric, in the meantime, was out partying, and brought another woman to their home.
Five months later, Cedric went to the police and admitted that he made up the story that his wife assaulted him. The police then arrested Cedric for filing a false report. Dorothy bailed him out.
Domestic violence
The choking incident took place on November 10, 2003. The Youngbloods had been married for less than two months.
It was the first time the Americus police were called to mediate with the couple, but certainly not the last. Over the next two years, the police responded to 12 domestic violence incidents involving the Youngbloods.
Dorothy had an idea of what she was getting into when she married Cedric. Shortly before their wedding on September 13, 2003, he had held a gun to her head, with his finger on the trigger.
She kept hoping he would change.
Showing him love
Dorothy and Cedric were living in Alabama when they first met at an Elks Club. At the time, Dorothy was 50 years old, retired from the military, divorced, and finishing college with a degree in psychology. She was a minister in a non-denominational church. She was also overweight—a size 22.
Cedric had come to the club with another woman. He was 29 years old and, according to Dorothy, “a pretty boy—he thought he was God’s gift to women.” He was also living in one of the worst projects of Montgomery, Alabama, and claimed to be dealing drugs.
Cedric started pursuing Dorothy—especially after he found out that she had a nice apartment, a new car and retirement income. It wasn’t long before he moved in with her.
Dorothy, in the meantime, thought she could fix Cedric.
“I was trying to tell him that he was smart,” she says. “I tried to get him into school. I bought him clothes. I tried to show him love. He said he was abused, he said his father did all these things, his father abused his mother, and he never had anybody to help him. I was trying to show him what a real family is. ”˜You can be so much more than what you are,’ I said. ”˜There’s more to life than selling drugs on the street corner.’
“That lasted three weeks,” Dorothy continues. “I bought him $600 worth of clothes and he was gone.”
Got to fix everybody
The same thing happened after they married. They were together for three weeks, then Cedric left Dorothy for another woman.
Dorothy didn’t want to take him back. But Cedric pleaded, promising that he would go to counseling and he would change.
So in October, 2003, a month after they married, Cedric and Dorothy went to counseling. “Cedric never admitted nothing,” Dorothy says. “He put everything on me.”
After the very first session, Dorothy says the psychologist told her to get out of the marriage. Dorothy did not take his advice.
“I’m a co-dependent,” she explains. “I’ve got to fix everybody, fix everything. I knew I could change him.”
More domestic violence
A year later, on Thanksgiving Day, 2004, the couple had another violent confrontation. Even as Dorothy was on the phone with 911, Cedric was choking her. It was all recorded on tape. Then he grabbed Dorothy’s cell phone and broke it in half.
The police arrived, but Cedric had run away. The next day, the police arrested Cedric for battery and obstructing a 911 call.
As the victim of domestic violence, Dorothy wasn’t allowed bail him out of jail—so she had her daughter do it. To show his gratitude when he got home, Cedric called Dorothy names and tried to burn her face with a cigarette. “You should have left me in jail,” he said, according to Dorothy.
