Terror and courage: Man who jumped from window sentenced

By Frank Schultz
JANESVILLE– Tens of thousands have been entertained by a video showing Quantrell D. Schwartzlow jumping out a window at the Rock County Sheriff’s Office.
But the reason he was in that room was an ugly, horrible story.
He choked a young woman until she passed out and then sexually assaulted her, saying he was trying to make her feel better, Deputy District Attorney Perry Folts said at Schwartzlow’s sentencing in Rock County Court on Wednesday.
The victim read a statement that many victims of domestic abuse will recognize. Judge Karl Hanson told her it was the most courageous act he ever witnessed, including during his service in the Iraq war.
She described a relationship full of such abuse and threats.
“I believed I was going to die the day I was strangled,” she said.
“The way he grabbed my throat, the way his eyes darkened and the noises I heard as I fell unconscious will forever be ingrained in my brain. …
“I will never forget him telling me right before I blacked out he was going to take me somewhere, where no one could hear me scream so he could kill me. Words like this were said to me so often that I knew better than to not obey. …
“Whenever I tried to convince myself that the abuse I was enduring was not normal, he degraded me into believing that the trauma he put me through was what I deserved, and if that wasn’t enough to shut me up, he would threaten my life or the lives of my family members.
“I wish I could have mustered the strength to report his acts of violence sooner. But those threats hung over my head and made me feel as though I could not scream, even though I desperately wanted to. Even when his hands were not around my throat, I had no voice,” she said.
“Part of me wishes that every mark, cut, bruise, scrape, busted lip and black eye could all come back at once so the court could truly see the extent of the physical damage done to me over the course of the relationship, if my body would even be recognizable. What is even more detrimental to my daily life is the psychological trauma …
“Nearly every night of sleep is interrupted with me waking up, shaking in a cold sweat from nightmares as I have continued living the assault that used to be my reality.”
She said she is in constant fear.
“If one day I show up dead, I guess you know who to look for,” she concluded.
Folts said Schwartzlow was adopted by the Schwartzlow family, but he later got in contact with his biological father, and Schwartzlow described how he loved hanging out with a man he called “a big drug dealer.”
Folts noted the state Department of Corrections recommended two years in prison and two years of extended supervision for two charges, escape and strangulation. Folts recommended doubling that sentence.
Defense Attorney Michael Murphy said Schwartzlow’s biological father came into his life when the boy was 16, and the man’s money, power and the fact that “girls like him” had great influence on the boy.
He learned his negative behaviors from his biological father, not his adoptive family, Murphy said.
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