It's almost Christmas! Good cheer and love for mankind is at hand...but not in every home! According to one agency, Domestic Abuse Program there were 17,667 calls of domestic abuse. That is only one fifth of the abuses that occur. In fact, 4000 women in the U.S. die each year from domestic abuse. Here is a reminder of what domestic abuse is and the stats:
Domestic violence is a pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors, including physical, sexual, and psychological attacks, as well as economic coercion, that adults or adolescents use against their intimate partner.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IS:
- A pattern of behaviors including a variety of tactics - some physically injurious and some not, some criminal and some not - carried out in multiple, sometimes daily episodes.
- A pattern of assaultive and coercive behaviors, including physical, sexual, and psychological attacks, as well as economic coercion. (NOTE) Yes, there is such a thing as marital rape. It is forced or demand sex when there is no consent and the police should become involved.
- A combination of physical force and terror used by the perpetrator that causes physical and psychological harm to the victim and children.
- A pattern of purposeful behavior, directed at achieving compliance from or control over the victim.
- Behaviors perpetrated by adults or adolescents against their intimate partner in current or former dating, married or cohabiting relationships of heterosexuals, gays and lesbians.
Prepared by Anne L. Ganley, Ph.D. for the Family Violence Prevention Fund
- One out of every three women will be abused at some point in her life.
- Battering is the single major cause of injury to women, exceeding rapes, muggings and auto accidents combined.
- A woman is more likely to be killed by a male partner (or former partner) than any other person.
- About 4,000 women die each year due to domestic violence.
- Of the total domestic violence homicides, about 75% of the victims were killed as they attempted to leave the relationship or after the relationship had ended.
- Seventy-three percent of male abusers were abused as children.
- Thirty percent of Americans say they know a woman who has been physically abused by her husband in the past year.
- Women of all races are equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate partner.
- On average, more than three women are murdered by their husbands or partners in this country every day.
- Intimate partner violence a crime that largely affects women. In 1999, women accounted for 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence.
- On average, a woman will leave an abusive relationship seven times before she leaves for good.
- Approximately 75% of women who are killed by their batterers are murdered when they attempt to leave or after they have left an abusive relationship.
Here is the sad news...most abused partners prefer to stay in the relationship. An article by Time Magazine on September 9, 2014 points out the problems that are still prevalent today:
After a video was released showing Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his then-fiancée, now-wife Janay Palmer so hard that he knocked her unconscious, victims of domestic abuse took to Twitter to explain why Palmer still decided to become Mrs. Rice after the incident. Some on Twitter shared their own experiences with the hashtag #WhyIStayed. There have been over 92,000 tweets on the subject since 1 a.m. Monday when the video was posted (follow the Twitter conversation in the graphic above).
The tweets give a chilling insight into why many women (and some men) feel trapped in relationships of domestic abuse. Beverly Gooden, a writer who started #WhyIStayed on Twitter, writes on her site that for her, leaving an abusive situation was “a process, not an event.” She explained in a series of tweets the many reasons it took her so long to get out: she once tried to leave the house, but her abuser slept in front of the door to block her; a pastor told her that God hates divorce; her husband said he would change; she needed time to find a place to go and money to survive once she left; she thought love conquered all; she was isolated from friends and family who lived halfway across the country.
Gooden’s story is a common one. One in three women experience domestic abuse in their lifetime, and it is one of the most chronically under reported crimes: only about one quarter of all physical assaults, one fifth of all rapes and one half of all stalkings are reported to the police.
Experts say that the limitations of leaving can be both psychological and physical. Many rationalize their situation. “People wind up blaming themselves for the abusive behavior of their partners,” says Craig Malkin, a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School. “They convince themselves if they approach the person differently, maybe they won’t be abused.”
Malkin likened a relationship with an abusive partner to gambling addiction: “The person being abused is focused on the positive and waiting for the next positive. There’s a psychological effect like gambling: the moments of tenderness and intimacy are unpredictable, but they are so intense and fulfilling that the victim winds up staying in the hopes that a moment like that will happen again.”
“People come to accept subtler forms of physical abuse at first, and very often it’s both people in the relationship who are doing that sort of thing,” he says. “So they tell themselves, ‘Okay I did sort of push him or her, so it’s kind of my fault that they knocked me out.’ It’s of course both partner’s responsibility to establish a sense of emotional and physical safety in the relationship. But the responsibility of a person who lashes out in such a violent manner as Ray Rice did in the video, that falls entirely to that person.”
Sometimes abusers will use the victims’ rationalizations to their advantage. Studies have also shown that domestic abuse and emotional abuse go hand-in-hand. According to the NCADV, psychological terrorism can keep victims from leaving unsafe marriages: tactics include limiting food purchases, constant tirades, demeaning comments, economic abuse by enforcing unreasonable budgets, restricting or criticizing trips to the doctor or getting medicine; sleep deprivation; total or partial isolation by criticizing their spouses family; unbiblical or unreasonable religious accusations, self pity and reverse victimization as a form of control, extortion or blackmail; taking the children, murder of pets; physical violence; and rape. Studies show that abused women often experience a kind of Stockholm Syndrome in which a victim comes to identify with and become attached to a captor.
Even abused partners who manage to leave their abusers stay on the fringes of the relationship because of self-doubt. They have been conditioned not to trust their own reasoning. Many simply give up and go back and live a miserable existence. They no longer report their abuses and many end up physically injured or dead.
Many of these male abusers consider themselves benevolent because they don't see what they do as abuse. Many don't hit, at least not yet. In fact, many are shocked to be considered abusers. Some are blatant abusers, but many are controlling, manipulative monsters who hide behind faces of success. Some even go church and hold offices within the church. When caught and called down for it, they maintain they do what they have to do to keep things running smoothly-their definition of smoothly.
This Christmas, if you are in an abusive relationship or still on the "fringes" of an abusive marriage. Seek good, solid counsel for yourself. Many of the abuse hotlines have counselor phone numbers. Talk to your family and friends and let them know what is going on-refuse to hide abuse. If you're a Christian I would tell you to go to your pastor as well, however many churches are not set up to deal with domestic abuse. There are some very good independent Christian counselors in your phone book. While marriage is sacred to God it is not eternal when dealing with a "manipulative, controlling and dangerous monster" who mouthed the words of love but only put you in the cycle of abuse. Physical abuse is only one of the abuses you might see as dangerous, in fact, emotional, sexual, and economic abuse cause terrible harm as you have seen in the above article. Get help and get free!
See you next blog,
Ted
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