Emotional
intelligence - Sometimes she hits him
By Anthea Rowan June 18, 2003
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-716800,00.html
Times -
18th June 2003
Domestic
violence is not always against women. Men can be victims, too, but
their complaints are often met with scepticism "THE FIRST time
it happened I was stunned. It came out of the blue, a blow to the
side of my face. I tried not to dwell on it. I assumed it was a
one-off and would not happen again." R is a victim of domestic
violence, a problem that accounts for a quarter of all violent crime
in Britain and a third of murders. This is why the Government is
considering setting up a register of every man convicted of assaulting
his wife or partner. The thing is, R is a man. This week's White
Paper on domestic violence will recognise the plight of men attacked
by violent partners for the first time. Acknowledgement has been
slow because of widespread scepticism and the view of women's groups
that many male victims of domestic violence are gay.
The British
Crime Survey of 2001-02, however, found that 19 per cent of those
claiming to have been victims of domestic violence were men, of
whom half were attacked by female partners. This followed a study
based on the analysis of 34,000 men and women by John Archer, professor
of psychology at the University of Central Lancashire and the president
of the International Society for Research on Aggression, who found
that there were "equal numbers of men and women whose partners
had used one or more acts of physical aggression towards them".
Terrie Moffitt,
professor of social development at the Institute of Psychiatry,
King's College London, believes that women are the perpetrators
of domestic violence at least as often as men. In non-clinically
abusive relationships (not resulting in injury or official intervention),
the perpetrators are primarily women, she concludes in a report
due to be released soon. In clinically abusive relationships (resulting
in injury and/or intervention) abuse is mutual, though more women
than men seek medical treatment for injury.
Figures
released by Accord, Ireland's Catholic Counselling Service, in November
2002 back both of these studies - women initiated relationship violence
in 30 per cent of cases reviewed and men in 24 per cent; the balance
of aggression was deemed "mutual".
Why, then,
has society flinched from accepting that men, as well as women and
children, are victims of domestic violence, particularly as the
number of male casualties is rising? A Home Office study stated
that between 1981 and 1995 the increase in domestic violence against
men was 512 per cent, compared with an increase of 185 per cent
for women. The answer is partly because the evidence of male victims
has been suppressed by biased reporting. Police, for example, do
not regard male victimisation to be as serious as female victimisation:
a 1997 Home Office report, Understanding the Sentencing of Women,
suggests that the law is more likely to define women as "troubled"
and worthy of sympathy, and men as "troublesome" and deserving
of punishment. This may explain why 25 per cent of all men who report
domestic abuse to the police in the UK are arrested as perpetrators.
It is also true that we find it difficult to accept that women are
capable of violence, and male victims can be reluctant to identify
themselves because of the ridicule, doubt and lack of support that
they fear they will face. The idea of a man being hit by a woman
challenges our stereotypical views of men as macho and women as
the fairer (and weaker) sex.
I didn't
know much about domestic violence - except, of course, that it happened
only to women and children - until a year ago. Then, suddenly and
bizarrely, at a wedding, my friend R told me that his wife hit him.
What? This kind of thing doesn't happen to people with middle-class
backgrounds and first-class degrees. Not big, strapping chaps who
played rugby for the first XV at school. Not doting fathers who
have houses in the country with lawns to mow and views to admire.
Why? "Because she has had a bad day, because I have put too
much milk on Jake's Rice Krispies, because I haven't put enough
on Chloe's. Because she feels like it."
When did
this start? I asked. "Three years ago." Why didn't he
say something? "I thought it would stop. I bury myself in work
at the office. The fear bubbles up as I drive home. What will the
evening bring?" But she is so small, how can she inflict such
injuries? "The ingenuity with which she turns household objects
into weapons is something to behold. A mug of scalding tea into
my face, a dustpan and brush used to beat me around the head; a
fork into the back of a hand; my son's fishing rod as a whip against
my bare back; a heeled kick in the groin; a knife into my arm."
Later he
e-mailed me. "The nurse who stitched me up asked how the injury
occurred. I told her: 'My wife stabbed me.' The look in her eyes
was the same that I had seen in my son's when I told him that I
had cut myself slicing cheese. Disbelief. She didn't ask any more
questions. Nor did she suggest that I contact the police. I did
- it was the third occasion I had done so - but the reaction was
the same: faces clouded with suspicion, eyes cast downwards, an
awkward shuffling of paper. They didn't know what to do with me.
So they passed the buck: 'Talk to your GP'. I haven't bothered.
What for?"
Many male
victims don't call it "domestic violence". To adopt a
mindset that scales down the seriousness makes the problem easier
to deal with on their own, which is a safer option than taking it
to the authorities, who are often both sceptical and unsympathetic.
Female victims
are more likely to acknowledge it for what it is and report it,
just as they are more inclined to consult a doctor for injuries
sustained. They are also more likely to be treated as victims. Marriage
is the safest place for women and children. Paradoxically this is
not the case for male victims, the majority of whom are subjected
to violence within a committed relationship.
Dave Gordon,
project manager at Men's Aid, says: "It is strange that when
a man does call the police or use the courts, everyone is astounded
and wonders why he didn't protect himself. Of course such protection
would inevitably escalate the violence and the man would be regarded
as the aggressor. It is a no-win situation for such men."
Archer suggests
that there is evidence to indicate that the extent to which men
are victims of physical aggression by their female partners corresponds
to "gender empowerment" and the "economic emancipation"
of women. Moffitt's explanation for female violence against men
is that we are taught not to hit anyone weaker or smaller than ourselves:
"This indoctrination inhibits most men from being violent towards
women, but at the same time it frees women to strike out at men."
Erin Pizzey,
who founded the world's first battered women's shelter in 1971,
found that of the first 100 women admitted, 62 were as violent as
the men they had left, if not more so. She concluded that some people
are "violence- prone". A violent and painful childhood
tends to create in the child an addiction to such pain. R's wife
is the product of a violent home. His greatest concern is for his
children, who often witness their mother's assaults.
"It
makes me especially sad when she uses the children's toys as weapons
because they invariably break. But I hate the verbal more than the
physical - I cannot bear knowing that the kids see so much, hear
so much. They are so little. Chloe has begun to wet her bed and
develop problems at school."
