At the completion of the presentation, a woman in her sixties approached one of the speakers. Softly she said;
“I never realised I was a victim of domestic violence until I heard your speech.”
Her remark, although startling to another member of the panel, was not to me, for most victims of domestic violence do not appreciate they are victims.
Over and again one will hear a woman say that her husband beat her because she ‘provoked it’ or ‘deserved it’ and that all violence suffered ‘was her fault’. No matter how severe the beating, her husband ‘didn’t mean it’ or that ‘it was for her own good’.
That is if one sees the bruises and knows the cause.
If one only sees the bruises, the victim will claim she fell down the steps, was in a car accident, any lie that comes to mouth to ‘protect’ her husband.
Many women make these excuses in a perfectly calm and certain voice. For many women refuse to accept they are victims.
For those unfamiliar with domestic abuse this lying by the victim to protect the perpetrator seems illogical. Yet victims refuse to believe they are the subject of domestic violence until...
they wake up in a hospital or abandoned on a road or claim to have fallen down the steps and realise this is the third time they are giving this excuse... or, like the woman at the seminar, hear an autopsy of their lives from another’s lips.
Only when the violence arises without the necessary brainwashing is it recognised and acted upon.
In most cases, the process of domestic abuse creates the perfect victim.
It is vital that one grasps the fact that domestic abuse is a Process, not simply an Act. It is a process in which the victim is worn down to the point that she believes the violence was deserved or provoked or not really violence.
Domestic Abuse is not only physical violence, and is not only practiced by men against women. There are men who are victims although their wives never used violence. This is because abuse is not simply physical.
I will define the abuse used by the sexes, beginning with male on female.