We need to understand victims of domestic violence, not shame them | Lola Okolosie
 The absence of accurate figures on domestic violence speaks volumes about a society that disbelieves women who live in fear More than 10,000 women and children face the possibility of being murdered or seriously injured by their partners or exes. Even more saddening is that this figure is an underestimation of the true scale of the domestic violence problem. Almost 40% of female murder victims, that is two women a week, die at the hands of someone that is, or was, an intimate partner. These statistics, horrific as there are, have an ability to simply wash over us and become part of the drip drip of things to feel awful about but powerless to change. The numbers never manage to fully convey the reality of a life terrorised by a person who insists a slap, punch or kick is a sign of love. This week the organisation Co-ordinated Action Against Domestic Abuse published research on how agencies can effectively help children living with domestic violence, 50% of whom are unknown to public bodies. They are the faceless many: 130,000 to be exact. These children appear overly aggressive, at times agitated, and prone to jumping at the sound of bodies aggressively moving against each other, doors being slammed and objects smashed. Or they are distant in social contexts, unwilling and unable to bring friends back home, and particularly attuned to the ways in which voices can carry gut-wrenching fear of imminent physical pain. The figures attest a type of violence that is endemic within modern society. Yet the data shows that the very public institutions that should be protecting vulnerable women and children are continuing to fail them, viewing the threat as too pernicious a problem to tackle systematically. Of the police forces asked to share their data on domestic violence with the Guardian, Cambridgeshire, Durham, Humberside and Lancashire were unable to provide figures for the numbers of women under high risk of death and injury. In London, where 10 calls an hour are the result of domestic violence incidences, only 87 at-risk women were identified. The absence of accurate figures speaks volumes about a society that continues to disbelieve women who, more than anyone else, know what their abusers are capable of. The same society that isn't up in arms over cuts to domestic violence services and a culture that, rather than holding perpetrators of abuse accountable, seeks instead to blame victims for their abuse, endlessly asking "why doesn't she leave?", as if staying, not the violence, is the real problem. If only leaving were that simple. It isn't. A third of women will continue to experience violence even once they have ended the relationship. Many still will find that any help in civil cases related to divorce and contact rights are now gone, thereby increasing the difficulty of leaving an abusive partner. As a result of drastic cuts to legal aid, survivors of domestic violence will be able to receive it only when they have logged abuse either with their GP or the police. The onus of support for the survivor is placed squarely on her shoulders. If she is unable to gain it, the abuse becomes, yet again, her fault. Society begins to sound rather like her abuser. Home, with its expansive suggestions of love and safety, is not where you expect to find violence and intimidation. We should choose to remember this before blaming victims. Home shouldn't be a place of pervasive and constant dread; a place where rape is a reality, in a room directly adjacent to that of children rather than in a dark alleyway. It shouldn't be a place where a parent uses a child as a tool in the abuse of a partner, labelling, often, mothers as bad, stupid or simply unworthy of a life free from such violence. Shame and guilt are supplementary tools in physical violence prone to emerge at the drop of a hat. Such violent acts are, invariably, followed by an insistence that these actions are tolerable and therefore normal. It is a double psychic wounding that leaves children feeling rootless and afraid. Some become so consumed by rage that it is all ooutsiders expect from them, while others still will be unable to trust and form meaningful relationships with friends and potential partners. Children become adults carrying traumatic experiences rarely reflected upon if ever talked about with others. We can begin to help by understanding young people who act up and women that stay. Shame is such a powerful emotion – it is a pity it should be displaced from those responsible for such agony, to the victims and survivors. theguardian.com © 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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