Arguments on domestic violence
Opinion | Domestic violence is a problem, and we must address it | Opinion
George Hodan | publicdomainpictures.netDomestic violence, has no age, no gender, no race. It is the ultimate betrayal, as the one you romantically love, returns your love with violence. The United Nations released a report showing 50,000 women per year are killed by domestic violence worldwide. In some countries, domestic violence is even looked upon as justifiable. With acts such as honor killings on the rise in other countries, domestic violence is still a problem in America and it’s time for people to speak up for those who are forcibly silenced.
However, it seems partisan actors have a “my way or the highway” approach to this issue. Far left intersectional feminists will constantly lecture about how men can’t have a seat at the table because you’re not the right sex and people in your sex did terrible acts. Yet, 11% of men experience severe intimate partner physical violence in America. Not letting them speak about their experience, because of their sex? Isn’t that sexism?
Conservative right-wing activists point out that domestic violence occurs in higher rates in Islamic majority countries. While factually true, America still has a problem with domestic violence. Three women on average die per day in America due to domestic violence according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV). Additionally, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), around 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States, 25% of women experience severe intimate partner physical violence and domestic violence hotlines nationwide have up to 20,000 calls a day.
The most highlighted counter argument, is “why don’t they just leave?” To answer why, The National Domestic Violence Hotline points out several reasons why a abused partner would stay in an abusive relationship. Also, statistically, its actually life threatening if an abused partner leaves their abusive relationship. Women for instance are 70 times more likely to be killed in the weeks after leaving their abusive partner than at any other time during the relationship.
In America, horrible tales such as an author being fatally stabbed her boyfriend and a woman reporting her abuse to the police only to end up being killed all occurred in the past couple months. People are doing to a grave disservice to the memory of these brave women by putting their ideological views first, or turning a blind eye abroad or at home.
As a society, we should commit more time into research about domestic violence and be committed to giving a voice to those who don’t have one, instead of waiting for someone else to.
We need to highlight the tales about domestic violence, recognize signs of domestic violence or potentially volunteer at a nearby women’s shelter. As a society, we must address the crisis of domestic violence.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline has an 24/7 contact at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). All calls are free and confidential.
Difference Between an Argument and Domestic Violence in FL
It is a rare couple who has never had an argument. In fact, some couples seem to thrive on knock-down, drag-out fights. But when does a dispute become abuse in the eyes of the law? If your partner is accusing you of domestic violence after a mutual disagreement, this is an important question to answer. If the police have been called, your first move should be to hire a Florida domestic violence attorney. These are serious charges, and you will need to mount a defense right away, even if your partner later changes her mind and refuses to press charges.
How Do You Defend Yourself Against a Domestic Violence Accusation?
It may seem like there’s a fine line between a physical fight and domestic abuse, but an experienced defense attorney will be able to make the distinction.
True cases of domestic violence usually involve one or more of the following:
In cases of domestic violence, the abuse is ongoing and relentless, not just an occasional fight. There may have been several reports by the victim or medical evidence that the victim has been hurt frequently.
No Give And TakeDomestic abuse is a one-way street. Arguments are not back-and-forth debates, but one partner attacking the other.
Coercion And ManipulationWhen a partner uses violence or threats of violence to get the victim to do certain things or act a certain way, that is a sign of domestic abuse.
FearThe goal of an abuser is to instill fear in his or her partner. In an ordinary argument, neither partner fears the reaction of the other. When a victim changes her behavior to avoid a reaction, she is living in fear.
Emotional AbuseDomestic violence does not have to involve a physical assault.
Belittling, criticizing, threatening, and embarrassing a partner are considered emotional abuse. Saying a few mean things during an argument does not constitute emotional abuse.
When the police are called during a domestic dispute, they will want to make an arrest. If your partner tells the police that you were the aggressor or that it has happened before, that may be enough for them to charge you with domestic violence.
Have You Been Accused Of Domestic Violence In Florida?
You and your partner may not be at a good point in your relationship right now, but if your partner takes that a step further by accusing you of domestic violence, you need to fight back to protect your freedom. If you are frustrated about a domestic violence charge that is disrupting your life you need to speak with an experienced domestic violence defense attorney as soon as possible. Contact me online or call my Miami office directly at 305.707.7345.
I also recommend that you download a free copy of our special report "He Said, She Said: Three Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Domestic Violence Case In Florida".
The sooner we talk, the sooner we will be able to help you fight the charges that could change your life forever.
by Daniel Izquierdo [email protected]
Coral Gables defense lawyer helping clients accused of Federal Crimes, DUI, Domestic Violence & Sex Crimes.
"It's my own fault!", or domestic violence in the era of gender equality Violence: Russia scored zero in the area of women's rights legislation because the country has no laws on domestic violence, harassment in the workplace, and there is no article in the Criminal Code on sexual violence at work. As a result, Russia's place turned out to be among such countries as Liberia, Gabon, Iran, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates.
So what is "domestic violence" and why do we have such problems with it? In a broad sense, domestic (family) violence is commonly understood as any manipulation of someone against his will by people who are in personal relationships with him - spouses, partners (sometimes former and even not necessarily living together).
From the definition it is clear that since domestic violence is manipulation, it can be both physical and psychological, economic, emotional (eg insults, imposition of guilt, financial control, restrictions on personal freedom, etc.). We will focus on only one aspect - physical violence, since these cases lead to the most tragic consequences.
The difficult fate of the "spanking law"
In Russia, domestic violence statistics are fragmentary, difficult to access, and often simply absent. The number of women victims of crimes involving violent acts against a family member amounted to 23.5 thousand people in 2018, of which 53% suffered at the hands of a spouse. Amendments to the law on the decriminalization of beatings in the family (aka the “spanking law”), adopted in 2017, only led to the fact that women’s appeals to the police stopped spoiling the statistics. Some experts believe that this was the main point of legislative innovations, since in 2019This year the government will have to report to the UN on the implementation of the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
Slow academic discussions about whether the law on the decriminalization of beatings is good or bad would continue to this day, if several high-profile events had not happened over the past seven months: this is the story of Margarita Gracheva, whose hands were cut off by her husband in December 2018, and the story of the Khachaturian sisters who killed their father in July 2018, who had previously beaten and raped them for many years, and many similar cases that did not receive such wide publicity.
Read also
The Federation Council allowed the introduction of criminal liability for domestic violence
Plus, in April 2019, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women for the first time recognized Russia as responsible for discrimination against Shema Timagova, a resident of Chechnya, who suffered from domestic violence, and recommended Russia to return everything to its original place - that is, to again criminalize domestic violence, introduce proven tools into the legislation, primarily the so-called protection orders, the meaning of which is to limit contacts between the perpetrator of violence and his victim, and also to transfer domestic violence from the sphere of private prosecution into the sphere of private-public, when the actions to protect the victim are carried out by the state.
And at the beginning of July 2019, the decision of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) was made, awarding more than €25,000 and reimbursement of legal expenses to Valeria Volodina from Ulyanovsk. She complained that the police and the courts failed to protect her from repeated cases of domestic violence, including beatings, abductions, stalking and threats. In its decision, the ECtHR emphasized that the legal mechanisms in the field of protecting women's rights that exist in Russia are insufficient to combat domestic violence, and the authorities are not ready to recognize the seriousness of the problem. At the end of June, the ECHR accepted for consideration four complaints of Russian women about domestic violence, and in total, according to Dmitry Dedov, an ECHR judge from Russia, about 100 Russian women addressed the ECHR with similar complaints.
As a result, the Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko, Ombudsman Tatyana Moskalkova, and Senator Andrey Klishas are now in favor of revising the famous "law on slaps".
Another text of the bill "On the system of prevention of domestic violence" was submitted to the State Duma Committee on State Building and Legislation. Recall that over the past ten years, such bills have been submitted to the State Duma 40 times (!), but never even reached the first reading, getting stuck in the approval procedures in the committees. It is obvious that the authorities do not show much willingness to deal with this problem, which, according to experts, is due to considerations of budget savings.
Public perception of domestic violence and victimblaming
This attitude is largely based on the perception of domestic violence by the population. As some sociological surveys show, more than half of the population does not consider domestic violence an important social problem, 9% of men are sure that sometimes it is "useful" to hit a wife or child, and 7% believe that domestic violence is excusable if it happened "in the heat of the moment" . But the majority of Russians turned out to be quite modern and adequate people: 61% of respondents believe that any physical violence in the family is unacceptable - 69% among women and 50% among men (another recent survey showed even higher numbers - 80% of respondents said that there is no justification for domestic violence).
However, at the same time, almost two-thirds of the respondents (63%) agree that women themselves sometimes provoke the use of violence against them by their appearance, clothing or behavior - and this smoothly brings us to the problem of victimblaming.
Read also
The film industry as an area of particular risk. How the Weinstein case changed the world
Victimblaming or blaming the victim is the transfer of responsibility to the victim, blaming her that she, through her actions, provoked the offender to violence. Psychologists explain this phenomenon with the concept of a just world. The discoverer of the phenomenon of faith in a just world, the American psychologist Melvin Lerner, in experiments showed that people tend to believe that in the end, evil will be punished, and good will be rewarded (which is why, by the way, we like American happy endings so much). Lerner came to the conclusion that the belief in the justice of punishment indirectly justifies violence and explains it by the behavior of the victim.
That is why the courts sometimes find out so meticulously how the woman who was beaten by her husband behaved, how long her skirt was and whether she cooked borscht well.
Victims of domestic violence in most cases hear from those around them arguments like: "It's your own fault, why didn't you leave, why did you endure it?" The phenomenon of victimblaming is very clearly manifested in the resonant stories of Margarita Gracheva and the Khachaturian sisters. In the case of Margarita Gracheva, a grandiose controversy flared up on social networks, and as a result, the prosecutors came to a “logical” conclusion - well, he couldn’t cut off her hands for no reason! So, it was for what! Oil was added to the fire by a photo session in which Margarita Gracheva starred - critics accused her of promoting herself on the tragedy of the family, and her look was depraved, so she deservedly got it.
In the story of the Khachaturian sisters, the case was not limited to a skirmish in social networks, the print media got involved, and supporters and opponents actively went to rallies and pickets.
One of the central newspapers published an article with a "speaking" title: "The bloodiest case of the year: what are the Khachaturian sisters hiding?" In another publication on the case of the Khachaturian sisters, the adoption of the law on domestic violence was associated with the possible legalization of same-sex marriage and the threat to our "historically patriarchal society."
Lenore Walker: the concept of the "cycle of abuse"
So why do victims of domestic violence live under the same roof with their abuser for years, despite repeated episodes of abuse? To explain it, the American psychologist Lenore Walker proposed the concept of the "cycle of violence", which describes the dynamics of relationships in a couple through the alternation of stages of growing psychological stress, violence, reconciliation and "honeymoon". It is the transition from violence to remorse and reconciliation that is why marriage remains attractive to partners (you love rollercoasters, don't you?), but a woman's self-esteem and her ability to act are increasingly declining.
After the honeymoon, the couple's relationship gradually returns to the first stage, and the cycle repeats. As time passes, each phase becomes shorter, and the outbreaks of violence become more frequent and more violent. Despite this, many women return to their abusive partners again for the "honeymoon" period, when "everything is so good!", "as if at the beginning of our acquaintance!". Over time, the scale and brutality of violence in a couple begin to get out of control, and then their personal history runs the risk of one day getting into the pages of the judicial chronicle.
Of course, along with such extreme cases, there are many others where the episode of violence did not recur or even ended the relationship of the couple, but these relatively successful stories do not reach the public. Moreover, stories in which a husband kills his wife rarely reach the public. However, stories where the wife unwittingly becomes the killer excite society much more, and in these cases, victims of domestic violence have a real chance to get acquainted with Russian legislation in terms of necessary defense, and this acquaintance does not bode well for them.
This is how events unfolded in the case of Galina Katorova from Nakhodka, Kristina Shidukova from Gelendzhik and many other victims of domestic violence. And if in the case of Galina Katorova, who killed her husband when he tried to strangle her in front of witnesses, the Court of Appeal delivered a verdict of not guilty, then in the case of Kristina Shidukova (who stabbed her husband when trying to throw her out the window), the jury in Gelendzhik delivered a guilty verdict, and the court sentenced her to eight years in prison on charges of premeditated murder.
It is this tragic development that the law on domestic violence is supposed to prevent. If it is finally passed, then the victims of violence will be able to attract the attention of law enforcement officers even before they are killed, put in a wheelchair or sent to prison.
The opinion of the editors may not coincide with the opinion of the author. Quoting is allowed with reference to tass.ru
How to avoid becoming a victim of domestic violence: advice from experts
Self-isolation is a difficult test for families in which mutual claims and discontent are ripe.
People get tired, contradictions intensify. How to understand that the conflict develops into violence? What to do about it? At the webinar of the Institute of Further Professional Education of social workers, useful advice was given by the director of the Crisis Center for Assistance to Women and Children, Natalya Zavyalova and the head. department of psychological assistance of the Lyubov Vyzhanova Center.
How conflict differs from violence
Disputes on various issues break out in any family. When there are not enough arguments, emotions take their place and conflict arises. In this conflict, of course, there is a place for both irritation and anger, but, in fact, this is nothing more than a search for a solution to the issue. The task of the conflict is either to accept one of the points of view, or to find a compromise that will satisfy everyone. Once a solution is found, the conflict ends.
The purpose of violence is quite different. For the offender, the main thing is not to resolve the issue, but to prove his superiority, to assert his power, so the subject of the collision is not important for him.
Violence is not generated by external circumstances, it is caused by the internal state of a person. Unlike conflict, it is repeated for any, sometimes the most insignificant reasons.
So:
- conflict always has a real reason — violence is looking for a reason;
- the conflict has a local character - violence is repeated regularly.
Violent actions are far from being only assault. In psychology, there are four types of violence: physical, psychological, sexual, economic. If derogatory assessments, insults appear in a conversation, it means that psychological violence occurs. If the breadwinner of the family uses economic repression, then he uses economic violence.
Abuse scenario
The offender-victim relationship is cyclical. Their life is divided into four phases, repeating in an unchanging sequence. American psychologist Lenore Walker described this "cycle of violence" in a married couple.
- Voltage rise.
- Violent incident.
- Reconciliation.
- "Honeymoon".
After a stormy quarrel, as a rule, an equally stormy reconciliation takes place, and then the partners live for some time in an idyll reminiscent of their honeymoon. If not for the third and fourth phases, it would be easier for the victim to get out of the pathological relationship. But another "honeymoon" is coming, love flares up with renewed vigor, and it seems that this time everything will be fine. Unfortunately, it is not.
Features of the behavior of a potential aggressor
This is a person who constantly needs confirmation of his power. It limits the freedom of a partner, controls him, isolates him from communication with relatives and friends. When a woman lives in social isolation, communicates only with her family, for psychologists this is a serious signal of family trouble.
The aggressor may force the partner to do something, humiliate or mock him in the presence of strangers.
He is not ready to take responsibility for his actions. As a rule, such people do not admit the fact of violence (“I didn’t beat her, I just pushed her a little”) or shift the blame on the victim (“She herself is to blame”).
The aggressor is not empathic by nature, so he can be cruel even to children. Reproaches of heartlessness and calls for sympathy are useless here. They only add fuel to the fire.
Aggressors are characterized by emotional instability, sudden mood swings.
Domestic abusers know how to make a good impression on others. If this is a man, acquaintances see him as a caring father and husband, his family is considered exemplary. No one can even imagine that at home behind closed doors this is a completely different person.
What makes the victim endure violence
According to official statistics, women are the most victims in the family, so we are talking about them. But everything said is just as true in relation to men.
Victims of domestic violence tend to be people with low self-esteem. They are suggestible, anxious, insecure, have an exaggerated sense of guilt. They easily blame themselves for everything. Isn't a woman responsible for peace in the family? Shouldn't she be the guardian of the hearth, a caring wife and mother? These stereotypes only reinforce the victim in the thought that the offender is not to blame, and she suppresses her feelings of anger.
A woman often hides the fact of domestic violence out of shame and fear of judgment. She is sure that no one will help her and that she does not deserve help.
The fear of independent living and the difficulties that will have to be overcome can keep the victim close to the perpetrator. First of all, this applies to women who have abandoned their professional careers and devoted themselves to their families. Often they simply have nowhere to go and nothing to start a new life.
In psychology there is such a term - "learned helplessness".
If a person has made several attempts to change circumstances, but nothing has come of it, he gives up and no longer seeks to improve his life, although he has such an opportunity. This is what happens to the victim. Many women try to influence the situation in the family - they leave home, have soul-saving conversations with the aggressor, threaten the court, and so on. Having spent all her resource and having achieved nothing, a woman falls into apathy and remains with the aggressor.
Advice for those who want to make a difference
Saying "I'm leaving you" is the worst possible decision. The offender will be furious if the world he has built suddenly collapses. Statistics say: the greatest number of quarrels with the use of force occurs precisely at the moment of a sharp break. Therefore, one must act not impulsively, but according to a well-thought-out plan. This plan should include the following points.
- Go to a safe place, such as your parents or friends.
You can contact the Center for Help for Women and Children. Being safe, a person returns to himself, begins to hear himself. From this state, you can start thinking about what to do next. - Take everything you need with you (money, clothes, medicines, etc.)
- Tell partner: “I have decided to think about our relationship. I am safe."
- If you left with your children, report this to the guardianship authorities so that later you will not be accused of stealing children.
- Start working with specialists: lawyers, doctors, psychologists. How economically dependent are you? How legally vulnerable? How strong is your emotional attachment to the abuser? Comprehensive work will help analyze all aspects of your life. Now the necessary consultations can be obtained online.
- Gather evidence. Record all cases of harassment: take screenshots of correspondence with threats, record calls. Report to the police, especially if the stalker breaks the law (damages things, attacks on the street).
Even if the police limit themselves to “talking”, the offender will know that he is also under surveillance. - Do not enter into negotiations. If possible, do not make contact with the offender. Do not respond to messages, and, of course, do not agree to a personal meeting.
- Refrain from posting on social networks. The abuser can determine your location.
What's next?
What will be the way out of your situation is impossible to predict. Each case is individual. For some couples, it is enough to go through a crisis once in order to rethink their attitude towards each other. This is possible if both partners want to keep the relationship and agree to work with a psychologist.
If your partner is not ready for dialogue, you have a lot of work to do, the result of which should be a safe way out of a traumatic situation. If your own resources are not enough, you can always contact Crisis Center for Assistance to women and children :
8 (499) 977-20-10
(Monday-Saturday-9:00-20:00),
9000 8 (499) 492-46-89(Monday-Sunday, 9:00-21:00)
Website KRizis-centr.
