FREE ESSAY ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

People who are close to one another need to trust each other. We should trust our parents
not to hurt us, and to give us what we need to grow. Boys and girls should trust each
other, as well as men and women. When someone is abused, the trust is broken. Domestic
violence is the use of physical force within a home in any form of abuse. Abuse can be a
whole range of physical behaviour, slapping, hitting, beating, or using weapons to hurt
someone. It includes verbal and emotional abuse, where someone is constantly insulted and
made to feel sad and worthless. It can also include rape and sexual abuse. Sexual abuse
is when someone forces another to have sexual intercourse or do other sexual things
against their will. Another form of abuse is total control where one adult makes all the
decisions for another person or for a whole family. Family violence may start with an
argument or even a fight, but it goes way beyond fighting. Some abusers were beaten as
children, and others saw their parents use violence. Some abusers are uncomfortable with
feelings like sadness, embarrassment, hurt, or even love. When these people have these
feelings, they get angry, and then they get violent. Some abusers get violent when they
run out of words, and some are drunk. Some abusers are jealous, mentally ill, or feel
overwhelmed by problems. Some are just mean. 
One thing all forms of family violence share is how they start. A desire to have control
leads to the violence. Every year, at least one million women are physically, sexually,
or psychologically abused by their husbands or common law partners. Two women are
murdered by their male partners every week. Throughout much of the history of Western
civilization, deep-seated cultural beliefs allowed women only limited roles in society.
Many people believed that women's natural roles were as mothers and wives. These people
considered women to be better suited for childbearing and homemaking rather than for
involvement in the public life of business or politics. Widespread belief that women were
intellectually inferior to men led most societies to limit women's education to learning
domestic skills. Well-educated, upper-class men controlled most positions of employment
and power in society. Traditionally, female family members existed only in terms of their
relationships to men. As daughters, subject to the control and whim of fathers, women
represented a means of economic or political gain through marital arrangements. As wives,
they became their husbands' property, and symbols of power and status. Violence against
women served to coerce their acquiescence in this scheme and perpetuate subservience to
male relatives. 
Legally permitted abuse of women continued to exist in many Western cultures until the
late nineteenth century. Early Roman societies deemed a wife the property of her husband
and therefore subject to his control. According to early Roman law, a man could beat,
divorce, or murder his wife for offenses committed by her which belittled his honour or
threatened his property rights. Roman society considered enforcement of such rights of
control essentially a private matter, and thus failed to subject the husband to either
public scrutiny or disapproval. 
Both the Old and New Testament attest to the belief in early teachings in the obedience
of women. Indeed, Eve's creation from the rib of Adam provided an excuse for early
preaching regarding women's submissive role within the family. According to the
teachings, a woman's virtues included obedience, chastity, and passivity. Failure to
conform to those standards subjected to an unruly wife to death by mutilation or stoning.

The misuse of the scripture to excuse the authority over women is unacceptable. Clearly,
men and women are created equally in the image of God and are one in Christ. In his
Apostolic Letter 'On the Dignity and Vocation of Women,' Pope John Paul II says that it
is a sinful situation when a woman is, "the object of domination and male possession." He
affirms that the passage at 3:16 of Genesis ("Your desire shall be for your husband and
he shall rule over you") does not mean that men are created to rule over women. On the
contrary, the "ruling over" that we have seen in history is the result of sin and broken
relationships between God and humanity and among people. 
All parents want their children to do the right thing, so when a child doesn't eat or
dress properly, a mother or father may be upset or even mad. But, an abuser doesn't need
a reason to be mad or hit. When an abuser gets violent, it is because of something that
he or she sees, feels, or thinks. It is never because of something the child does. It is
the parents' role to provide for their children's physical needs. They must protect their
children from physical harm and provide for their children's needs for love, attention,
and affection. Parents must protect their children from emotional harm and provide moral
and ethical guidelines. 
Violence is only one method abusers use to get their way. They also threaten and deprive
people of things they need to live, like money or food. Child abusers may lock children
in the house during the day with no one to watch or feed them. A woman abuser may take
his wife's money and pull out the phone. In many cases, the father is the active abuser
and the mother is the silent partner. However, this is by no means the only family
scenario. In some families, the mother is the active abuser and the father is the passive
one. Most of the time, child and woman abuse do not occur together, however, in almost
half of all homes where there are abused children, the mother is also abused. One common
belief is that when a husband hits his wife, she will then beat her children. Sometimes
this is true. Mothers are responsible for about 30 percent of all child abuse. Women do
most of the parenting in society, so when children are deprived of what they need to
live, mothers are usually responsible. But, men commit most of the physical abuse,
particularly when severe injury to children is involved. 
The 'battering cycle' consists of three phases that could vary in timing and intensity
for the same couple and from one couple to the next: tension-building or 'stress stage',
the explosion of acute battering or the 'abusive incident', and loving remorse also
called the 'honeymoon phase'. 
During the stress stage, there is ongoing emotional strain between victim and abuser as
tension and frustration grows. Unresolved conflict and previous feelings of anger burn
inside an abuser like a volcano ready to explode. 
During the next phase, the violence occurs. He becomes driven from within and the
physical action is even pleasurable. It releases the pent-up tension and rage. The
process feeds on itself, leading to faster and harder blows until the weapon is empty or
destroyed or the abuser is exhausted. The repeat abuser becomes addicted to this tension
release. It's the only way he knows to rid himself of his bad feelings. When he finally
explodes, his rage is uncontrollable. The victim is battered, verbally put down, sexually
humiliated, threatened with violence and physically harmed. This could result in minor
injuries to even death. During the 'honeymoon phase' the victim and abuser try to forget
what has happened. The abuser either displays loving behaviour in attempts to reconcile,
flatly denies what has happened, or promises to change. The abuser may even be absent
entirely from the scene. Abusers may mentally reconstruct the act in order to blame the
victim for having provoked the aggression. The victim tries to believe that the suffering
is over and it is, temporarily, until tension builds and the cycle repeats itself. 
During the build up phase, the victim knows all too well where the verbal attacks are
leading. She can see the dark side coming. As the tension grows, the gradual descent into
hell begins, paved with sarcasm, put-downs, insults, and humiliation about her ability as
a mother, a housekeeper, and a lover. The woman, in a desperate attempt to avoid the
inevitable, usually goes into a survival mode. She swallows her own outrage and caters to
her man's every whim. She tries, at first, to avoid the inevitable by pacifying him,
making sure nothing upsets him, doing little extra favours. It's hopeless, and the fists
fly, or an abrupt backhander sends her reeling. And, sometimes, sensing that it is
unavoidable, she may even provoke him, just to get it over with. 
During an assault, the victim quickly realizes that escape is futile. She usually
dissociates. Women describe leaving their bodies with their mind. A surrealistic state of
calm may occur during which the wife experiences the abuse like a slow-motion movie. This
may be coupled with a sense of disbelief, a sense that the incident is not really
happening to her. After the violence, the victim's reactions are similar to those who
have experienced a natural disaster. These typically involve emotional collapse within
twenty-two to forty-eight hours after the catastrophe and symptoms of post-traumatic
stress such as listlessness, depression, and feelings of helplessness. Victims tend to
isolate themselves for some time, in an attempt to heal and to avoid the shame that
accompanies having their injuries detected by friends. 
Frequently, battering occurs when assaultive men are inebriated, and they often blame the
violence on alcohol. In general, assaultive men have very high alcohol use scores.
Alcoholic men experience depression and anxiety - so-called dysphoric states. Alcohol is
one of the common ways they learn to suppress and blot out these uncomfortable feelings.
So is anger. Since these individuals experience the dysophoric feelings as a function of
their personalities, and since alcohol is a disinhibitor - that is, it relaxes one's
inhibitions - what results is a volatile combination of unhappy, angry men who have lost
all restraint. This puts them at an even greater risk for violence. Alcohol and anger
clear out depression but unfortunately, they do so at great cost to the drinker. Like
alcoholics who haven't confronted their addiction, batterers are in denial, minimizing
the seriousness and frequency of their violence and their responsibility for it. It is a
mistake to blame alcohol for the violence. When people say, "The alcohol made me do it,"
they're blaming one symptom - violence - on another - alcohol. These are both aspects of
an abusive personality. So, while there is an association between alcohol use and
violence, one does not cause the other. Both are traced back to an earlier aspect of the
self. One's personality is formed much sooner than one learns to use alcohol or to hit.
Children can be hurt simply by seeing parental violence. The parent uses criticism as a
means of control, so no matter what the child does, the parent will find something to
criticize. The child becomes an outlet of frustration, a scapegoat for all that is wrong
with his parents. This is a corrupting way for alcoholic parents to justify and ventilate
their own inadequacies. Sometimes when children see abuse, they have nightmares and
trouble sleeping. Little children and even older children may wet the bed. Children may
also have trouble in school, even getting into fights with their friends. Or, they may
retreat into silence and stop playing with their friends. Sometimes children who are
abused take out their anger on pets and sometimes may even kill them. Sometimes they
become very passive and quiet and always seem sad. Abused children have confusing
feelings. They feel trapped and guilty that they may be responsible for the violence.
They also feel ashamed that this is happening to them. At the same time, many abused
children feel loyal to their parents. They want and need attention and love, and they
deserve it. When the person who is supposed to love them hurts them instead, they may
feel it is because they are bad. Abusive parents are often very cold to their children.
Some children want attention from their parents so badly that they confuse getting hit
with getting attention. 
An abused person feels like a hostage. She feels afraid, alone, and trapped. When
children are abused, if someone comes to help them, they may cling to the person who is
hurting them. These children do not like being hurt, but they want and need attention and
love from their parents. They think the parent who is hitting them doesn't love them.
They think they are hit because they are bad, so they cling. In some cases, the abused
child unconsciously identifies with his abusive parent. After all, the abuser looks
powerful and invulnerable. Abused women may also feel trapped. They may lack money or a
safe place to go, and they don't want to leave their children. They may even be afraid to
leave because they think the abuser will find them and hurt them worse. 
Today we know that there are many non-violent ways to punish a child or to disagree with
adults. Violence is a choice people make. Only the abuser is responsible for this choice,
and nothing a child or an adult victim does causes abuse. And, there is little a child
can do to stop or prevent abuse. That is why there are services to protect and support
victims of abuse. 
It is against church laws to cause intentional harm to any other person. Domestic
violence hurts all areas of the church. Violence against women breaks the fifth
commandment. It is a sin, a crime, and a serious social problem. The government is
against domestic violence. Common assault can be dealt with either as a serious offence
(called an indictable offence) or as a less serious offence (called a summary offence).
The sentence may be a fine, a jail term, a discharge or probation. It depends on the
seriousness of the assault. The judge may choose one or more of these penalties. For
example, the judge may fine the offender and place him on probation. The offender will
have a criminal record. 
When child abuse is reported, a child worker looks into it. If there is serious danger,
the child is removed from the home and placed with a family that will keep him safe. When
the child is no longer in danger, the child worker can help the family learn how to deal
with its problems in a better way. Today, battered women and children can seek help. They
can live on welfare or go to a shelter for abused women. These shelters help each family
start a new life where their abuser cannot find them. The women and children learn that
abuse is not their fault and about equal rights. The shelters help women find jobs and
safe places to live. The children learn to solve problems in ways that are not violent
and most important, they learn that not all men are violent. 
In our society, strict ideas about how boys and girls should behave can cause trouble.
This kind of thinking, about what is right for boys and girls, is called "sexism". Today
many professional counsellors are trying to teach people how to avoid this kind of
thinking. They can also help people to change their feelings about the things that are
right for boys and girls. The more we learn about respecting the rights and the
independence of all others - boys, girls, men, women, wives, husbands, children, mothers,
and fathers - the easier it will be to keep family violence from happening.