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The Absence of Rage

Why Battered Women Don’t Leave Home

Wednesday 1 November 2000

This is a verbatim copy of a letter from a battered woman on the subject of why battered wives don’t leave home.

Dear Editor: Your review article "When Battered Wives Kill" , in suggesting stereotypes of which juries could be disabused, perpetuates another stereotype, that battered women stay with abusive men for such vague reasons as low self-esteem. Hogwash!

You stay because:

Anywhere you can go, he can go. When he finds you , his rage will make former abuse seem mild.

He has told you that if you try to leave, he will find your child at school and take it out on her, or on your pet, or on your parents.

Your friends have become alienated, and you have nowhere to go. If you do know people hwo may accept you, you inflict him on them, and few people are altruistic enough to put up with that. I learned this the hard way when a policeman told me that my violent husband was my problem and I had no right ot inflict him on the police.

He lies convincingly. So you run away and the police bring you home after he has "explained" to them that you are insane and must be returned to his custody.

Professionals find it hard to believe that a quiet, amiable and educated man would do such things, especially since he never does it with witnesses around.

Your religious adviser tells you to forgive and turn the other cheek - that love conquers all

You finally get him to go with you for counselling and the counsellor tells you that you both must trust and communicate. Over your frantic, surreptitious protests, what you told the counsellor in confidence is repeated to your husband, who reacts with quiet, intelligent concern. The satisfied counsellor then tells him you had assumed he would react with anger and violence. The counsellor sends you on your way with and as soon as your husband gets you alone he beats the living daylights out of you.

You got into the fix because you never expected a quiet, amiable man to be abusive. The first times he did it his tears afterwards made you sorrier for him than for yourself. Somehow it seemed to be your fault, because you didn’t love or trust or support him enough.

Later, when the counsellor agrees it was your fault, all you know is you’ve tried everything and can’t get away.

I was lucky. There are years and hundreds of miles between me and my ex-husband now, but I still remember with special bitterness the psychiatrist, doctors, and policemen who told me that I must enjoy such treatment, or I would never put up with it."

Source: Mahabir-Wyatt D. In Caribbean Training and Resource Manual on Domestic Violence: Five-day Training Course, p. 66. By CAFRA and ACCP. IDB/Finnish Trust Fund, 2000

CAFRA serves as a facilitator of the regional women’s movement, responding to the needs of the movement and seeking to encourage regional collaboration and solidarity.