Not An Isolated Incident

You've seen us write before that the purpose of this blog is to connect the local work we do to larger issues that contribute to a culture that tolerates and encourages violence against women. Part of that culture is a deliberate insistence that incidents of violence against women are isolated incidents. This opinion piece in the Washington Post shows how the media contributes to that view:

A Washington state study of 230 news articles about 44 deaths related to domestic violence found that nearly all the stories portrayed these incidents as isolated events, rather than as part of a larger social problem.

A similar Rhode Island study of the media coverage of domestic violence homicides found that journalists often portrayed the murder as an “unpredictable private tragedy” rather than part of a larger pattern of abuse. Both studies found that media coverage generally failed to provide accurate information about the dynamics of domestic violence or utilize experts as sources for stories. When experts were quoted, however, the media coverage was much more likely to describe the murder as a part of the societal problem of domestic violence and to discuss community resources for responding to violence.

If we can't see domestic violence homicides as connected, and we can't see the larger societal attitudes and issues that contribute to violence against women, how can we devise a solution? That is why it is vital to share what you've learned about domestic violence with those around you. You can help them connect the dots and only then will we be able to come up with solutions that are truly preventative.

5 Things a Survivor Wants You To Know

Last week, we spotted this amazing post from The Good Men Project, written by a domestic violence survivor. She challenges 5 myths about domestic violence, using her own story to set the record straight:

I’m not weak.

I , legitimately, walk the planet on a daily basis knowing that there is someone out there that wants to physically harm me. I live knowing that, at any minute, Scott could return. And I’m only able to do this because on a hot July afternoon I picked up my broken body from the concrete floor and limped out of the door, without looking backward. Nobody else did that for me. Nobody was there to protect me from the madness, nor did they hold me by the arm while I walked on a strained ankle and battered knee. I was in so much pain that I wanted to crawl. But I didn’t, knowing that if I took even a second longer than necessary he might kill me. Weakness wasn’t an option. Strength is what allowed me to survive. And it kept me alive every day before and every day after.

It wasn’t easy to come home to a house that didn’t have electricity or running water. It was heartbreaking to have my car repossessed two days after I made the decision to leave. Trying to find a job, without a car, was embarrassing and difficult. But I did it. And I lived in a home for the next several months knowing that, at any moment, he could walk back into my life (and my house) because he knew where I was and he knew that my back window was broken out (because he shattered it with his left fist).

Survivors of domestic abuse are strong.

This excerpt is just one highlight from an article that you really should read in its entirety.

How Long Will You Last With Your Last $1,000

The Urban Ministries of Durham has a new online game, and their goal is to challenge the way you think about poverty and homelessness. In the game, you have lost your job, your savings and are down to your last $1,000 dollars. Then you have to try and make it through one month. Try it out and see how long you last. Just keep in mind that most women who come to us after fleeing domestic violence don't have anything near $1,000.

Play Spent

The Best DV Article Ever (So Far)

This is a really great article that tells survivors' stories respectfully, doesn't victim-blame, and does a great job of illustrating many of the common issues that survivors of domestic violence face. All around, it is a fantastic article. We don't get to say that very often, so we encourage you to click through and read.

Nicki Minaj and Fighting Back

Last week, singer Nicki Minaj was involved in an incident of domestic violence during which, according to the police report, her companion hit her with a suitcase. Minaj chose not to press charges and then denied the account to the media. Taking to Twitter, she said (paraphrasing due to the adult language in the original tweet) people are stupid to believe that a man would hit her and not leave on a stretcher.

We hear a lot of women say that. Some think that domestic violence victims are weak. Others just think that their own self-esteem (or temper) is too high to "put up with" violence used against them. Zerlina Maxwell at TheLoop21 addresses this somewhat (clicking this link takes you to Minaj's original tweet, which contains adult language):

Being the victim of violence doesn’t make you weak. It makes the perpetrator of that violence look weak. Furthermore, Minaj’s insistence that she would have retaliated against the man if she had really been hit is wholly unacceptable.

We need to have a mature conversation around gender violence. It’s not appropriate for anyone to be hit or leave in a stretcher. The automatic response from Minaj should not be one that coincides with her stage image, she is a human being after all. Even if she didn’t want to admit to being hit, a more empowering response could have been “I was not the victim of domestic abuse but if you find yourself in that situation call the police or tell a friend. Get Help!”

Of course, these kinds of comments are dangerous for more reasons than just that violence should not be met with more violence. I talked to a woman literally as I was typing this post who was struggling to admit that her partner was abusive, that it was really all that bad, despite the fact that he has choked her in front of their child and is threatening to kill her. She said that it's hard to believe that it is real because she isn't the "meek" kind of woman that she thought "usually ended up in these situations". We are stereotyping domestic violence victims so much that they now cannot recognize themselves enough to seek help!

There's another reason why this reaction isn't helpful. WRC offers two free classes every month that the local judicial districts call "anger management". Women are mandated by the courts to attend these classes because they have been arrested for family violence. Some of the women in the class genuinely have anger management issues, but most are victims of domestic violence who were arrested for fighting back. Our classes are 1/3 DV support group, 1/3 anger management, and 1/3 instructions for how to avoid future arrests and how to get this one expunged from your record.

In the class, we often show a video about the Framingham 8, a group of 8 women in Framingham, Massachusetts who were imprisoned for killing a spouse or partner after years of domestic violence. Several of those women have since won their freedom by using Battered Women's Syndrome as a defense. We had a woman in class recently, who you will recall was there because she had been arrested for fighting back, who was assaulted again by her partner a few days after the class. She called to tell us that she thinks that video might have saved her life. Instead of fighting back and possibly escalating the violence, getting arrested again, or killing her partner, she just took the abuse. For her, that was her best-case scenario.

It's not a pretty picture, but here we are. How disheartening is it that we are asked to teach classes for victims that instruct them not to fight back or they might go to jail? The unfortunate truth is that many victims of domestic violence do go to jail for fighting back, or for killing their partners, and the effects of that often last longer than the effects of the physical violence. Once you are arrested, it is harder to find a job. While you are in jail, your children might be taken from you (and sometimes even given to your batterer). You are labeled the "aggressor" by the legal system, a label which follows you throughout your interactions with the courts as you later try to press charges or file a protective order. That label also prevents you from receiving services from the court victim advocates and even some domestic violence programs (though certainly not ours). To help women have the best chance of rebuilding their lives after domestic violence, while they are in it, we are encouraged to tell them just to take it.

How can we get to the hard work of ending domestic violence when we have to tell 80ish women per month just to take it?

We are thankful to be able to offer these classes, for free, because instead victims who are arrested would have to pay a more traditional anger management program to treat them like a criminal. We are lucky to have this means of introducing our agency to women who might otherwise never attend a DV support group or hear about our services. We are also disgusted that so many women who don't belong there end up in these classes at all, and we work hard for the day when our community no longer punishes women for the crimes committed against them.

DV and Custody Evaluations

The Huffington Post has an article that looks at the differing beliefs about domestic violence held by custody evaluators based on whether the individual evaluator has ever had DV training. Really, this could describe anyone:

The custody evaluators whose views tended towards viewing aggression as situational violence reported less training in domestic violence. This group generally viewed domestic violence as stress induced, normative and mutual. As a result, these evaluators minimized spouse abuse as relevant to child custody decisions. They also thought that false allegations of violence were common. In terms of custody and parenting plans, they prioritized coparenting and father-child relationships.

On the other hand, custody evaluators who characterized domestic violence as intimate terrorism took a different view of custody. They were more likely to report extensive training in domestic violence. These evaluators viewed spouse abuse as a significant factor in determining child custody. They thought that false allegations of abuse were rare. This group of evaluators distinguished between types of violence and expressed strong views that custody and parenting plans should be different for each of these types of violence. In the case of intimate terrorism, they prioritized victim safety over ongoing contact with fathers.

The summary really is this: people who know a lot about domestic violence take it more seriously. People who don't really know much about it think DV isn't much of a problem.

This is especially scary when it comes to the courts. These evaluators make decisions about custody that can put both child and adult victims at risk. Many abusers use custody exchanges (the meeting of the two parents to physically pass the children back and forth) as a guaranteed opportunity to continue harassing or abusing their former partner. Abuser parents can also bring the children back late, insist on rearrangements to the schedule, refuse to bring the children back at all, etc. as a way to continue exerting control over their former partner's life. If the parent with a history of using violence has unsupervised access to the children, they also have additional opportunities to harm their former partner by threatening to harm or actually harming the children. In addition, men who batter pass on their beliefs about women to their children and model abusive and disrespectful behavior for their children that the kids often pick up.

If custody evaluators and others with the power to make custody decisions for a family do not take domestic violence seriously, they won't understand any of these things. If they do not consider the effects and dynamics of domestic violence when making custody decisions, they are opening that family to a continuation of the behavior instead of communicating to the batterer that his controlling tactics should end. Custody evaluators have a unique opportunity to make families safer by ordering supervised exchanges, supervised visits, or no custody or visitation, but most don't do so. Keep that in mind when you hear men's groups lamenting how judges are keeping good fathers away from their children. It actually takes quite a lot for an evaluator or judge to get to that point. More often, women and children who have experienced domestic violence cannot truly end their relationship with a batterer until the children are grown.

Why Pastors Struggle with DV

It seems like all we have been doing lately is sharing other people's work, which is great, because that means all sorts of people in the media are paying attention to issues including and surrounding violence against women.

The article we want to share today looks at reasons why many pastors struggle when trying to address domestic violence among their congregants. The author comes up with six:

1. Domestic violence is fundamentally unbelievable (that a person would be capable of hurting someone they love).
   
2. Wife abusers are masterful manipulators.
3. Pastors think spousal abuse only happens in certain kinds of families.
4. Pastors haven't thought enough about the gray area between "submit" and abuse.
5. Pastors believe what they preach.
6. Pastors simply aren't trained about domestic violence.

The only fault in this article is that it, unless it is meant to be implicit within the last point, the author offers no solutions for pastors who want to become better at helping both abuser and survivors address the abuse going on in their relationship. That's where we come in. If you are reading this post and belong to a church, synagogue, or other faith-based institution and you would like to help your religious leader increase his or her skills in addressing domestic violence without causing more harm, please call us at (404) 370-7670. We would love to provide the training needed to make our community's faith leaders part of the solution.

We Don't Hate Men

Organizations like ours often get accused of hating men. We must admit, sometimes it gets tempting to get mad at all men. After all, we've spent 25 years helping women pick up and start over after the damage that men have inflicted on them financially, emotionally, and physically. But each of us have men in our lives whom we love - fathers, brothers, husbands, friends, children, etc. We also know that the vast majority of men don't use violence.

It's the MRAs (Men's Rights Activists) that really seem to hate men. For example, men who wear this label are the type of men who feel that women are to blame for their own sexual assaults if they wear sexy clothing that sends men mixed signals. When feminists are saying that men are rational human beings who are able to make the conscious decision not to rape (because most men don't rape), MRAs say that men are animals who are ruled by their libidos and thus just can't restrain themselves if the see a thigh or a little bit of cleavage. Who sounds like they hate men?

Hugo Schwyzer is an ally to women who wrote an article for the Good Men Project claiming that MRAs have their ideas of feminism all wrong and that feminism is actually good for men, too. An excerpt:

The cause of men’s very real unhappiness isn’t a biased family court system, or feminist college professors, or the perceived injustices of Title IX athletic funding. The source of men’s anguish and uncertainty is the straitjacket of traditional American manhood. Men are suffering because their emotional, psychological, intellectual, and sexual potential is stunted by their own efforts to live up to an impossible masculine ideal.

Whether they got it from their fathers or their older brothers, whether they learned it from peers or pastors, coaches or drill instructors, almost all American boys grow up learning the “guy rules.” As Deborah David and Robert Brannon first showed in their landmark 1976 book on men, The Forty-Nine Percent Majority, the rules are crushingly simple: Big boys don’t cry. No sissy stuff. Be a “sturdy oak.” “Be a big wheel.” “Give ’em hell.”

Being a man, in other words, is defined by divesting oneself of anything remotely associated with femininity (like kindness, sensitivity, intuition, empathy). When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others. This frantic effort to shut down a whole aspect of one’s potential isn’t caused by testosterone or Y chromosomes. It’s caused by the longing to live by the “man code.”

♦◊♦

Most MRAs agree that the “man code” exists and that it does great damage to young men. But they blame women for these cruel and limiting rules. According to many MRAs I’ve spoken to, it is women’s sexual desire for the alpha male that forces boys to compete ruthlessly with one another. “Women say they want one thing but choose another: they always go for a**holes,” so many guys say. If women would broaden their sexual appetites to include “betas” and “omegas,” their reasoning goes, boys would feel less compelled to compete ruthlessly with one another. (The men’s rights activists tend to be wildly off-base about what women actually want, but that’s another topic.)

It’s a typical but tragic mistake: MRAs wildly overestimate women’s power, sexual or otherwise. Men, they insist, are helpless by comparison. But that claim ignores a long and unmistakable history of male domination in human history. And if there’s one undeniable truism about our species, it’s that the rules are made by the dominant group. The “man laws” or “guy rules” were created by and for men. Historically, winning validation from other men has mattered more than getting sex or love from women. (If you don’t believe that, think for a moment about how hard boys will work to please a demanding football coach.) Males are raised to be “homosocial,” which means they’re taught to get their primary affirmation from other men rather than from women. Working too hard for female approval just makes you a “mama’s boy” or “p***y-whipped,” and the frantic efforts young men make to ensure neither of those labels apply to them tells you all you need to know about who it is they are really trying to impress.

Amanda Marcotte on the same site breaks it down even better and with more detail. She looks at four examples of causes that MRAs take very seriously and shows how the feminist solution to all of them is better for women and for men. Those issues include:

• Men are more often the primary or even sole breadwinners of nuclear-family households.


• Men have to do all the work asking women out, and women are often hostile to men’s overtures, which hurts men’s feelings.


• Men are more likely to get killed at work.


• Ladies Night, where bars often extend a drink special to women and not to men.

Still think we're the man haters?

V-Day, the Non-Harassing Way

Valentine's Day is all about love and, for singles, finding your special someone. However, our culture is rife with books and movies that teach us more about how to become a stalker than they do about how to approach someone new with respect to their personal boundaries. Comment is Free has some great tips for how to approach women without being harassing.

Perhaps you think there is no way you could be considered as harassing. Maybe you're just giving someone a compliment or trying to be friendly. Well, consider this:

In one of the first street harassment studies ever conducted, Carol Brooks Gardner, associate professor of sociology and women’s studies at Indiana University, Indianapolis, interviewed 293 women in Indianapolis, Indiana, over several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The women were from every race, age, class, and sexual orientation category of the general population in Indiana and the United States. She oversampled women of color to better represent their experiences. Gardner found that every single woman (100 percent) could cite several examples of being harassed by unknown men in public and all but nine of the women classified those experiences as “troublesome.”

In her Comment is Free article, Holly mentions that talking with young men about appropriate stranger interactions in public is especially important.

Society often suggests that in heterosexual relationships, it is men who should approach women. Men's peers, family members and the media may tell them that it is OK, and even flattering, to be aggressive or to sexually objectify women whom they encounter (no matter the men's or women's sexual orientation). I doubt most men want to be harassers, but if they take these messages to heart, they may become harassers.

The most important thing a cisgender man can do to be an ally to women and to the movement to end violence against them is to realize that intent doesn't always matter, and that the way you view a situation through a male lens is often not the same as a woman will view it. If a woman sends you clear signals that she feels harassed, or threatened, don't mock her for overreacting. You will never understand what it feels like to live under the constant threat of violence just because of your gender, so don't presume that you can tell her how she should feel. Instead, learn from her reactions to you and listen to her if she is willing to explain her feelings. After all, the quickest way to a woman's heart is to be part of the solution, not the problem.

Domestic Violence and the "Princess Problem"

You might think that there is no way in the world that princess culture amongst little girls has anything to do with violence against women as adults, but Hugo Schwyzer at the Good Men Project thinks it does.

Scwyzer, responding to an article in Redbook titled “Little Girls Gone Wild: Why Daughters Are Acting Too Sexy, Too Soon", argues that even princess culture contributes to an earlier and earlier sexualization of girls.

You may balk—what’s sexy about a little girl in a pink princess costume? But sexy, as it turns out, is not the same thing as sexualized. Sexualization is not just imposing sexuality on children before they’re ready and viewing girls as sexual objects, but also valuing a girl for her appearance over her other attributes. “Princesses are just a phase,” Orenstein writes, but they mark a girl’s “first foray into the mainstream culture. … And what was the first thing that culture told her about being a girl? Not that she was competent, strong, creative, or smart, but that every little girl wants—or should want—to be the Fairest of Them All.”

As Orenstein and others point out, little girls take their cues about what is desirable by looking at how boys and men respond to older girls and women. The father who lavishes adoration on “Daddy’s little princess” but ogles high-school cheerleaders is sending his daughter a clear message. The message is that the princess phase won’t last much longer, and if you want to grasp and hold adult male attention, you need to be sexy.

This sexiness has very little to do with sex, and everything to do with the craving for validation and attention. While all children want affirmation, princess culture teaches little girls to get that approval through their looks. Little girls learn quickly what “works” to elicit adoration from mom and dad, as well as from teachers, uncles, aunts, and other adults. Soon—much too soon—they notice that older girls and women get validation for a particular kind of dress, a particular kind of behavior. They watch their fathers’ eyes, they follow their uncles’ gaze. They listen to what these men they love say when they see “hot” young women on television or on the street. And they learn how to be from what they hear and see.

Both articles are worth a full read, because they paint a dangerous picture of how we as a society value women primarily, and in some circles exclusively, for our appearance and not for the myriad of other talents and values that women can bring to table. It is this view of women as not fully human, or not as valuable as men, that empowers men who use violence against women to do so. If a woman is not fully human, is not valuable, or is not worthy of the same respect as men, why is it wrong to treat her accordingly? As parents, we need to raise our kids to believe that men and women are equally valuable and, as peers, we need to hold others accountable for any words or actions that would suggest otherwise. Only after we change these attitudes as a society will violence against women be brought to an end.

DV and Other Things That Won't Get You Fired

According to an article on Gawker this week, the FBI considers domestic violence committed by its employees to be less worthy of a firing than fudging an expense report or shoplifting.

If employees of law enforcement agencies know that committing a violent crime against their spouse won't even get them fired, and we know that batterers who are law enforcement officers are less likely to be arrested, prosecuted, and/or found guilty of domestic violence, there is nothing in place that lets battering cops know that those actions are anything less than perfectly socially acceptable. And if their employers tell them that domestic violence isn't a big deal, even if they aren't batterers themselves, how might your average police officer or sheriff's deputy respond to a DV call?

If our nation's top law enforcement agencies don't take domestic violence seriously, how can we expect local officers to do so?

DV 101: Domestic Violence and Mental Health

What we know, from working with women experiencing domestic violence for 25 years, is that women experiencing domestic violence are vulnerable to mental health problems because of the abusive environment in which they live. They may also be vulnerable to self-medication through alcohol or drugs as they attempt to escape the pain of what they have experienced or are experiencing.

We also know that women with existing mental illness, as well as women with any physical or mental disability, are at a higher risk for victimization.

Most importantly, we understand that the majority of women who experience intimate partner violence do not have a diagnosable mental condition. Therefore, an assumption that victims of domestic violence require our diagnosis, psychoanalysis, therapy, or“treatment” is inaccurate at best. It is not the victim of domestic violence who has made a choice to use controlling and abusive behaviors, and it is not the victim of domestic violence who has committed a crime. Therefore, the victim is not the person who needs treatment. For most women, they simply need the abuse to stop.

As for the abuser, some people with mental health problems are violent, but most people who use violence to control their partners do not have a mental illness. In fact, many who use violence against their intimate partners are at times charming, and caring people. Most men who use violence against their women partners believe, on some level, that it is their right and even their responsibility to control their partner and their children. Our society often reinforces this thinking. "Treatment" for these batterers includes helping them change the thinking that they are entitled to use violent and abusive tactics and instead helping them see that their partners deserve their respect.

DV 101 - Common Abusive Behaviors

The following list, which outlines many common behaviors that abusers use to establish and maintain control in an intimate relationship, is certainly not exhaustive. Batterers are often creative, and they constantly think of new ways to dominate their partners. For that reason, abusive behaviors can encompass any behavior that a person uses to control their partner, especially those that make the victim fearful. The following, however, are some of the most common:

Physical Force – An abusive person may misuse physical power to restrain, injure, and terrify their partner. This results in the establishment of fear and control in the relationship.

Jealousy – At times people confuse or equate feelings of jealousy with feelings of love. An abusive person may frequently and suspiciously ask questions about their partner’s conversations, whereabouts, activities, and experiences. A person who is behaving abusively may become verbally and/or physically aggressive and accusatory when, for any reason, they are not the focus of their partner’s attention.

Manipulation – A person who is behaving abusively will attempt to justify their abusive behavior by relating it to their “concern” or “love” for their partner. They may also attempt to exploit their partner’s feelings of love and compassion.

Lying – Abusive people often lie to themselves and others. They put a “spin” on events in their lives in order to avoid responsibility for the violence that they perpetrate. Lying about affairs and finances are common occurrences.

Unrealistic Expectations – A person behaving abusively may expect their partner to meet all of their needs, to take care of everything for them emotionally and/or domestically.

Isolation – Abusers, once they have established power in the relationship, may isolate their partner by making it difficult or impossible for her to be with family and friends. She/he may block his partner’s access to the vehicle, work opportunities, telephone and Internet services, and any or all connections to the world outside of the relationship.

Blames Others for Problems, Emotions, and Abusive Behavior – A perpetrator of intimate partner violence will often blame others (usually partners and other family members) for their abusive behavior and negative emotions. However, it is their choice to use those behaviors or act on those emotions.

Use of Children – An abusive person may use the children to control their spouse. Children are at times asked to monitor the behavior of one parent and report on that behavior to the other. Or, abusive parents may threaten to or actually harm the children in order to harm the other parent.

Cruelty to Animals – Abusive behavior may include injury to the family pets.

Sexual Abuse – This includes carrying out any sexual interaction that is unwanted by the person with whom you are being sexual. Manipulative and coercive behaviors that are intended to gain compliance are also forms of sexual abuse.

Verbal Abuse – A person using verbal violence may degrade his/her partner; call her/him names, and say cruel and hurtful things. The long-term negative consequences of this victimization can be as devastating as those that occur among victims of physical and sexual abuse.

Duel Personality – “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” – A person behaving abusively may shift quickly between moods. The victim may feel like she has to “walk on eggshells” not knowing what to expect.

Threatens to Harm – Abusers may tell their partners and/or children how they will hurt/punish them if they do not obey.

Breaking or Striking Objects – Abusive behavior may include breaking household items, punching holes in walls, or kicking doors to scare the victim.

Financial Abuse – A person behaving abusively may take complete control of the household money, including controlling all spending and not allowing the other partner to work. The abuser may take out or cancel accounts in the partner's name or sabotage the partner at work, causing her to lose her job. Threats to withhold money for necessities, such as food, are also used to control the family.

Minimizing or Denying Violence – Perpetrators of domestic violence often say things like, “It’s not that bad,” “I didn’t do anything,” and “You’re just overreacting.” Over time, this kind of “crazy making” behavior can cause a victim of abuse to question him/herself and the reality and seriousness of the nightmare that they are experiencing.

If you recognize any of these behaviors occuring in your relationship, please reach out for help by calling 1-800-799-SAFE.

Welcome to a New Year

Welcome to a new year. As we have done in the past, we'd like to take the next week or two to recap some Domestic Violence 101 for our newer readers. You might like to start with one of our classic DV 101 posts:

Staying and Leaving

Effects of Domestic Violence on Children

or, try searching our blog for posts labeled "DV 101".

He Would Never Hit a Girl

An Atlanta teen was beaten to death outside a party this week. According to witness accounts given to the AJC, this is what happened:

Two young women got into a fight outside a party. One of the women struck a male partygoer.

The young man did not hit back, saying that he doesn't hit girls, but vowed that the next guy who walked by would get what she deserved.

18-year-old Bobby Tillman walked by.

The young man who was struck began to beat Bobby Tillman. Three others joined in.

They beat Bobby to death.

Do you see why it isn't enough just to teach our sons not to hit girls? The young man in question absorbed that lesson to the letter. What he did not learn was not to hurt women, not to threaten or intimidate them in order to control their behavior. So, instead of hitting her, he chose a random bystander to hurt, letting her know that this was her fault. He was seeking her anguish, her anger, her shame. He punished her by assaulting Bobby. Yes, she hit him first, but he reacted with a much greater degree of violence, and now an innocent young man is dead and a young girl is left, for the rest of her life, feeling like she caused his death.

It is not enough to teach our sons not to hit girls. Men who are arrested or who are enrolled in family violence intervention programs often learn not to hit women. They don't always learn not to use verbal abuse, or financial abuse, or threats of suicide, or other means of controlling women. Our sons, and our brothers, and our coworkers, and our friends need to learn that violence is never a problem-solver. They should also learn to treat others with respect, and that it is never okay to use controlling tactics to punish another person or to get a person to do what you want. No one should have been hit that night, and certainly no one should have died.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Tillman family.

Women Arrested for DV Murders

Two Georgia women have been arrested recently for murdering their husbands. WRC knows that women are also capable of using violence, but we also know that women are much less likely than men to murder a spouse or intimate partner. In addition, much of the violence used by women that men's groups cite to prove that men are equally as victimized happens in self-defense. When viewing these two murder cases through that lens, it is certainly interesting to note that both homicide victims had a history of domestic violence.

From WALB:

An Albany woman, who shot and killed her ex-husband Monday night says she'd long been the victim of domestic violence.

33 year old Marlina Hamilton is charged with killing 32 -year old Christopher Donaldson.

Donaldson had just gotten out of prison in March and Police say he and Hamilton, who divorced two years ago, were talking about moving back in together.

Police were called to Hamilton's home around 10:30 that night because of an argument, and officers told Donaldson to leave.

He returned a couple of hours later and was shot.

From the AJC:

A 53-year-old northwest Georgia man was shot and killed Wednesday night, and his wife has been charged with murder.

Walker County deputies were dispatched to the Flintstone home after receiving a call about a domestic dispute, the Rome News-Tribune reported. Deputies found D.C. Hollis dead on the living room floor, according to the report.

Hollis apparently died from a single .38-caliber gunshot wound to the head, Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson told the newspaper. An autopsy will be conducted at the GBI crime lab.

Hollis' wife, 53-year-old Jimmie Nell Hollis, was arrested and charged with murder, Wilson said.

The couple has a history of being arrested, according to the Walker County Messenger.

D.C. Hollis was released from state prison in 2006 following his conviction on aggravated assault charges, according to the Georgia Department of Corrections.

This is not to say that either man deserved to be killed, but you don't often see newspaper reports of female homicide victims that mention that she spent time in prison for assault or that he claims she had of a history of abuse toward him. Even if we count cases where women kill their partners in self-defense, or to end a lifetime of abuse as these cases may be, the unfortunate reality is that women are still disproportionately killed by their partners and men are disproportionately the ones who do the killing.

More News from Churches

The Epsicopal Diocese of Atlanta has posted an article on their website about the role churches can play in stopping domestic violence. They also cite one of the most important facts when it comes to the importance of faith organizations taking a stand: women who are experiencing domestic violence in Georgia are much more likely to reach out to their church than to law enforcement or domestic violence agencies like ours.

We did a special interview in our fall newsletter with Victoria Ferguson, an advocate at our safehouse. Victoria has a background in theology and works with women who are experiencing crises in their faith because of family violence. She also provides advice for faith-based organizations in working with both survivors and abusers. You can find our newsletter here.

Not Something We Need To Be Worried About

On this blog, we try to regularly draw attention to ways in which domestic violence in dangerous to everyone, not just the individuals involved. This is important, because many people still don't see domestic violence as a serious threat. Case in point:

A Raleigh, North Carolina woman was found shot to death in a Buckhead apartment Wednesday. Here is a quote from a neighbor:

"I'm hoping it's more of a domestic dispute rather than something we need to be worried about".

In other words, domestic violence is OK. It's not something I would be bothered by.

Fishermen's Wives Face Post-Spill Trauma

An article today from Mother Jones describes the St. Bernard Project, a nonprofit founded in 2006 to provide rebuilding services to Katrina-ravaged St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana, as well as offer "psychological rebuilding" through a wellness and mental-health center. Since the oil spill started, the organization has been looking to vastly expand its services to meet the area's latest mental-health crisis: the unrelenting depression falling on families living and working on the Gulf Coast.

There are a myriad of things that contribute to domestic violence. One of the most common that we cite are a batterer's loss of control in others areas of his life, which causes him to seek to recapture that control where he can. People who feel out of control also often turn to alcohol use, which lowers inhibitions and might contribute to some people using violence who otherwise would not have considered it. Both of these things could be contributing factors to the rise in domestic violence seen in gulf areas since the spill.

"My husband's goin' drinkin'. My husband comes home and screams at me. The food's not good enough, the floors aren't clean enough. That's why I'm here, for him to take it out on me."

In next-door Plaquemines Parish, 11 domestic violence calls came in on one recent weekend, compared with 3 on a typical weekend. Cathy Butler, the woman who takes the calls, isn't ready to attribute the spike entirely to the oil spill; it's a hundred degrees outside, after all, and calls always increase a bit in the summer. The mayor of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, says they've had 320 percent more incidents of domestic violence since the spill. Whatever the cause, Butler is sure it's gonna get worse soon. "The more people are out of work, the more trouble we're gonna have," she says. "Plaquemines Community CARE is offering help now, but we're gonna need some more counselors. In the coming months, I'm gonna see a definite increase." She says she is also seeing an increase in child abuse calls.

Michelle tries to offer some perspective to the women by explaining that their husbands' anger is just a reaction against helplessness. He can't fix this, but he can fight.

These are not men who are accustomed to seeking therapy and, indeed, most therapy services in the area are aimed at the wives, hoping that some of the calm and coping strategies will make it back to the husbands. But when we as a culture place a man's value in how well he provides monetarily for his family, we cannot see that taken from him and expect him to know how to handle it alone. Anger, loss, depression, anxiety, and many other emotions are to be expected. That doesn't make family violence OK, but it does underscore the need for us to take men's emotional needs seriously, and to offer mental health services to them as well. If anything, they should be offering counseling to men to protect the wives, not the other way around.

DV Increases After Oil Spill

The mayor of an Alabama gulf town is reporting a significant increase in domestic violence.

Bayou La Batre, Alabama, Mayor Stan Wright told the BBC that domestic violence has risen by 320 percent since the Gulf Coast oil spill began. There has been a 110 percent increase in daily calls and complaints to the local police department.

This isn't the first time domestic violence rates have risen with a natural disaster.

After the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, rates of alcoholism, suicide, and domestic violence all increased in towns affected by the spill. After Hurricane Andrew in Miami, spousal abuse calls to the local helpline increased by 50 percent, and police reports of domestic violence went up 46 percent following the eruption of the Mt. St. Helens volcano in 1980.

We say over and over again on this blog and in this movement to end violence against women that domestic abuse is about control. When a batterer feels out of control in other areas of his life (i.e. he is losing his business or source of income), he often seeks to exert control where he can. Our society places less value on women and, therefore, a man can often exert control over his female partner, through physical violence or other tactics, and escape consequences. Until we make it inconvenient for men to abuse their female partners, either through criminal penalties or social consequences such as loss of status, harming wives and girlfriends will continue to be the outlet for many men's frustrations.