Don’t Call Me Shirley, I, for one, am honestly interested in having my “ignorance” on this particular point alleviated.
I completely understand the common dynamic of the battered woman (or man…henceforth, “the victim”) staying in an abusive relationship/situation and why the common arm-chair advising of “just LEAVE” is a bunch of ignorant crap.
The very nature of this sort of abuse reinforces the co-dependency, helplessness, fear, isolation, loyalty, etc…that make “just leaving” difficult or impossible. The economics and logistics can do likewise. And then there is the fact that very often, leaving or trying to can be more dangerous than staying, as far as the abuser actually killing you. I get all that.
I’ve witnessed this sort of abuse a few times. When I was about 8, I had a friend whose father was a physical abuser of her mother. I witnessed a few of the beatings and subsequent "reconcilliations. It was a shocking, embarassing (for both my friend and I and the mother), almost incomprehensible thing to me then. WHY didn’t she just leave? Even then I realized that 1. she was finincially/materially dependent upon the status quo, and 2.(oddly enough to me at the time) both “loved” and feared her abuser.
When I was 11, my mom had a friend, our next door neighbor, who had left an abusive relationship. One night, my mom and I went over to hang out and the EX came driving by, banging on the door, drunk and crazy, demanding his “stuff” and verbally abusing and threatening her. We called the cops, she stuck a butcher knife in the door-jamb to keep him out, and we stayed until 3 am or so to make sure she was safe. I recall this all vividly, and not only because I started menstruating that night.
When I was 17, my own mother was with an abuser. He never beat her but threatened to. Threatened to KILL her one night, and that was the night I left, walking out into deep snow and walking 5 miles into town to stay at the house of a friend. She left him and came to get me the next day. We got an apartment in town, but a few weeks later she took him back and made plans to move back in with him. She sat me down and said she realized I didn’t want to live with him and offered to pay for me to move out of state, to where my grandmother lived. I went. She left him again soon after, for good, and a few yrs later, he ended up in prison after beating a man into a coma with a shovel.
My mother is NOT stupid nor did/does she have a pattern of abusive relationships. BUT…
Her mother, my grandmother, (the strongest person I have ever known) divorced an abusive, alcoholic husband and raised 5 kids on her own. She once told me that a few yrs before they divorced, he (a 6’3 man) beat her (a 5’2 woman) again and she told him, “If you EVER hit me again, you’d better kill me or I WILL kill you!” According to her he never touched her again. So no doubt my mother, even as the youngest and only 3 or so when they split, was affected by what she probably witnessed.
Also a few other such situations with friends I’ve known over the years.
At any rate, I submit that I have quite a bit of experience with this issue, and am hardly “ignorant” regarding the factors involved.
Like a few others here, I honestly question WHY this woman STAYED, in HIS house yet, for so long. I think it’s a perfectly fair question. IF he was so horribly abusive and she was SO concerned for her safety and that of her child, did she not relocate and pursue the legal measures she is now from elsewhere? And, given the timing of the tapes and her allegations, did she stay IN the relationship so long after his abuse, according to her, became apparent?
As I posted earlier, she does NOT fit the usual pattern of the “victim.”
I suppose it’s possible. Maybe she herself had a history of abuse, witnessed or personal, that made her esp. vulnerable to falling into that role. Otherwise, WHY would a self-sufficient, mature woman remain in such a situation? I and every other woman I know would be gone at the first sign of such crap!
I am honestly asking for your insight. I just don’t think it fair to dismiss such speculations/questions with a simple “you are ignorant”.
