Lets say that in the normal course of business in your life and in your town you notice a young couple. The Husband, a bow-legged fight-picking sort never seemed to grow up past a white T-shirt and spending the night in jail. The Wife, a really nice person, is relegated to pushing a baby carriage and using make-up skills and sunglasses to cover her bruises.
Lets assume that anyone in your town who has spoken up before, bow-leg boy has made a point of threatening publicly… and then small accidents like fires and property damage are sure to follow. Yes, in two words he’s Bad News and part of a gang… but he still seems to be beating the crap out of his wife weekly without anyone stopping him.
I would not. He’d spend the night in jail and come back to beat her more, plus cost the family money in bail/legal defense/his lack of employability/etc.
I would attempt to befriend the wife and help her get away from him if that’s what she wants.
Inserting yourself into this drama will do no good. She has to make the choice to leave him herself. An inconclusive visit from the cops isn’t going to change him.
I know for a fact that he’s hitting his wife (that is, I actually see it happening) or I just “strongly suspect” him?
If the former, damn right I’m calling the cops. If he threatens me in any way then I’m calling the cops about that too.
On the other hand if I haven’t actually witnessed a crime it’s hard for me to call the police. I might check with social services or the local crisis hotline and find out who is supposed to assist in these sorts of problems and see if they can contact the wife directly, but I don’t know that the police can respond to “My neighbor has a black eye”.
Unless you witness an act of wife-beating, there’s not much you can do. And even then, if the wife has the choice of pressing charges or not, it’s a coin-toss as to whether she will choose to do so, even knowing you’re a supportive witness.
Some states have laws that require the police to arrest/charge someone as the aggressor in a domestic dispute if the other party has visible injuries. That’s pretty much the only situation where your interference (as someone who has witnessed the act) has strong odds of getting the bad guy some legal consequences.
It’s been 25 years at least when I awoke one night to find my neighbor beating his wife out on the front lawn. I got dressed, went outside, cocked my 9mm and aimed it point blank at his head while informing him that if he laid one more blow on her in front of me that he would die where he stood. She came over to my house, stayed for a few hours and then went back over to him. Next day he apologized for his behavior and I never heard a peep out of them again.
Guess I could have called the cops, but where is the fun in doing that?
I would report it and tell her that I care, she deserves better and if she won’t stand up for herself, I will. I watched a babysitting client try to kill his wife when I was in 9th grade. I felt helpless and she didn’t press charges, so it all went away.
I agree. If I witness an assault, I’m reporting it to the police. I’ll testify against the guy in court based on what I saw. It doesn’t matter if the victim was his wife or somebody else.
But what am I going to tell the police if I didn’t witness the assault and I only suspect he’s hitting his wife? At most, I can give them a tip to something they could investigate but in the situation the OP described I’m assuming the local police already know as much as I do.
Report it, but don’t expect much to come from it unless you witness it directly. Even if you are a witness, if the wife decides to side with the husband and deny he did it (aka protect him), everyones pretty much SOL.
There are two cases of domestic assualt I know of personally; in the first I witnessed assault happening personally and the wife (several months later during trial) denied her husband hit or touched anyone. Serial abusers tend to have persuasive powers (either intimidating or charming) that they use to constantly manipulate their victim into keeping quite or even outright covering for them. Don’t ask me to explain it, but it happens a lot.
In the second case, there had been minor abuse going on for years but always behind close doors. One day it spilled outside and luckily a couple strangers were walking by and reported it. By the time the cops showed up the couple had gone back inside (actually he forced her back in), but thanks to the witnesses they had enough grounds to haul the guy away. Thankfully the partner actually did want out and followed through properly eventually getting the guy convicted. That didn’t stop the guy from breaking the non-contact order and later trying to manipulate her into telling the cops nothing happened… he got an additional conviction for that.
Part of the reason people getting abused will put up with it for years is the fear that unless they report the abuse the very first time on the spot, that it’ll be assumed they’re lying if they report it later or don’t report every single instance. Sure enough, during the trial in my second example the guy’s defence lawyer strongly suggested that she was exaggerating the whole situation because it had happened before but she did nothing about it. There are a lot of “outs” and excuses abusers and their lawyers will try when they get reported and/or charged, and it’s usually up to the victim to refute them; the whole statement and court procedure surrounding which can be even harder to get through than simply putting up with the bad behavior every now and then. It’s easier to take a 30 second slap or yelling session every 6 months than to move out, make statements, go through trial procedings, and worry for months over the grilling you are going to get from the abuser’s lawyer on the stand… and to know there’s a chance he’ll get away with it and then get really mad… or maybe you’ll get “removed” one night by the guy before being able to testify against him. Getting out of domestic abuse situations is not as simple and care-free as some people imagine.
Assuming there’s really a baby in the carriage, Child Protective Services might be interested too. (Domestic violence in the home, even if not proven to involve the kid(s) directly, tends to be a red flag, and they like to get involved.)
As a matter of law the wife almost never has this choice, the prosecutor decides, though it is true that many prosecutors won’t file charges if they know there are no witnesses to testify.
That’s the way it ends up but it’s common for cops on the scene to literally ask the victim if they want to press charges, especially when the cops didn’t witness anything themselves (see pretty much every domestic call on the show COPS); I’ve seen it in real life too. The way it’s phrased makes it sound like pressing charges is the victim’s choice, but I assume it’s just the cops at the scene determining how likely they are to have a useful witness for the procecuter to use in a potential case later on. I’d assume that if the victim said “no” they don’t want to press charges, that would translate to the cops as “likely unreliable witness” and they would relay that to the prosecuter… who could decide to go ahead anyway or perhaps more likely drop it.
Sure, literally it’s the prosecutor who will “press charges”. But if a wife says “no, I’m not going to testify against my husband”, you don’t have a case.
