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Battered women - violence against women continues to be a major problem in this country. It is nothing new. It has been with us for ages. Who is the battered woman? What does she look like? We are told she doesn’t come from any particular socio-economic class. She is normal with no special attributes many times that make her stand out in a crowd.
Some characteristics of this woman are:
2) Usually is a traditional wife or girlfriend and believes in strong family unity
3) Accepts responsibility for being battered
4) Suffers guilt from it
5) Presents herself to the world as a passive person, but has enough strength to prevent herself from being killed or severely injured many times
6) Believes her situation is hopeless
7) Is financial dependent on her husband or boyfriend .
These women do not choose to stay in the relationship because they enjoy the beatings and abuse. Most of them stay for economic, legal or social-dependence reasons. Many simply have no place to go. Most people can not understand why a woman would not leave the man who treats her so cruelly.
A lot of women feel guilty and ashamed and feels the abuse they realize are punishment for their sins.
Women that are on welfare or have other means of support are usually more successful at leaving these men because they can control to some degree their own finances. They stay in the abusive relationships for several reasons. They stay for companionship, fear of aging, or having to face being a single parent. They are many times afraid that they will be harmed or killed if they leave.
Also, many women will leave the abusive relationship many times before she finally makes the break. With this in mind, the caregiver must not give up on them when they go back to the abuser.
They have not become strong enough to make the final break. Evidence suggests that the men who batter women learn this behavior from a significant male in their own life. They have many times grown up in families where they witnessed their dad’s abuse of their mothers.
Many times these fathers have been abused themselves. They have grown up with a strong authoritarian type of male ruling the house. These men focus on weak, dependent females and seek them out. When in this position, he has a sense of power, which makes him feel better about himself because many times this is the only power he has in life. He will have low self-esteem and has learned that he can boost his ego by bullying those weaker than himself. He usually will express a lot of jealousies to his lover.
He is extremely suspicious of she does, whom she sees and whom she talks with. He will accuse her of having sexual affairs with almost any male she comes into contact with from her father to the salesclerk at the supermarket.
There are three stages of the battering cycle.
- They are Phase I- The tension building stage,
- Phase II- the Acute Battering Stage and
- Phase III- the Kindness and Contrite Loving Behavior Stage.
In Phase I the woman usually does all she can to calm down the batterer. She may nurture him or simply attempt to stay out of his way. She accepts the abuse because she thinks this will keep matters from getting worse. She here is seen to have sleeplessness, loss of appetite, overeating and sleeping, and constant fatigue.
Phase II sees the explosion. It is here where she is usually beaten.
She anticipates this is coming.
Phase III is characterized by extreme loving, almost kin to the honeymoon stage. The batterer shows affection and kind behavior that resembles a newly wed. He knows what he has done is wrong and tries to make it up to her. He begs forgiveness and promises never to do it again. He is like a little boy promising that he won’t do it again.
So, what is the answer? No one plan or method seems to be working that allows battered women to get away from the man described above. Interesting enough, this woman may actually love this man. A lot of understanding from a care provider must be given, whether it is a professional counselor or another significant person.
We must all become more sensitive to the battered woman, realizing that it may seem very simple to us, but it is terribly complex problem for these women.
The legal system needs to be more involved, laws need to be passed to deal with this crime and batterers need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Policemen need better training in ways to get women to safe houses. But most important of all, these males need to be taught as children that physically, sexually, and verbally abusing women is wrong and can not be tolerated.
The education system itself can be used to meet this objective. I believe that the social conscience has to be raised concerning this area. When this is done, we will start seeing a decline in this problem.
There is NO excuse for ANY abuse on women, children, men or the elderly. We can't help but notice it is only a coward that would abuse anyone and that they would never abuse one who could fight back.
People don't stop to think about the different types of abuse, Verbal, Mental, sexual abuse etc. When you call your child, friend or spouce a name that is abuse, degrading is abuse, when a person says NO and you force that is abuse. I would never slap ANYONE as I don't ever want to know what it is like to get slapped. I bite my tongue even when someone says something nasty to me because I can't call anyone something that I know they aren't.
To understand battered woman's syndrome, one must first understand how someone becomes a "battered woman". A woman must experience at least two complete battering cycles before she can be labeled a "battered woman". The phases are mentioned earlier.
It is also important to understand why battered women stay in abusive relationships. A battered woman tends to stay in abusive relationships for a number of reasons."
Among those reasons: women are still positively reinforced during the honeymoon phase; women tend to be the peacekeepers in relationships - the ones responsible for making the marriage work; adverse economic consequences; it is more dangerous to leave than to stay; prior threats by batterer to kill self, or children; or to abscond with children; lost self-esteem; and no psychological energy to leave - resulting in a learned helplessness or psychological paralysis.
Battered woman syndrome describes a pattern of psychological and behavioral symptoms found in women living in battering relationships.
There are four general characteristics of the syndrome:
1. The woman believes that the violence was her fault.
2. The woman has an inability to place the responsibility for the violence elsewhere.
3. The woman fears for her life and/or her children's lives.
4. The woman has an irrational belief that the abuser is omnipresent and omniscient.
