Domestic violence: Silent but very problematic crime

Physical abuse is the easiest form of abuse to detect. There may be multiple signs throughout the woman’s body. These signs, according to the article “Understanding the Effects of Domestic Violence” by a Psych Central staff, may include “repeated bruises and broken arms [and those women] are more likely to have frequent doctor visits, frequent headaches, chronic generalized pain, pelvic pain, frequent vaginal and urinary tract infections, gastrointestinal problems and eating disorders.” The frequent bruises and broken bones is an obvious sign that the batterer is trying to maintain control through fear and corporal punishment of his partner. These beatings usually lead to hospitalization and women may try to protect their oppressor by making up stories as to how they keep getting those bruises for fear that the batterer may due something worse to them if he finds out that they accused him of being responsible for those beatings. The beatings’ immediate consequences are hospitalizations, but can later lead to “arthritis,hypertension, and heart disease”, according to the article “Long-Term Effects of Domestic Violence”.

Physical violence doesn’t just lead to scars and bruises, but economic troubles as well. According to “Long-Term Effects of Domestic Violence”, women will often lose their jobs due to excessive absences related to illness caused by physical beatings, and by court appearances. Women may also have to relocate multiple times to avoid their tormentor, and moving takes up time from their jobs, and can also be costly if they’re moving from one city or state to another. Another economic hardship that victims of domestic violence may face is the amount of hospital bills as a result of having undergone any complicated process in the hospital, especially if they are uninsured.

Unfortunately, women are not the only victims of domestic violence, the children are also victims in an abusive relationship. The children in an abusive relationship are also deeply affected by the hostility in their homes, according to “Understanding the Effects of Domestic Violence”, “50 to 70 percent of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children”. The reason for the men beating their children as well would probably be explained by the crying of the child while watching his or her mother being beaten by their father and that crying could irritate the abuser and cause him to retaliate against the children. According to the National Woman Abuse Prevention Project, Washington, D.C., “Children in homes where domestic violence occurs are physically abused or seriously neglected at a rate of 1500% higher than the national average”. Children may be neglected by their beaten mothers because they too are trying to cope with the abuse that they go through themselves. Their fathers may be out getting drunk and arrive late at home, and will almost never try to interact or get
involved in their children’s lives other than to beat them for even the tiniest of errors. According to Children in the Crossfire, by Maria Roy, “85% of children had stayed with friends or relatives” to avoid the violence going on at home, “and 75% over the age of 15 had run away at least twice”. Children who grow up in violent homes may feel guilty for not being able to protect their mothers, may have mixed emotions about loving their fathers or step-fathers who beat them as well as their mothers, and they may even blame
themselves for being the cause of their mothers torment.

Boys and girls are affected differently as they grow up. As young children, both boys and girls may “exhibit emotional problems, cry excessively, or be withdrawn or shy”. When children are withdrawn, they may have a hard time making friends at school. They may also miss school due to their father’s beatings, who may not want the child to go to a counselor or social worker at school and expose him to the authorities.

Children who see violence at home may also exhibit violent behavior at school towards their classmates because they may think it is alright to use physical violence to solve your problems as they see it at home by their fathers towards their mothers. As boys get older and they see their fathers beat their mothers, they can grow up with violent tendencies towards their own wives in the future. The girls who grow up seeing their mothers being beaten, are more likely to accept that being beaten by their husbands is correct.

In the times of slavery, domestic violence wasn’t necessary what we define it to be in our time. Back then, the simple fact of a slave boy seeing his father being beaten by his white masters was domestic violence of the psychological type. There are two accounts of this type of violence in the poems “The Lynching” and “To the White Fiends”, the latter by Claude McKay. In “The Lynching”, the author describes a father being lynched in front of his son. The author writes “His father, by cruelest way of pain,/Had bidden him to his bosom once again”, as if embracing him one last time before
he died. This creates hatred in the boy’s heart as he expresses his despair towards the end of the poem, “And little lads, lynchers that were to be,/Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee”. In Claude McKay’s “To the White Fiends”, he too, expresses strong words of hatred to the slave owners. “Think you I am not fiend and savage too?/Think you I could not arm me with a gun”. These lines express the hatred that slaves had towards their masters who would often abuse their authority and beat one their slaves to death to make an example of him or her. The children of the white masters grew up thinking that it was perfectly fine to keep another human being as property and that they could dispose of them however they pleased.

That is why even after the Civil War had ended and the slaves were finally free, there were still bitter feelings from former slave-owners that led to the formation of the Ku Klux Klan that kept lynching people just for being of color.

Domestic violence is a silent, but very problematic crime. It is often the least reported crime of all and its victims are left with physical, psychological and socioeconomic troubles in the long run. Women often have repeated bruises and broken bones, and in extreme cases lose their lives to domestic violence. Children grow up with problems of their own as well, such as difficulty making friends in school, stuttering, suicidal tendencies, being runaways, as well as becoming batterers or victims themselves. Yes, women are still commonly looked upon as the weaker sex, and some people think that that gives them the right to mistreat them. To paraphrase what Benito Mussolini once said that not because the majority of people say something’s right, doesn’t mean it’s right. Just because women may be considered the weaker sex, that doesn’t anyone the right to abuse them nor their children just because they can’t defend themselves. It’s time to take a stand against domestic violence and end it once and for all by removing the stereotypical misconceptions that people still have about women.