BATTERED WOMAN SYNDROME
The Battered Woman Syndrome develops when a woman is bewildered and entrapped by a domineering man whose moods swing between sweetness and rage. He's also jealous, suspicious, and snoops around to check on you. He accuses, blames, and ridicules you - oftentimes claiming that he's "just kidding," other times he's dead serious. Rapists, stalkers, and batterers all have delusions of entitlement to women – feeling they have the right to "own" a victim. Battered woman syndrome usually begins by eroding her self-esteem with belittling comments. Then he starts using threats and displays of violence to intimidate her, such as smashing things precious to her, even hurting her pets. Next comes pushing, slapping, and restraining. Finally comes punching, kicking, choking, and clubbing that may kill her. The man of her dreams has become her nightmare. She was shot above the right eye with a .22-caliber, hollow-point bullet. Most of the bullet fragments are still inside her head. Her husband is in jail awaiting trial. "Don't stay with a violent man," she said. "I kept excusing his violence.” Battered Woman Syndrome affects up to 50 percent of American women. Although most people understand domestic violence as a punch or slap, it is actually a pattern of physical assaults, threats and coercive behaviors used to maintain control over a current or former intimate partner. ... These can be ongoing verbal, emotional, sexual, physical, psychological and economic abuse. While stress and anger may seem to cause domestic violence, this is not the case. Battered woman syndrome is caused by the perceived right of one person to dominate another. Typically, it gets worse over time. ... Nationally, half of all homeless women and children are fleeing domestic violence. Attempts to leave may be perceived as a threat to the abuser's control, and killing her may be the only way to maintain control.
A lot of red flags that would indicate violence went up for Rita in her relationship with her common-law husband. She ignored them, saying he had such a charm about him it was almost hypnotizing. “He let me get comfortable with him. He knew what I wanted to hear and could smell the vulnerability,” she said. “He would tell me no one loves you but me. He won my trust.” ... She said he started mentally abusing her, then the abuse became physical. The abuse went from pushing her around to accelerating the car they were in to 90 mph and asking her if she was ready to die. ... It escalated to his slapping, biting, and burning her with cigarettes to throwing a knife at her head. She said he even held her down and cut her with a piece of glass 97 times. Rita said she believed she had no place to go where he couldn’t find her. Her family tried to help and she even left the state for awhile, but she couldn’t stay away. She called it an addiction. ... A friend who lived nearby tried to help, often calling the police, but Rita wouldn’t press charges against her abuser. Eventually, he beat her within an inch of her life and she decided to get out. BATTERED WOMAN PROFILE Battered Woman Syndrome crosses all demographic lines: any age, class, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and geographic location – including the partners of doctors, lawyers, cops, judges, and preachers. Since it’s often hushed up because of fear, shame, and a perverse desire to protect the batterer, overall statistics are sketchy. But a 2000 Department of Justice survey found that “25 percent of women (and 8 percent of men) reported they’d been assaulted by an intimate partner during their lifetime.” Other studies show that up to half of all women treated in hospital emergency rooms are there because of battered woman syndrome; one-third of all women murder victims are killed by an intimate partner; and one-quarter to one-half of all women's suicides are linked to battered woman syndrome. If I tried to leave him, he said he’d kill me.” Those were the words allegedly spoken by 23-year-old missing mother of two, Stacy Peterson, to a friend and neighbor about a threat her 53-year-old husband Drew Peterson made. ... On Oct. 26, Stacy told Drew she wanted a divorce. Two days later she was gone. Her policeman husband suggests that she has left for personal reasons in the past, and that he suspects she has either run off on her own or run away with an unnamed man. No evidence of either scenario has yet been discovered. ... What is it, though, in Sgt. Peterson’s background that would make him any more of a person of interest in his wife’s disappearance than the statistical probability ascribed to any other spouse or partner of a missing person? ... Stacy Peterson told relatives she was afraid of her husband. Sgt. Peterson had allegedly monitored and limited his current wife’s telephone and social contacts, “watching her every move,” even to the extent of allegedly following her as she went to class at a local college. He previously refused to allow her to visit her sister in a nearby community and had allegedly threatened her on more than one occasion. “Domestic violence can be deadly. But women who have lived with battered woman syndrome may believe the abuse will continue to hurt – but not kill. Here are some questions victims can ask themselves to assess the risk of being killed: A partner, or ex-partner, who may be inclined to commit a violent act may exhibit some of the following warning signs: London – The number of "domestic" homicides in the capital has fallen in the past 11 months. Scotland Yard believes the drop is largely due to a new early-warning system that uses six factors or pointers that help their officers identify would-be "domestic" killers before they commit murder. The Indicators: See Women Safety - Domestic Violence for batterer's profiles and how to escape battered woman syndrome. CONTACTS & RESOURCES for
• National Coalition Against Domestic Violence www.ncadv.org |
