I’m definitely against that—but why won’t some women leave these losers ?
Or why do they go back to them ?
That’s something I’ve never been able to understand, really. I was once under the impression that women who stayed in abusive relationships did so because they had no options and were basically trapped. I now understand that while occasionally that is so, when I volunteered at a women’s shelter for a couple of years I saw that it was much less cut & dried than that.
I saw educated women, women with family trying to save them, even women who were paying the bills going back to abusive losers. Most such shelters operate with some anonymity and privacy because many of the women and children there are in hiding, often even fearing for their lives. So some of the women who couldn’t let go endangered all of us.
They would sneak and call their abusive partners from the shelter ! One of the counselors was murdered by the estranged husband of one of the women—who had left him but then phoned him and told him where she was. When he arrived, she told him that the volunteers and counselors weren’t letting her leave (which was false). I eventually had to stop volunteering there, because frankly, I was afraid.
In addition to that, there was a situation when a friend’s brother lost his life trying to stop a man from beating up his pregnant girlfriend on a public street. There were several witnesses, but when the man went on trial, the girlfriend testified that her boyfriend had been protecting her from our friend—thankfully then those witnesses spoke up and refuted that lie.
I came away from those experiences feeling rather cynical, alas. And much less likely to intervene than when I was younger. I’ll still call 911, but I won’t go charging in there myself. And even my brother, a retired policeman, says they hate domestic calls above all because most have had the experience of being jumped on by the wife while taking away the husband who had given her that black eye or broken nose. 😞
That’s something I’ve never been able to understand, really. I was once under the impression that women who stayed in abusive relationships did so because they had no options and were basically trapped. I now understand that while occasionally that is so, when I volunteered at a women’s shelter for a couple of years I saw that it was much less cut & dried than that.
I saw educated women, women with family trying to save them, even women who were paying the bills going back to abusive losers. Most such shelters operate with some anonymity and privacy because many of the women and children there are in hiding, often even fearing for their lives. So some of the women who couldn’t let go endangered all of us.
They would sneak and call their abusive partners from the shelter ! One of the counselors was murdered by the estranged husband of one of the women—who had left him but then phoned him and told him where she was. When he arrived, she told him that the volunteers and counselors weren’t letting her leave (which was false). I eventually had to stop volunteering there, because frankly, I was afraid.
In addition to that, there was a situation when a friend’s brother lost his life trying to stop a man from beating up his pregnant girlfriend on a public street. There were several witnesses, but when the man went on trial, the girlfriend testified that her boyfriend had been protecting her from our friend—thankfully then those witnesses spoke up and refuted that lie.
I came away from those experiences feeling rather cynical, alas. And much less likely to intervene than when I was younger. I’ll still call 911, but I won’t go charging in there myself. And even my brother, a retired policeman, says they hate domestic calls above all because most have had the experience of being jumped on by the wife while taking away the husband who had given her that black eye or broken nose. 😞
