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Have you ever thought that men and women who’ve experienced Domestic Violence and Abuse (DVA) could work together for the mutual benefit of the family and community?
Neither had I!
I delivered a talk earlier this month to men who had experienced domestic violence and abuse (DVA). I explained it in the context of the criminal justice system in the UK. I took the audience on a journey that I had been witnessing for 15 years and wanted the women present to know what would happen to men or women in the UK if they were reported for DVA.
Essentially what happens is that if the incident is extremely serious, the perpetrator is given custody. In prison, he rarely gets to attend any significant programs. The majority of the time, perpetrators are given a Community Order or a Suspended Sentence Order and a requirement to complete a DVA program. The problem with the DVA program is that it doesn’t challenge the perpetrator, it basically teaches them how to have positive relationships which is fine except, how is this a punishment? But I digress.
I watched womens eyebrows raise in agreement with the information I provided regarding the narcissist and coercive control, and their heads nodding up and down. It seemed that they had experienced most of what I was sharing and could accept that there were other people who knew about this wretched behaviour. Men were also demonstrating that they understood what was happening but there was a feeling that women had too many rights.
Men and women were agreeing about DVA. They were all listening intently as I shared what was happening and what treatment men could expect if sentenced. This was the first time I had seen both men and women agree over this issue; however, the issue of women leaving relationships after 40+ years did bring some interesting debate. There appear to be many women leaving relationships they’ve been in for 40 and 50 years.
That should make you question why shouldn’t it? No one wants to leave the safety of a home at 55+ so something awful must be happening. This was where it became interesting for me.
While the men felt women were being encouraged to leave, they were also open to hearing me state that some of these women had gone through horrendous abuse throughout their marriages and they needed to move on and be able to breathe without asking for permission.
Men shared their concerns stating, ‘women have too many options now and it is too easy for women to leave or report a man wrongly’. I felt I had to intervene. To some extent I agreed with the men as I have seen and known women who had harmed men deliberately in DVA relationships and I have been told directly what some women choose to do when they don’t get what they want so while the men were not completely wrong, they did need enlightenment.
I spoke about older women in the South Asian community who I had become aware of around 2005 who had left their husbands after they reached the age of 50/55. They said that they had done their duty to their husbands and their children. That meant they had remained in their marriages until their children were able to find suitable partners and would not be affected by a parent who was no longer with the other parent. In South Asian communities the concept of honor and shame still exists. That results in certain behaviours needing to take place to protect the sanctity of collective thinking.
The men insisted that there were too many cases of women leaving after decades of marriage so I proposed the WHAT TO DO question. I’m not quite sure what I was expecting but the men stated that women too should be sharing what was happening to them so that people could jointly help figure out how to move them out of the abusive situation and hold their husband’s accountable.
Was I really hearing this? Men who had a moment earlier stated women had too many rights were the same men who felt that we need to have an arbitration of sorts in which such issues can be stated, heard and dealt with. It seemed they did not want interference from governmental agencies, instead, wanting to find a way to deal with family, community relationships so that the families could figure out a way of managing the abuse without breaking up entire family units.
These men were not abusive or aggressive. They had gone through DVA themselves and were now older men trying to help manage their communities and stop the abuse from happening. They were genuinely concerned with what was happening to relationships and more importantly raised concerns around not being able to help support their grandchildren. They were not only raising issues that were true and live, but were offering a potential solution.
Communities rising up together to help their own members by offering support and kindness.
What was even more amazing was that the men that were present represented a number of communities that are generally known to be disrespectful of one another. They have united through their shared experiences of domestic violence and abuse.
Speaking to the women, I found the classic experiences of being abused and staying in relationships until they no longer existed within that relationship. Women still often leave because of their children saying, ‘mum, you have to get out, this isn’t good for you’.
In the course of our talk, what was becoming apparent was that there was a new breed of men who were willing to step up, despite believing the system was not conducive in supporting them or the families to work their relationships out, instead wanting to break down every relationship that came through the door.
The discussion that followed our talk left me feeling extremely positive about the future of DVA in the types of communities these men represented. While they held strong opinions about women’s rights not necessarily being useful for their husbands and families, they fully agreed and understood that DVA existed and required more than a few so-called professionals to help couples manage it.
For the first time, I left a DVA meeting/talk/seminar feeling that there was hope out there and there were men and women who could and would work together to find a way forward for their communities. It was only the first meeting.
I’d love to know your thoughts and feelings about this potential venture.
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Meet the author:
I’m an Author, Domestic Violence and Abuse Trainer and Certified Trauma Facilitator. I worked as a Probation Officer 15+ years and in Violence Against Women and Abuse for 25+ years.
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