With the headlines lately, there is a lot of focus on battered women and their families. It is unfortunate that a serious problem such as this cannot get the attention it needs until a celebrity is involved.
Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women between the ages of 15 and 44 in the United States, more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined. (“Violence Against Women, A Majority Staff Report,” Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 102nd Congress, October 1992, p.3.)
Battered Women and Their Families
Getting out of an abusive relationship is not as easy as you would think. Imagine for a moment that you were kidnapped and held for a year or more. You are isolated from your family, you’re not allowed to have friends and have no access to money. On top of that, your keeper is also beating on you and belittling you to the point where you feel you have lost all hope of escape.
Most abusive relationships don’t start out that way. When it suddenly turns sour, you may wonder what you did wrong. Maybe you’re embarrassed that you’ve stayed in the relationship so long. Battered women need to know there is help out there for them and their families. Help without judgement.
If you are being abused, remember:
- You are not to blame for being battered or mistreated.
- You are not the cause of your partner’s abusive behavior.
- You deserve to be treated with respect.
- You deserve a safe and happy life.
- Your children deserve a safe and happy life.
- You are not alone. There are people waiting to help.
Your abusive partner will not change, you cannot change your abuser, your partner will not keep promises to stop the abuse, and counseling is not a guarantee that your partner will change.
There are 1,500 shelters for battered women in the United States. There are 3,800 animal shelters. You can help change these numbers. Donate to your locale shelter.
For a safe place to stay, visit Womenslaw.org for a state-by-state directory of domestic violence shelters in the U.S.
The shelter should also be able to refer you to other services for abused and battered women in your community, including:
- Legal help
- Counseling
- Support groups
- Services for your children
- Employment programs
- Health-related services
- Educational opportunities
- Financial assistance
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
― Edmund Burke
Be sure to check for books on this topic listed here.
I wasn’t going to write about my own experience because even after four years away from my ex-husband, the pain is still so heavy. But after reading Judy’s story, I felt the need to.
I spent five years married to a control freak, honestly. He hurt me deeply emotionally and mentally, but never dared to lay a hand on me. He had to know where I was, what I was doing and who was with me. And that’s if it was one of the few occasions I was away from him. It was so bad at one point that I couldn’t leave the room for longer than a few minutes before he came looking for me. Even if I was in the bathroom, he found a way to unlock the door to see what I was doing.
He told me once that basically I had a terrible choice in friends and he was going to find me better ones. He didn’t like my friends because they stood up for me and he thought they were going to give me ideas, ones that would eventually get me to leave him I suppose. My new “friends” were also his friends so I was still under his thumb.
Any argument we had, he always threw something I supposedly said back in my face. Didn’t matter if I couldn’t remember saying it, he did and that was all that mattered. I eventually got to where I just gave up fighting, it seemed pointless. And I can’t count the number of times I was accused of cheating with a co-worker. He went so far as to say one day shortly after I found out I was pregnant with our last child, that he wanted a paternity test. He had no shame.
He brought me so far down, I was a shell of a person. Nothing mattered anymore, or at least it felt that way at times. When I finally had the guts and the nerve to tell him to leave, I was broken. I didn’t care anymore about life. I did what I had to do for my kids, but as for myself- I just didn’t care. It took me a year to come back from that hole. And I’ve been fighting for the survival of myself and my kids ever since. The last four years without him and struggling to find myself again have been the hardest and most rewarding that I have ever known. While what I went through was pure hell, I’ve experienced enough pain at his treatment to last a lifetime, I still wouldn’t go back and change anything. He gave me two beautiful girls, and the determination to fight back and learn more about myself. I’m not always happy about being myself, but I am forever proud to be able to be myself.
Thank you for sharing your story. Hopefully your experience may help another reader.
Good luck!
Simply fantastic! Now I can help my friends with information on how to help battered women!! Thanks for the website! I’m currently helping for SwagSeptember in Australia we need something to help victims of abuse!
Thank you. I feel battered women and their families are not given the attention they deserve and need.
Very heartbreaking story and very well written. It really hit home with me. I was one of the lucky ones. My husband committed suicide cause he no longer had control of the rest of us. I became very depressed one day cause the cycle kept happening. Another one of my kids were affected by our family violence cycle. My teenage daughter attempted suicide. She was in the psych ward when I started to become very depressed. Next I attempted suicide. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t know who I was anymore. I stopped eating when I was in the psych ward and wasn’t getting better. The doctors had determined that I could not return home for my mental well being. So I moved 700 miles away to my mothers house with my three daughters. Unfortunately, my husbands next move he died of carbon monoxide. He committed suicide. I returned home before I knew anything was wrong. Left him messages that I decided to come home. But I was too late. I found him in the garage and my daughters saw him on the garage,floor. Very rough time for all of us. In time we healed but to this day I can’t bear to talk about what really happened. My daughters think someone killed him. I regret everyday of what happened. He should have not lost his life. I did get married again and have a very peaceful marriage instead of being stuck in the violence cycle. I had Electronic convulsive therapy. Lost some of my memory. But I think losing that memory has helped me to go on with life. Angela you are doing a very good thing here. I would change everything in my life and the choices I made if I would have known the outcome of it.
I am so sorry for what you had to go through. I can’t even imagine the emotional pain you are dealing with. I am so glad you were able to fins someone to treat you right.
I can’t understand why anybody would batter a woman. Men who are guilty of this also batter them mentally and emotionally to the point where the woman feels worthless and couldn’t do better, or worse, doesn’t deserve better!
Nobody deserves to live that way. Ever!
Yes, I agree. I don’t understand how it ever would seem okay to someone to put their hands on someone else.
This is such an important subject. Thank you for taking it on.
I agree, it is very important and doesn’t get enough exposure.
One thing you can do as a friend or family member of an abused person, is to just be there. You don’t have to have the right words, or lots of money, or the ability to take it all away. Most just want someone who will not judge them for their inability to leave when you feel they should. It’s something they have to do, on their own. Otherwise, the cycle continues. They want someone to show them that they are, indeed, worthy of unconditional love still. To know that when the time does come, there is a place for them to go to. It’s easy to say they are always welcome in your home. It’s another thing to really feel it. It may be hard and painful for you to watch, but you have to remember how heartbreaking it will be to these women when they no longer have you around. They lose hope, and that is a very precious and rare trait to maintain during all the abuse.
Very good points. It is very important to let them know you are there and give them the information they need. Then you just wait, hope and pray they will be ready before it’s too late.