[Dryerase] The Alarm!--DV: Intricacies of DV

[The Alarm!Newswire]

The intricacies of domestic violence

By Halie Johnson
The Alarm! Newspaper

Author’s note: to protect the safety and anonymity of some of the 
domestic violence survivors I interview I have used pseudonyms where 
there is an asterisk.

“We live in a world where violence is seen as okay in intimate 
relationships. Our biggest challenge is the status quo,” said Jennifer 
Rose, Director of Domestic Violence Services at the Walnut Avenue 
Women’s Center. “I think we run up against statistics.”  Rose works 
with women and children who may have witnessed or experienced this 
abuse.

Celia Organista of Women’s Crisis Support/Defensa de Mujeres feels that 
in some ways the statistics help dispel popular misconceptions about 
who is a batterer and who is battered. “The demographics of who we 
serve are parallel to the demographics of the community we’re based 
in,” she said she and others working around domestic violence (DV) 
prevention strive to teach the public that an individual’s or a 
couple’s economic status and race do not increase the likelihood of 
violence in their relationships. However, there is one factor that does 
appear to be a large factor in violent relationships: gender.

According to US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the US 
Department of Health and Services 85% of reported DV victims are women, 
so most of the organizations that work around this issue assume the 
victim is female. The three local agencies that work the most with DV 
deal almost exclusively with female victims, Rose explained that 
working with male victims (other than adolescents and children) may 
jeopardize their clients’ sense of security. For abused women, just 
having men around can be traumatic.

In 2000, local law enforcement in Santa Cruz County received 1,374 
calls for assistance in “domestic disputes” and listed 1,213 cases of 
family violence where a weapon was involved [Source: Santa Cruz County 
Community Assessment Project, 2001].

Violence in Intimate Relationships
A local woman, Colleen,* was battered by her husband to the point that 
he crippled her. “When we got married everything changed within weeks. 
I wasn’t allowed to talk to anybody who was a female, and eventually no 
one at all. I couldn’t listen to music, I couldn’t open the curtains. I 
wasn’t allowed to work.”  Colleen now has a restraining order against 
her ex, and said that every day she feels closer to leading a normal 
life, but still receives death threats from him.

“People in the community are just horrified by the idea,” another 
community member, Claudia,* said about living with DV. “They can’t help 
but try to rationalize what has happened by trying to figure out how 
it’s your fault. I won’t take any small bit of responsibility for his 
violence.” Claudia left her husband, the father of her son, after 
several years of abuse, counseling, compromise, treatment programs, 
forgiveness and more abuse.

DV is multi-faceted. There is more to the violence than what lies at 
the surface—the bruises, the rage, the appearance of helplessness. The 
physical evidence is only one small part of violence. Violence in an 
intimate relationship is about control and power more than anything 
else, as any victims’ advocate will explain.

Most batterers weave their way into the violence and domination through 
a subtle process that includes intimidation, isolation, insult and 
economic/decision-making control that leads to physical and/or sexual 
abuse. “It was at the point where I’d literally say, ‘tell me what you 
want me to do to make you happy,’ and I’d do it. If he wanted sex, I’d 
let him do it, just to keep him from getting angry,” explained Claudia. 
  Cat Ring of the local Battered Women’s Task Force explained, 
“Batterers are extremely manipulative. They’re as nice as they need to 
be to keep you from leaving, and as mean as they can be without losing 
you.”

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