Nava_Motamedi

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

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Table of Contents : Dedication.............................................................Page 4 Foreword................................................................Page 6 Chapter 1- How it Began......................................Page 8 Chapter 2- What you’ve just experienced...........Page 14 Chapter 3- Why don’t they leave?........................Page 18 Conclusion.............................................................Page 22 Bibliography..........................................................Page 28

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DEDICATION

DEDICATION

I dedicate this to all the victims who have experienced violence and have lived in a violent home. This is for the people who have faced violence and gave in all their power to get away from it, the survivors.

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This is for t he students who didn’t know about the disasters happening behind closed doors and as a motivation to get out and help.

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FORWORD

try week, wai o t s i h g n i r u om d k. To me, it e theater ro a h e t p s n i d n n a w o c d i m Sitting

e speaker in me up to the h o T c . o e t m o r h e k o a g e sp to ing for the out her best just wanted b a I d d e n k a l a e t m i e t Sh of ierre-Dixon. was a waste P a d n ched on a re a u l o o t R e , h f s l e , s t r e e lkp. Y troduced h ence. She ta l ms growing u o a i e v r d c i r t i s e e h m t do friend and violence and ile subject, c g i a t r s f e m d o n d a h t g n e hrou ally importa bout how I’v a riend went t f g n t i s k e n b i h r t e h me ed about how It also got ered. It got t . t s a a h w s t e i r e y w r ca ms ent through re and how s how her drea w o f m e o b o r e c e n m e a l s o is c vi ts people in th seen domesti , t o n t still exis i r o t o r n e h r t o e h r w e h about it out whet r a e me thinking e r h u g t i ’ f n o o d t we wanted ore, because m y n violence. I a e u s s i not an today and is Bay Area. here in the

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Chapter 1:

How it began

Famous Pop singer beat up! On Sunday, February 8 2009, news reports flew in about the singer Rihanna, being brutally beaten by her boyfriend, famous R&B singer, Chris Brown. Social media flew the news out to everyone in society. Chris Brown lost most of his fans, while Rihanna was given sympathy. Today, in 2013, news has spread that they are back together again. Many people believe that she has made the wrong choice, but the victim herself believes that he is her soulmate. How do people react when they hear this story? Well, many people feel sorry for Rihanna, but not a lot of people understand her.

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Society often gets information through social media. When a famous icon sets out and does anything, millions of reports are brought in and we hear, listen, or read about it on a daily basis, because it has become a typical hobby in today’s society. When you do anything wrong, not a lot of people notice and, frankly, don’t care. But when a famous person does anything wrong or is a victim, the whole world gasps and puts it on blast. There is more attention and people suddenly care. Basically, what I am saying is that depending on who you are, word gets out and people start caring because of who the person is.

But what happens when the word doesn’t get out and how much worse it is? Nobody knows and nothing is done for people to know. One issue that is mostly hidden for the world, especially in the Bay Area, is domestic violence. It’s an issue because people think of the Bay Area as a classy area with educated and well manneredpeople. Domestic violence is the last thing they would hear. Well, it goes on. About 10,000 victims, mostly women, encounter violence either verbally and/or physically in the Bay Area in 2012. Programs such as Shelter Against Violent Environments (SAVE), located in Fremont, are made especially for these victims who suffer from this violence. We see the programs, but we don’t hear about the people in these programs. We don’t hear about the survivors in the Bay Area and this is because we believe it’s in their own business and their own problems that they got themselves into. In my opinion, living in the bay area, many peoples’ lives are a secret, and no one exactly knows what the other is going through. Yes, the bay area is a safe place, but we still have violence going on in households. Problem is, we think it doesn’t happen here. The word isn’t out and no one ever knows.

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You’re out walking around in the park with your boyfriend or girlfriend, who you’ve only been dating for a couple of months.

It’s a nice day out, the sun is bright, the sky is clear, and the grass is greener than ever. You couldn’t have pictured this day any better with the person you love. What gets even better is that you see your friends and their partners at the park too, so you go over and hang out with them; yet your partner seems hesitant, and as the sun is setting, and it’s time to head home. You leave, holding the hands of your love lightly. It has clearly been a good day. After five minutes, you reach their house. It’s raining and thunder shatter light all throughout the sky. The trees are dead and there are no noises. After parking your car, both of you get out of the car and walk towards the house. Yet this time, there is a distance between you two. As you follow along behind, you feel tense walking through the door. One thing you know about your partner is that they are a heavy drinker. After a couple of shots, you come to say, “I think you’ve had too much, maybe it’s time to go to bed.” They look up, sweat sweeping down from their forehead. There are changes; they’re starting to act different. Their fist clenched into a punching pose. Stumbling toward you, with their furious eyes; fire sparking in their pupils. You fear them now.

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Your mind and body weaker than ever; they push you to the ground and walk upstairs to their room and slam their door. You’ve just experienced domestic violence for the first time. Feel your heart beating ten times faster than normal. You can’t get over this fear. So what do you do? You think to yourself and blindedly make excuses, it’s probably a one time thing, maybe they had a bad day, or they didn’t notice what they were doing because they were too drunk. Yet, you’re still sitting all alone on the floor with a scratch mark on your shoulder for which they had pushed you with.

In this case, which of the following below would you respond to if you were a new victim encountering the first violence you’ve been in:

a. Run home and talk to someone b. Call the police c. Go home and come back later

You probably chose A or B; but most people that encounter violence for the first by a loved one would choose C. Not B, because they don’t want the person they love to go to jail; nor A, because you wouldn’t want them to get hurt either.

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For first encounters, all that the victims ask about is this most common question:“Why did they hit me?” Studies show that battering habits are due to “drinking, drugs, and/or they were victims of domestic violence growing up.” (Dixon) It’s known as a recurring cycle. When people don’t take action when they are abused, in the future, it would happen to them again or they would turn into the batterer. “If a man were to act violently towards another, it would be for power, if a woman were to act violently towards another, it would be for attention.”

(Baxter) There are many more reasons why people act violently, but do you believe that those two are a part of the reason?

“Up until the 1970s, domestic violence, especially violence against women, was dismissed by the criminal justice system as “a family matter.” The belief was that what a husband does to his wife is his private business”(current issues). Strange thing is, people today still believe that it is a private business, just as this couple step outside and encounter violence, it’s the victim who is looked down on. They claim it’s their lives and it’s not their problem and this is because if it opens behind closed doors, there’s nothing to do about it. More victims would come out more and ask for help only if they hear about asking for help and so Bay Area doesn’t believe that domestic violence is not an issue.

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Chapter 2:

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what you’ve just experienced

You’ve just experienced violence. Physical violence to be exact. The pushing and shoving even if it wasn’t intended, is still considered violence. Having the police involved would definitely get the batter arrested. About four years ago, I had witnessed a form of violence next to my hotel room. She was screaming and crying, begging him to let go and he was clinging onto her wrist, while I saw a hatred through his eyes. What was scary was that I actually knew the people, both the victim and batterer. I wouldn’t have expected the batterer to be my dad’s best friend.

He didn’t seem like the type to hit his wife because whenever we went over to their house, he would act so helpful and loving towards her. Though he was a pretty big guy and really had a sense of humor. Once I watched through closed doors, it opened my eyes to see how you can’t judge a person. Whether it’s a good judgment or bad judgment, especially if you’re blind enough to not see what is going on. I suppose anyone could be a batterer. Anyone can be a victim too. Both the victim and the batter need help and many batterers had been victims themselves and they bring it out on people to feel in control because of what happened to them in the past.

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Physical or verbal; they’re both known as violence. It is known that verbal is just as effective as physical violence. “Physical violence is the intentional use of physical force to cause bodily harm. Examples of physical violence include choking, hitting, shoving, punching, burning, or using a weapon against another person. It may also include denying one’s partner needed medical care, or forcing the partner to commit alcohol or drug abuse. Physical abuse includes homicide” (current issues). Physical, meaning they are being beat up, while verbal, meaning being beat up with hurtful words. Either way, you’re getting hurt and bruised, inside and out. It hurts everyone, whether you’re the victim, the batter, or the witness. It affects everyone, yet in the bay area, no one seems to notice. It’s still there. The victim could be your friend or someone really close to you. Yet, it’s invisible. If there wasn’t domestic violence in the Bay Area, then why are there still programs in Santa Clara, San Francisco, and even Palo Alto? Planned Parenthood surely brings it up. Even at schools; they bring in speakers who have encountered domestic violence in their lives and makes them talk to children because there still is domestic violence. People know it’s there, yet no one does anything about it.

It all happens behind closed doors, it’s true. But when you see bruises on the victims’ arms or if any of them are acting weird ever since their relationship, stop and think about it. They might be going through violence. Victims tend to feel isolated and try to be isolated and because of that, force themselves to remain in isolation.

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“Domestic violence crosses all socioeconomic and ethnic boundaries. According to the Department of Justice, 21 percent of crime in California is related to domestic violence. In the United States, a woman is physically abused by her husband every nine seconds. It is estimated that twelve million women will be abused by a current or former partner at some point in their lives�

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chapter

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why don’t they leave?

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If you were a victim of domestic violence, would you leave?

Of course you would, yet most victims don’t! Why do you think they don’t leave? Many people put victims down when they see that they don’t leave. But there are reasons! People stay for money; they need someone to care for them and support them financially. They think that the abuser is their soulmate; they fear they won’t find anyone because their partner always say “You won’t find anyone who would love you as much as I do”. They feel like a penny. Worthless. Or used like pencil shavings.

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Penelope Baxter is a mother. She has been a victim for domestic violence ever since the day of her marriage. Baxter states, “It is scarey being known as a victim because you feel weak; especially when people find out about it because you wouldn’t want to be treated differently and you just want to be someone else.” I asked her, that if she was so scared of being a victim why she doesn’t leave. Yet her response threw me off. I always thought if a woman wouldn’t leave it’s because of stupidity, thinking it’ll all end.

Yet her reason was, “I only stayed for Nikki. I didn’t want her to be apart from both parents that she needs the most. I love her so I stayed for her.” Is using the excuse of having a child the reason why she didn’t leave her husband? It broke my heart to see this lady struggle because she wanted her daughter to have a happy and easy life. She stayed with her husband because of her child. But what if she never had Nikki, would she have left? If a child is the heart of the family, the person that keeps everyone together; without them, would things fall apart? “Even if I never had Nikki, I wouldn’t be able to leave him. It has nothing to do with love or money. In our culture, it is wrong to leave your husband and should only be with one man in your life. I feel that if Nikki was never around, he wouldn’t have stopped beating” (Baxter). Basically, a child changes everything. But is it true? Has Mr. Baxter stopped beating? Is his wife too scared to tell the truth because she’ll think he found out? I don’t know whether or not to believe her.

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Today, victims might feel weak, but they have power. They have the power to go to the authorities and get them in jail.

They have the strenght to leave and never come back again. They have rehab programs to talk to people and gain help to get out of the relationship. What they need is someone to talk to, especially for batters, because they need techniques to bring their anger out, “Prevention of abuse requires long-term social changes in attitudes toward violence, gender roles, and the relationship of the family to other institutions. Research in the structure and function of the brain may help to develop more effective treatments for the aftereffects of abuse and possibly new approaches to help break the intergenerational cycle of abuse. At present, preventive measures include protective removal of children or elders from abusive households, legal penalties for abusive spouses and professionals, and education of the public about the nature and causes of abuse� (current issues). These programs are here to help the victims and to help batters to realize what the have done wrong. Let’s open our eyes and help the people in need and bring the word out that this issue can never be erased so easily.

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CONCLUSION

In conclusion, domestic violence is caused by alcohol use, some sort of medications altering the mood, drugs, and/or obsessive power control.

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The clock is ticking, victims s houldn’t wait around hoping that their partners would get better. You can only wait for so long until the situtation gets bigger and worse.

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Last step is to ask for help. Call the police or even your friends. People are here to hear you out and help you get rid of this torturous life. Doing so, you do a heroic action. You’ll your own hero.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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“Domestic Violence.” Current Issues: Macmillan Social Science Library. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints In Context.

Web. 25 Mar. 2013.

“Domestic Violence.” Personal interview. Rolando Pier-Dixon.

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“Domestic Violence.” Personal interview. Penelope Baxter. 23 Feb. 2013.

Violence in America. Ed. Ronald Gottesman and Richard Maxwell Brown. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1999. From U.S. History In Context.

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