Editor's note: October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. This is the second of four stories highlighting topics related to domestic violence education and prevention.
Domestic Violence Awareness has evolved in the last 25 years. For 25 years communities across the nation have used October to talk about prevention and attempt to dispel myths surrounding an issue that for too many years lived in the shadows.
And while so much work and progress has been done in the last three decades, there is still a problem.
In Iowa alone in 2011, nine people were killed as a result of domestic violence.
Women are still almost exclusively murdered by a man they know in incidents that involve a single victim and a single offender.
A new study – titled "When Men Murder Women" – by the Violence Policy Center, a national non-profit educational organization that conducts research and public education on violence in America, states that in 2010 there were 1,800 females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents.
For all homicides where the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 94 percent of female victims, 1,571 out of 1,669, were murdered by a male they knew. Sixteen times as many females were murdered by a male they knew – 1,571 victims – than were killed by male strangers – 98 victims.
The study also contained other insights into who is being abused and how:
- For victims who knew their offenders, 65 percent of female homicide victims were wives or intimate acquaintances of their killers.
- There were 313 women shot and killed by either their husband or intimate acquaintance during the course of an argument.
- Nationwide, for homicides in which the weapon could be determined, more female homicides were committed with firearms – 52 percent – than with any other weapon. Knives and other cutting instruments accounted for 20 percent of all female murders, bodily force 12 percent, and murder by blunt object seven percent.
And the same myths that persisted decades ago continue to linger, including blaming victims for the abuse they suffer.
The Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence has attempted to respond to five victim myths that continually arise.
- Is domestic violence caused by the victim's behavior or relationship problems?
Focusing on the victim's personality or behavior takes the focus off the perpetrator's responsibility for abuse. People can be in distressed relationships with difficult people without responding with violence. While some victims may have problems – substance abuse, poor communication skills, parenting difficulties – violence is not a reasonable, or a legal, response.
- Aren't victims of domestic violence poor and/or uneducated or belong to certain religious, ethnic or personality groups?
Victims of domestic violence are not a specific age, race, religion, economic status, educational level, or personality type. They may or may not have had low self-esteem before they were battered. They may or may not have witnessed domestic abuse when they were a child. They may or may not be survivors of childhood abuse or abuse in a previous relationship. There is no causal link between victim characteristics and the violence. Domestic violence is the result of the abuser's behaviors.
- Victims don't ever accept help, so what's the point of bringing it up?
Some of the victim's behaviors – such as her lack of confidence in her own abilities, her fear of the perpetrator – can be understood in light of the control the perpetrator has managed to enforce through isolating the victim. Fear of retaliation, depression, exhaustion, fear for the safety of their helpers, and a lack of real resources such as affordable housing, childcare, transportation, and health care, easily trap victims in the abusive relationship even if they would like to separate from their partner.
- Why don't victims of domestic violence just leave?
Many victims do leave, but it is not always that simple. The primary reason given by victims for staying with their abusers is fear of violence and the lack of real options to be safe with their children. This fear of violence is realistic. Research shows that domestic violence tends to escalate when victims leave their relationship.
- Are victims of domestic violence passive and unwilling to help themselves?
A victim uses many different strategies to cope with and resist abuse. Such strategies include: agreeing with the perpetrator's denial and minimization of the violence in public, accepting the perpetrator's promises that it will never happen again, saying that she "still loves him," being unwilling to terminate the relationship, and doing what is asked. These strategies may appear to be the result of passivity or submission, when in reality the victim has learned that these are sometimes successful temporary means of stopping the violence.
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