We have seen too much abuse already

Mar 06, 2014 Editorial

Violence has been with us for as long as there have been unions between a man and a woman. However, in poor countries such as ours, violence seems to be very prevalent.
Scarcely a day goes by without one reading about some man doing something drastic against his spouse, more often than not fatal.
At this moment, the criminal justice system has a number of men awaiting trial for some serious abuse against their spouses; some have killed them, while others have maimed them.
People are offering many reasons for spousal abuse and domestic violence. Some attribute it to the perpetrator growing up in a home in which there was domestic violence. The analysts conclude that the man growing up in such homes believes that such violence is the norm, so that when he takes a spouse he re-enacts what he saw in his home growing up.
These analysts also conclude that because the woman is considered the weaker sex, she turns her attention to the children, and the cycle continues ad infinitum.
However, there is another school of thought that men strike women out of frustration with situations outside the home. For this reason, there have been seminars aimed at getting managers to treat employees in a certain manner so as to minimize the extent of anger that their employees would take outside the work place.
What we do know is that there is a correlation between alcohol abuse and spousal abuse. Some men go home under the influence of alcohol and seek to impose their will in a rather violent way.
Others, who for some reason feel that they have been wrongfully spurned, oftentimes behave uncontrollably, as later related by reluctant neighbours.
In some countries, there are laws designed to deal harshly with people who indulge in spousal abuse. In the United States, for example, the police have the power to separate the partner, often asking the male to leave the home. This is generally done when tempers flare and there is harsh language.
The situation changes when fists fly and one party or the other bears the marks to show for the confrontation.
In Guyana, the police are often unwilling to intervene in domestic disputes for a variety of reasons.
This might have had its precedence in the fact that, quite often, when there was a prosecution, the spouse would decline to lead evidence against the abuser. Somewhere along the way the police simply gave up trying to force prosecution. And even when the police managed to get the matter to the courts, the spouse would have second thoughts and the prosecution would collapse.
Today, our women are dying senselessly, and there have been concerted efforts to stamp out domestic abuse and domestic violence. More and more women are coming to realise that they need not stay in a home and be abused. They are reporting instances of abuse and leading prosecutions.
They have thrown out of the door the tradition that marriage is for keeps —for better or for worse.
They are becoming less forgiving. No longer are the majority prepared to sit and wait for the husband to change his wicked ways.
And indeed, that was often the case. A husband would strike a wife then apologise profusely and promise not to strike her again. But he often does, the violence increasing in intensity with each beating.
Poverty has also contributed to the incidence of domestic violence. Many a woman would lose her temper with a man who leaves her to fend almost single-handedly for herself and the household. For her anger she would get a beating.
She would sustain the beating, even justifying it in one way or another. Some would say that if they leave the abusive situation they would have nowhere to go. The truth is that they are afraid of leaving one situation for worse, often choosing to stay, to their own detriment.
We have seen too much abuse already, and the time is nigh for there to be an end.

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