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Domestic violence is common - we just hide it well
- Anonymous Doctor (10 April 2007)
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Sh*t Happens
- Elizabeth Marsh (11 April 2007)
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Violence - physical or non-physical - is never right
- Charles Essex (16 April 2007)
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Anonymous Doctor, Doctor Hospital Specialty
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Thank you for this article, which must have taken a great deal of courage and honesty to write and submit. I note with interest your comment that you began to wonder about other victims of domestic violence following your own experience. I sincerely hope more people open their eyes to the phenomenon after reading your article. As the eldest child of an abusive mother, I was subjected to regular, severe beatings from as early as I can remember. I was always having to hide bruises and injuries - it became a way of life, as did drying my tears and putting on a smile when I walked into school each day. Excuses become easy to make up: Been kicked in the face and head? Fell out of a tree. Bleeding nose? Accident with a badminton racquet. Bruises in the shape of fingers over your arms? Fell down a step and mum tried to catch me. Fractured skull? Dived into the swimming pool at the shallow end. I remember attending A&E with a broken arm, and the doctor asking me whether my dad had been angry with me that day. I found it easy to reply 'no' since my father never hurt me - he merely stood and watched my mother beat me, then turned a blind eye. The last time my mother beat me up, I was 24 years old and working as an SHO in a large A&E department. It was embarrassing going to work with bruises and grazes over my face, neck and arms. One of the SRs took me aside and reminded me of our domestic violence policy. I wasn't expecting that, and I laughed, told him I couldn't be a victim of domestic violence since I didn't have a husband, and that I'd sustained my injuries falling out of a tree. He didn't believe me, but he said nothing more. Why did he say and do nothing more? Maybe he believed my story after all. Or maybe the concept of a junior doctor being beaten up by her middle-class mother was something he'd prefer to ignore. Perhaps he was respecting my privacy. I don't know. I just know that he's the only person - other than close friends - who ever broached the issue with me. I also note your recommendation that perpetrators of violence should seek help, and I can't stress this strongly enough. The people who inflict violence on their loved ones don't just inflict injuries on others, they suffer terrible pain and grief within themselves, each time they realise what they've done. Anyone who gets into such a situation needs and deserves all the help they can possibly get, in order to get their life back on track, and to re-gain the trust of those they have hurt. Competing interests: None declared |
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Elizabeth Marsh, Writer, Poet & Social Analyst DT4 9QU
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I too know what it is to be on the receiving end of abuse - physical, sexual and by definition, psychological, mental and emotional. However, I do not view abuse as described here in the same way as either the writer does, or the lady who responded. There are a number of reasons for this. Perhaps the most important one is that I was brought up with abuse in the same way that most other children may have been brought up with Action Man or the Cindy Doll. When abuse is a way of life, one becomes almost blase about it, which is not the same thing as saying that one remains unaffected, or impassive. There are so many books and articles written about abuse and its effects, and I question this: why are we as a nation (at least here in the West) so "weak" that we label everything that happens to us as abuse? This does not mean that genuine abuse does not occur, but our perspective has been radically and fundamentally altered over the past twenty years or so, so that "abuse" is as common as having a packet of crisps. If this is so, then something is seriously wrong with the national psyche. As one who has been abused, I am aware that when abuse occurs, it is rarely if ever as a result of the abusers actions alone - and there are perhaps an army of liberal thinkers and feminists who will wave self- righteous and self-indulgent fingers at this concept, spoken not as a perhaps but more as a fact. Abuse does not occur for no reason, generally speaking. Abuse takes place because those of us who are on the receiving end have often said, or done something to antagonise our abuser. To those who question this, I would ask them to consider that if someone lashes out, why are they doing so? Is it possible that we may have contributed to their actions in some way? When those who seek to lay all the blame at those who do the abusing, they completely overlook the fact that provocation is almost always a contributing factor. This does not mean that an innocent child is guilty of being deliberately provocative, only that they may be strong-willed, which may be a trigger to an abuser. When adult women are abused, all too often the story is offered as a means to elicit compassion, rarely is there ever any recognition that their own actions and behaviour may have antagonised - perhaps deliberately so - their abuser. Unfortunately, we live in an age where no -one is ever allowed to retaliate for anything and those who do are rarely ever allowed to state mitigating factors. In developing and encouraging a society of non-violence - in the sense that parents and all adults are banned from smacking children, what those who espouse these views do not consider is the impact of these policies. If, on the one hand, all children are supposedly free from being smacked, how can this be viewed as a mark of a tolerant society when on the other hand, gun crime and knife crime is rampant within society as never before? For the lady who wrote this piece - I don't doubt the reality of her experience - but I would respect her more for not feeling the need to remain anonymous. I would also question her own role in the abusive situation and ask if she can honestly say that she did not antagonise her abuser, goading him into a response. When letters such as this are made public, there is no acknowledgement of the basic differences between a man and a woman - women have hormones and men use their fists. Not all men use their fists, but some do and if women know this, then perhaps there should be more recognition of this fact, instead of feigning surprise when he decides to use them. Abuse takes on many forms - sadly, the term abuse is used with little consideration or restraint and is becoming a byword for the victim culture that too many academics and other liberal thinkers are trying to establish. For those who may wish to respond, especially the two people whose stories have already been published, please feel free to write to me should you wish to continue this debate. However, I believe it should remain private and not be something that the whole BMJ readership should be privy to. And to those liberal thinkers who try to convince the world otherwise, I would like to affirm that I am in a stable and loving relationship and have been married to a wonderful man for many years. Whilst throwbacks of abuse remain, I have gained insights that I otherwise would not have had and so am able to say with a degree of confidence that pain is temporal and it is one's handling of this that is the key to survival. Feeling sorry for oneself is natural but not very helpful. An honest appraisal and recognition that we are living in an imperfect world may sound a little trite but it is straightforward and refereshingly uncomplicated. lizziemarsh@aol.com Competing interests: None declared |
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Charles Essex, Consultant Neurodevelopmental Paediatrician Child Development Unit, Gulson Hospital, Coventry CV1 2HR
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Men who use violence and threats of violence towards women do so because they can. Women generally do not use violence on men because they can’t. So they use other things – words and actions. These do not leave scars or bruises. There is no blood; nothing to photograph; Social Service and Police Domestic Violence Teams would not respond. We see a macrocosm of this in the NHS. The NHS has a large female work force and a smaller male workforce who are predominantly doctors. Through unassertiveness, jealousy and frustration, the former bullies the latter by their behaviour. The biggest untold scandal in the NHS is the number of patents who are killed or harmed by unprofessional, vindictive and obstructive acts by staff who work eight hour shifts towards doctors who, despite the reduction in doctors’ hours, still often work much longer than other NHS staff. Each act is a straw on the camel’s back, making the doctor a bit more tired, a bit more careless and a care-less. An hour or day or week later a patient will be on the receiving end of that. Or the doctor’s family when he or she gets home. Most doctors could write volumes of their own or their colleagues’ experiences of this behaviour, and of the examples that NHS staff boast about inflicting on doctors. The shameful actions of these NHS staff harms patients, other staff and their families. Violence – whether actual, threatened or verbal – and bullying, whether in the home, the workplace or the street, are never right. It needs people to stand up and be counted, however unpopular it makes them and however it may affect the perpetrator’s reputation. Competing interests: None declared |
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