Blindfolded by White Ribbons

‘We can no longer remain silent about domestic violence!’ Surely you have heard that catchphrase recently? Indeed, it would be amazing if you had not, given that the exclamation is figuring even more frequently of late in public discourse than exhortations to fight climate change. Those who decline to speak up against domestic abuse are, at least for the moment, even lower and more loathsome in the reckoning of causes du jour than callous souls who torment Gaia with their light switches and automobile exhausts.

But just who, exactly, are these speechless sorts? It must be them again. You know the sort. If they’re not at the footy and booing Adam Goodes, they’re chasing their womenfolk around the backyard with iron bars and deadly intent. What a pity that the strong silent types are so devilishly attractive and so many silly, irresponsible women find them so.

Can’t you just imagine the effect this crusade must be having? Some tattooed bruiser is poised to take up  his sawn-off to murder the ex and their kids when a public-service ad comes on the telly. It might be the voice of Tanya Plibersek or a parade of sports heroes pledging that they will never, ever hit a woman — just in case viewers were labouring under the suspicion that they might. And that is going to change the thug’s mind. Fairies at the bottom of the garden are more credible.

Here’s a tip: The criminals who murder their partners aren’t interested, and never will be, in what sports stars, or even Dame Quentin Bryce, think of relations between the sexes. By all means, let’s put more money into Women’s Shelters and hire more counselors. And let’s get serious about taking thugs off the streets and keeping them behind bars, where they can’t beat their partners (or anyone else, for that matter).

The problem with the domestic violence publicity campaign is that it is ignoring half the demographic. What about, yes, more help for battered women, plus a dose of old-fashioned opprobrium for those who fail to protect their kids by remaining in relationships with grossly unsuitable partners. Or those who come-and-go, drawn by the mysterious bonds of perverse attachments. These are forces that women, once they’ve had children, are obliged to scrutinize and resist.  It’s all very well and good for po-faced sportswomen and politicians to lecture men about what might easiuly be taken as the presumed tendency among most men, if not all, to make violence their first recourse.

But where are the lectures delivered to women, the sound and obvious advice that it is not OK to date, marry or, God forbid, breed with thugs. We could expand this theme to the size of a billboard:

Had a kid with a thug or two?
Now what you gunna do?
Don’t hang around and cop a few
Child safety: It starts with you!

Before you rush to condemn the mocking tone, remember that this is the sort of drivel that substitutes for clear thinking. There is pathos of the ‘pathetic’ kind here. Just like physical aggression, of the sort that causes us outrage and a rush to condemnation, it’s not nearly good enough to be psychologically immobile, or overwhelmed by developmentally or behaviourally-reinforced feebleness if you’re being belted and you have a child.

Consider the transcript below, presented without comment. It is an excerpt from a Four Corners episode profiling Rosie Batty, whose son, Luke, was beaten to death with a cricket bat by her estranged husband, Greg.

ROSIE BATTY: Really, why-why can’t you rely on or ask someone to help you with those simple things that really make a big difference? So that’s what Greg’s good at. And he wanted to help. You know, and then there’s that… so you just start to… That, that boundary starts to flake away again and because you just need somebody to help you.
REPORTER GEOFF THOMPSON: But away from Rosie and Luke, Greg’s own life was falling apart. He had no job, no home and was living out of his car. One afternoon his car broke down.
ROSIE BATTY: And I said, “Look, if you want to sleep in Luke’s room, Luke can always come in, sleep with me tonight.”
And then he just flipped. “Is he sleeping in your bed?” And accusing me again of… just absolutely, you know, extreme reaction. And so I just said, “Just leave, Greg. Just get out. Just go. Now.” So he did.
GEOFF THOMPSON: But Greg returned through an unlocked door.
ROSIE BATTY: So that escalated in him chasing me around the house. I managed to have, I had the phone at some point and managed to ring 000 and say the address. And, um, Greg finally caught me, pulled me by my hair, pulled me round to the back of the couch, threw me on the ground and kicked me.

One of the risks of having someone like Rosie Batty as Australian of the Year is that her situation was so extreme that any chance of examining the role of women in the cover-up and maintenance of situations of domestic violence is silenced under the reflexive retort that it is “blaming the victim”. This characterization of domestic violence, pitting a child murderer against a lovely mum, lulls us into thinking there is no moral work to be done.  Characterizing domestic violence as good versus evil is the dumbing down of a complex problem. How then can we ever entertain the uncomfortable truth that it is sometimes important to “blame the victim”. It might make things worse for some, but if done in a more sophisticated way (‘non-blaming’, if you like) it might be an impetus for some women who are not friendless, penniless and hopeless to remove themselves and their kids from situations of domestic violence. Many do, of course.

Tragically, some can’t get away. The three women who, just last week, allegedly were killed by their partners couldn’t pull of their escapes. But not all families where violence of one sort or another is a sad fact of life have no friends and no extended families. Some, dear reader, do it because they expect no less.

In all of this distress about domestic violence, there has been not a peep from women’s groups about the dependent and ineffective women and mothers who take their children back, time and again, to situations of domestic violence. As a society we are too quick to explain away their psychopathology as so immutable and paralyzing that it relieves them of the responsibility to remove their children from harm. Or, even worse, finding another bruiser just like the first to keep the floggings coming. Often these women feel guilty about what happens to their children at the hands of their breeding partners. Some of that guilt is entirely undeserved. Some, sadly, is well deserved.

We don’t accept, as an excuse from bullies or violent men, that their upbringings were so appalling (as they often are) that they simply had no choice but to brutalize and terrorize their wives, partners and children. We accept that such backgrounds are a factor and possible explanation, but we grant no absolution on that basis. We don’t say of them: “It simply had to be this way because these poor men are completely unable to control the impulse to yell and push people around.” By the same yardstick, nor should we accept the psychological narratives of frightened and dependent women as excuses for inaction in the face of risk to the psychological or physical well-being of themselves and their children.

While it is certainly true that some situations are so dire, the choices so few and the victims at such grave risk, that help seems impossible, there are many others where, for the sake of the children, some poor souls simply need to do better.

In trying to do psychological work with adults who have been victims of sexual and/or physical abuse in childhood, it is not uncommon to see the patient who is, initially, preoccupied with feelings of revulsion and loathing towards the (usually male) perpetrator. Then, gradually, they discover to their horror (perhaps when they become parents themselves) another wicked truth, one they have not previously acknowledged: that their mothers must have known, or should have known, yet did nothing!

Forget predator priests and paedophile scoutmasters, of which we hear so much. They are out there,make no mistake, but the biggest criminal cover-up of sexual and physical abuse in Australia has been committed, in my clinical experience, by mothers.

Murray Walters is a Brisbane psychiatrist