Moves to help battered wives

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33857, 31 May 1975, Page 6

Moves to help battered wives

By

LAURENCE MARKS

of the Observer Foreign News Service.)

About 1 per cent of husbands in Britain beat their wives, according to social researchers. But a wife who runs away to escape repeated assaults may become homeless and have her children placed in institutions.

A bill to give her the legal right to possession of the family home if her husband is convicted of assaulting her is being promoted by a British Labour member of Parliament, Mr J. Ashley. Mrs Barbara Castle has recently set up a Parliamentary select committee to study the problem of battered wives in Britain.

Most violence is inflicted on people in their own homes in daylight by people they know, yet this 'act produces far less public alarm, far fewer sensational newspaper headlines than teenage mugging. As an American sociologist has put it: “The safest place statistically a human can be today is on

the street after dark with a stranger”.

The response to revela-; ; tions about men attacking their wives with hammers, red-hot branding irons and [broken bottles has been mild | compared with the outcry ! over hooliganism by football [ spectators. ! Mrs Castle. remarked i recently: “I first became aware of the problem when| [a woman in my constituency I was beaten up by her hus- ! band, then woke up in the; [middle of the night to fefel ; something cold being poured' all over her. It was petrol,’ land he was intending to set i her alight.” i Ignorance and implicit I social acceptance are part of .| the problem. Although the) I law does not discriminate i [ between domestic and other ■ assaults, the police are wary of bringing wife-battering cases to court. An Englishman’s home is his castle, and the law is reluctant to cross the drawbridge. Husbands are much less likely [to be prosecuted than others; who commit persistent as-1 saults. Social security rules make it difficult for the fugitive wife to claim financial; assistance when she has no ifixed address. Social services'; i departments' may refuse to! find her a home because they regard her as having Heft her own voluntarily. She may be terrified of: her husband taking leprisals: ! against herself or her child[ren. The pressures on her are to suffer in silence. Citizens Advice Bureaux (neighbourhood information | centres) receive 25,000 inquiries a year from battered wives. About 20 sanctuaries

have been set up to provide; accommodation, as well as medical, social and legal help, in the past three years. The word 'battering" has been borrowed by social workers concerned with the! problem from the “battered baby syndrome." a phrase coined a decade ago by Dr Henry Kempe, who was then, desperately .tying to alert an unbelieving public to the fact that parents sometimes severely assault their children. A wife-bat erer has a "good chance of being a heavy drinker, of having been spoilt in childhood, of having witnessed violence in his own family while growing up. or of being the son of a broken marriage— and, as a consequence, of having a “low frustration-threshold." Money, rather than sex. is usually the precipitating fac-! tor. three-quarters of the> wives interviewed in one

survey said they had good sexual relationships with 1 their husbands. The same percentage said that they had quarrelled about money. A research project at the i pioneering Women's Aid Centre in the West London, suburb of Chiswick has re-: jected the idea that maso .chism —the syndrome of the subconsciously willing victim ■ — could be an ex-, planation. But another study! has found that the sympathetic girl with a desire to; be a helpful partner is high- [ ly vulnerable and risks! becoming an “aggression-! provoking wife.” A psychiatrist has said that a husband’s frustration! and anger at his inability to! find or sustain a loving rela-, tionship with his wife is a [ very much more common: cause of battering than the! sadistic enjoyment of) inflicting pain, which is rare! in these cases. 1

According to a report on, 23 men remanded in custody for seriously assaulting their, wives, more than half were suffering from psychiatric) disorders at the time. In; three-quarters of the cases there had been a warning of the assault. The writers of the report 'identified five types: The dependent, passive husI band who spends his [ time trying to pacify.a querulous. demanding ' ’ wife, leading to an explosion, 'The dominating husband who will brook no in-: [ subordination — the at-’ ! tack being triggered by' a trivial matter: [The husband who is unduly: i distrustful of his wife’s: ' fidelity, but nevertheless' I so dependent oh her. j that he cannot leave her i — a conflict that gradu-

ally builds up to a state of intolerable tension. The stable and affectionate husband who suddenly explodes as a consequence of mental disturbance; The bullying husband whose battering of his wife is the culmination of a long sequence of violent episodes. , It may be difficult to persuade men to co-operate in 'receiving psychiatric treatment. Since there is nothing to stop them from acquiring and maltreating one partner I after another, the need to help the men is as vita! in the long run as the need to provide a refuge for the [wife is in the short run. : There is one sign of hope Last year, several husbands ! formed an Association of Wife-Bashers to provide 'self-help.