Domestic Violence

I am pretty busy this week, preparing a special report on domestic violence for the Manchester Evening News, to tie in with White Ribbon Day this weekend.
It’s an issue I have looked at in the past but never fail to be shocked by, and it only takes a day of sitting in any magistrates’ court in the country to realise how prevalent it is. And those cases are the mere handful which made it to court.
Far more are retracted by the victim way before that point – although some refuse to go through with it at the very last moment – and then there are the statistics which show most people suffer 35 times in silence before even contacting police.
Listening to victim's stories, as I did yesterday, is heart-breaking. Figures can shock but it’s the personal tales of these people which I always find extremely moving.

Women are most at risk but are not the only ones to suffer abuse at the hand of a trusted partner. One in four females will go through it during their lifetime, as will one in four people from same-sex relationships and one in six men.
It may just be a woman’s nature, but many victims try to understand why their partner attacked them and seem to make excuses for them, at the early stages at least.
One woman I met - a year younger than me and with two primary school age children – felt the need to tell me that she was “no angel” herself and that he was the perfect partner when he was sober. And this is someone in recovery, who has escaped and seen the case through the courts.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe her former partner really is a big teddy bear underneath all that anger and aggression and perhaps he did make her feel like a princess, as she claimed.
But he also knocked seven shades of shit out of her on a regular basis. She was kicked, punched, head-butted and attacked with anything which happened to be at hand.
I saw the big hole in the door which he had smashed in a rage.
And I heard the council workmen installing a panic room in her bedroom – a solid metal door which can only be opened from the inside. Many of these attacks took place with her kids in the house, and several with them in the room.

Greater Manchester Police deal with more than 1,100 incidents of domestic violence every single month, and remember these are only the ones which end with a 999 phone call.
A Salford magistrate I spoke to is convinced that she is seeing more cases, and more serious injuries, than when she joined the bench almost 20 years ago. She wondered aloud whether the increased social acceptability of excessive alcohol consumption is partly to blame.
It certainly seems as though many abusers do turn into monsters when they have had a few. But isn’t that taking away responsibility from people from their own actions?
As someone with no personal or family experience of physical, financial or emotional abuse I, like most people, find it difficult to imagine what my reaction would be if it happened.
But if I’m honest I suppose I can probably understand why these women try to rationalise what is going on and keep giving their partners a chance, when they clearly don’t deserve it. But if someone’s apologetic enough and does treat you like a princess 95 per cent of the time, isn’t it natural to focus on the good times and put the bad ones to the back of your mind.