Here in the UK, the Sentencing Guidelines Committee (SGC) has given new advice to judges that ‘repentant domestic violence’ could get a community order or suspended sentence.
It seems the SGC has been listening to a confusing account of “Supernanny”, instead of considering the realities of domestic violence. I say an ‘illegible’ account, because the structure of “Supernanny” is this:
Offenders are given a clear understanding of what is and is not acceptable behavior
Offenders are isolated and punished.
Offenders apologize for their behavior and are ‘rehabilitated’ into the family
And then, of course, there’s the fact that they’re tiny children, under the age of 10.
The SGC advice seems to suggest that:
a) the offender cannot be presumed to have fully understood that domestic violence is not acceptable behavior
good ba, sincere apology is appropriate.
Suitable for whom?
Is there any reason to assume that criminals live on planet Zog and therefore don’t know that domestic violence is a crime? Or is it just that these criminals are one step ahead of the rest of us? Do you know what we don’t know, that society would rather treat domestic violence as a ‘wrong’ than the brutal crime that it is?
More questions arise with the SGC advice: who determines if remorse is genuine? How do they arrive at your opinion? And, crucially, does it really matter?
There is a diagram that is often used in domestic violence education. It’s called The Circle of Violence. (You can find the diagram at [http://www.joyfulcoaching.com/images/violence.jpg] ) Represents the circle around which any abuser travels. Like any circle, you can go up and down wherever you want. But suppose it starts at the outburst, the point at which one of the partners, even more commonly the man, lashes out.
After the adrenaline rush of the outburst, the abuser feels great for a while. But then regret sets in; perhaps they have gone too far this time. So they’ll apologize, maybe even express genuine remorse, and play Mr. Nice Guy for a while, until they start to feel diminished by the consideration they feel they should show their partner.
Then the frustrations start to bubble up below the surface and they will go back to criticizing their partner. The old pattern of criticizing will appear again, becoming more and more frequent, until they have another outburst and then remorse.
According to statistics, the average woman in a violent relationship will go through 35 violent “outbursts” before she finally leaves. During that period of months or years, the abuser will eventually start going around the circle faster, and may eliminate Mr. Nice Guy’s apologies and routine. Or maybe not. That depends on the person.
But almost all of them have enough common sense to find justifications for their behavior and, of course, express how truly sorry they are for the harm they have caused, when they risk prosecution.
Why does that mean we must forgive them? Or if we forgive them, why not forgive the infamous moor killer Myra Hindley? True, it was a different offense. But, as she pointed out, she served her time, at least.
When a victim of domestic violence is willing to not press charges and give a relationship another chance, it does not necessarily prove that the perpetrator’s remorse is genuine and that the relationship will be transformed. All it conclusively proves is the triumph of hope over probability. The victim, who has been repeatedly told by her partner that no one else would ever want her, is so desperate to feel loved that she will continue to work on the relationship through thick and thin.
And then there is the consideration that if a violent partner, whom the victim has ever denounced, is released, the victim will never be safe. At any time, the perpetrators can revert to the violent and frightening behaviors of the past. Ironically, in a situation like this, accepting the perpetrator may be safer than exposing yourself to his wrath for being rejected.
In addition to the 2 deaths a week in the UK from domestic violence and endless beatings, most of which go unrecorded, there are also victim suicides, which don’t even get recorded as a domestic violence statistic.
The problem of domestic violence is enormous, and the long-term cost to society is probably incalculable. In that context, it’s easy to see how, in the UK, by all standards “sorry seems like the cheapest word”.
(C) 2006 Annie Kaszina