Behind closed doors: victims of domestic violence speak

The suspect now charged with the murder of the young Moldovan woman, identified only as Svetlana, has a long history of violent behaviour. Georges 'Jojo' Nuza has already served prison sentences for a number of offences, including the murder of a gardener in 1996, and in only March last year he was accused of assaulting and injuring Svetlana, who he met in 2009.

He was, as a result, under house arrest and wearing an electronic bracelet when the incident on the night of the 28th took place. In many ways, this is the hardest part of the tragedy to understand: that the victim went back to her attacker. That she returned, by her own will, to a situation that would ultimately take her life.

Not a one-off incident
For many people, Svetlana's behaviour may seem irrational, self-destructive perhaps, even suicidal. Sadly, however, the reality is that her story is not a unique one. "Often a woman who suffers violence at the hands of her husband or boyfriend will swing between 'I go, I stay'. On average these women will make five to seven round trips, leaving the marital home and returning," explains Corinne Peirone, president and founder of Séparation Info-Service, a Nice-based association dedicated to helping women separate from their partners. "Of course, it can happen that on one of the occasions they return, they will encounter a violent episode so severe that it kills them."

Terrifyingly, in France this happens, on average, two or three times a week; with one woman killed by her partner every two-and-a-half-days. In 2009, domestic violence was to blame for 140 female fatalities nationwide. And these are just the cases that make the newspapers: behind closed doors many more women are suffering abuse and violence in one form or another.

Facing a global issue
It is thought that at least one out of every three women around the world has been beaten, coerced into sex, or abused in her lifetime, normally at the hands of a person known to her, nearly always a male and commonly her partner, lover or husband. In the case of domestic violence, there is a pattern of abusive behaviours, which can be physical, sexual, psychological or economic, used by one partner against the other, often to gain, maintain, or regain power and control within their relationship.

Many of the cases Peirone sees involve spousal abuse. This can take a variety of forms, from psychological bullying and emotional manipulation to sexual violation or physical attack - kicking, slapping, biting, strangling and so on. These women are often afraid to walk out on their partners and feel trapped and helpless .

Stockholm Syndrome link
"There exists an emotional, physical and economical dependency, children may also be involved. It is hard for a woman to just leave. Although one must not generalise, with domestic violence there is, in addition, a tendency for the relationship to be based on fear and control. The women may also be suffering from a condition linked to Stockholm Syndrome [a paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express adulation and have positive feelings towards their captors], which is impossible to recover from without therapy."

Svetlana is a prime example of this kind of psychological condition: her boyfriend had been in prison for hitting her and, on his release, he was wearing an electronic bracelet preventing him from making physical contact with her. And what happened? She went to him. "So we have to imagine the internal state of these women, they are not only victims of the violence but also victims of a lack of personal resources to be strong enough to say, 'I will not go back.'"
If they tell their partner to 'stop' the abuse, if they can leave, cut all contact and attain a divorce, then the chances of a victim successfully escaping her abuser and starting afresh are good.

One woman’s story
The story of Audrey [not her real name] is a good case in point.

Married for 20 years with three young children, Audrey was beginning to grow increasingly uneasy about her domestic situation; although her husband had never hit her before, she started to feel as if it was a possibility.
"He was always authoritarian and wanted to be the head of the family in the proper sense. He worked hard and I gave up my job to look after our children. In 2006 we came south [to Nice] and that's when everything started to go wrong, he questioned me, undermined everything I did without me knowing why.

“He had a period of depression, and there was a problem with alcohol [both are commonly comorbid with abuse]. It felt as if the situation declined quickly, maybe there was one very difficult year. I was also a little isolated, because we had just moved here. When he got back from work I did not know if he would be in a good mood or a bad mood, if he would be upset with the children or with me and we were sometimes afraid when we saw him, and more and more I felt that it was wrong. He looked at me like I was the enemy and there was an atmosphere of violence. When I felt it was at me he turned his questioning towards, his aggressiveness, that the person at fault was always me, that's where I said this is starting to get dangerous."

It was at this stage that Audrey turned to Séparation Info-Service. Peirone's first advice was for her to open a bank account in her own name and to start saving money because one of the major factors that prevents a woman from leaving her partner is her financial dependence on them. In Audrey's case, her husband was the sole income provider, they had a joint bank account and he had control of her credit cards. Peirone immediately realised that this woman was being subjected to a moral and emotional violence and that there was a dangerous tension between her and her husband that could erupt; she gave Audrey her mobile phone number just in case.

"We had the children and I thought everything could still work without it becoming too painful. But it was getting more and more tense, I was living in fear and asking myself what would happen if he did something while at the same time believing he would not dare to. Then, as we talked one evening, things started to degenerate and suddenly it became very painful, violent and physical. On that evening I left."

At three minutes past midnight Peirone received a phone call. At the other end of the line she heard thuds and the screams and cries of a woman and children. After failing to re-contact Audrey, she called the police. When officers arrived at the scene, the victims were hiding in a back bedroom. It was the only room in the house with a lock. The mother and children were all trembling with fear.

That night Audrey was taken to hospital and the next day she filed an official complaint with the police, who accompanied her to the marital home to collect some basic personal effects. Peirone was by her side throughout.     
"Audrey was almost 10 pounds lighter," she remembers, "her speech was slurred in the police station because he had punched her in the jaw, she was very reduced and in an extremely poor physical state. Yet in her heart she was strong because she had been able to say, 'Stop'.

Importance of a nest egg
Having followed Peirone's financial advice, there was a little money saved to enable Audrey to put herself and her children up in a hotel for three weeks, until a judge had evicted her husband from the marital home and she could return. “For me, the process was quite quick, but even so I highly recommend women to have a nest egg. It makes the fall less severe."

Now divorced for two years, Audrey is under no doubt that it was easier for her to escape her marriage because of the support and assistance she received from the association. "They gave me the means, or at the very least an understanding, that I had to leave and that I had to do it straight away. After I had made the move to separate, Corinne facilitated all the connections between the various parties, the lawyers, social workers and so on. Having help with the paperwork was vital, because there are many forms to fill in, they can be complicated and if any are missing it slows the process down.”

While she feels indebted to the association for the help they gave her, she is adamant that she would have left anyway. "I don't know where I would be now, if I had not said 'no' on encountering the first act of violence, that's why I had to do something, even if I had been by myself. Yes I could be an example to other women I suppose," she nods. "I was afraid to leave at first but I also could not live in fear or put my children in danger. Certainly, it is not easy, there are many barriers to leaving and you must stay strong. Facing an unknown world, with unforeseeable changes, is horrible but the most horrible thing for me was to say I'm going back."

The cycle of abuse
"Audrey was very determined," Peirone emphasises "She found the physical abuse unacceptable and she really had the internal resources to say ‘enough’."

There are others who have a different psychological profile, however, who are very vulnerable and who will return to an abuser when he seeks her out. This is why it is so crucial for the victim to cut contact, to never answer a text message, return a phone call or respond to a letter or email. It is also why therapy plays such an important part in breaking the cycle of violence.

Peirone illustrates with one case she saw at the association. The young woman, Soraya, came to the office and confessed she was suffering from sexual abuse at the hands of her husband. He was also beating their two children on the soles of their feet and there was a very high level of mental and emotional distress.

They summoned the police, the man was placed in custody, a lawyer was brought in and Peirone assumed the couple was separated as she heard no more news. Then, seven weeks later, she passed the woman in the centre of Nice with her two children and her husband. "So you see how delicate it is?" she concludes. "That is why we must act extremely carefully working with these people and it is why we must treat each case individually. Yes, there is domestic violence, yes there are victims, yes there are authors but they are not all the same. There are the children too, of course, and they are the first victims, they are  helpless."

The knock-on effects of growing up under the shadow of domestic abuse can be catastrophic. Not only do children find individual incidents of aggression traumatising, not only do they live in fear for their safety and for a parent's, but they are also more likely to perpetuate the cycle of violence in the future.

Family history
"There is definitely a link between family history and those women who end up victims and those men who end up perpetrators," explains Peirone. "Often the victim's mother or grandmother will have suffered some form of abuse, then in one blood line of women a pattern emerges and they do not question what is happening to them. It's important to recognise this pattern within the family so we can prevent the daughters repeating the same mistakes. With the perpetrator it is similar. For example, there was one man who came to speak with me because he was  weighed down with guilt for slapping his wife. It turns out that no male relative in his family really played the role of father, they either died young or left or were dominated by their women. This man also confessed that, between the ages of 6 and 12, his father had beaten him for 10 to 15 minutes every other day. Can you imagine? He was a battered child and there is no coincidence that he, a man who has hit his wife, has a sad story too." To make it clear, women are not the only victims of domestic abuse and it is not at all uncommon for a man to be violently attacked by his female spouse. However, figures tell us that women are infinitely more likely to be seriously injured or killed in such situations.

Likewise on a global level, and in general, women and girls suffer disproportionately from violence, both in peace and in war, at the hands of the state, the community and the family. This problem crosses every social and economic class, every religion, race and ethnicity. From domestic abuse to sex as a weapon of war, violence against women is a gross violation of their human rights.

Take the tragic story of Svetlana again. As a former prostitute from an economically underdeveloped country, by the time of her death she had become stuck in a cycle of violence and abuse - physical, emotional, economic and sexual. The only role she knew how to play by then was that of the female victim.

How to stop the violence
Although this is a problem of epic proportions, it is considered preventable by many human rights and public health watchdogs. Yet sadly,  many people remain ignorant of the extent of the issue, especially within their own community. Most often, it is fellow women who take action and try to help.

Peirone is one such woman. She set up Séparation Info-Service in 2005 after separating from her own husband proved difficult. She now sees on average two new women a week; last year she conducted 235 interviews.

Thanks to her work, the future looks brighter for many women in the region, including Audrey. She has a job, her children are happy and doing well at school, they have found a balance. Even so, she will never lose the mental scars: “I can remember the night that I went to collect my things. As we got into the police van, I thought my husband might throw something out the window at us and I was trying to tell the policeman that he was very violent. Once we were in the truck the police officer turned around and said, ‘Madam. promise that you will never believe him.’ This policeman was adamant that I was not to return when my husband told me that he was not violent anymore. ‘You can never believe him,’ he said, ‘because you do not know for sure and the next time maybe it is the last time.’

Tearful, she pauses to compose herself then continues, “I have not returned. That is the message to convey.”          

    HM