History in America Essay Example for Free

History in America Essay Domestic abuse has a long and harmful history in America. Generally it occurs when the man within the family seeks to maintain or create control over his wife or loved one through a variety of motives which in the end, are counterproductive and which usually further the distance between the victim and the perpetrator which had already existed in the beginning and which contributed to the start of the abuse. What is starting to gain some light in recent years is the fact that men sometimes can be the victims of intimate partner abuse, both from homosexual and heterosexual relationships and which can be very damaging to the relationship in both cases. Abuse can be divided into physical, emotional, economic and spiritual. (Cook, 2003 pg. 13) All four can and often times do, place irreversible damage on the victim which if they are to ever recover from the abuse, can often times takes years and sometimes decades to recover. Others will never fully recover and in carrying that hurt, such abuse serves as a severe impediment to the victim ever carrying out successful and intimate relationships with future individuals. This is how intimate partner abuse can be so destructive. A black eye will completely heal in the matter of a couple of weeks at the most. However, a bruised psyche and emotional hurt can often times linger when there seems to be no outside effects on the victim. Only when that victim engages in a intimate relationship with an outside party will such hurt often times come to the surface and can sometimes completely negate the ability of the couple to continue in a successful and loving relationship as the victim may be forever scarred as a result of the previous abuse. Further understanding of the causes of domestic violence and the ways in which it can be dealt with and even prevented is so very important to not only the victim and his or her loved ones, but also their future relationships and also, the perpetrator himself. In doing this, the individual can better identify the reasons why he acts out in such a fashion and in doing so, it becomes that much more likely for the motivation to be identified and then corrected in one way or another. In the end, domestic violence can take on many forms and each case of intimate partner abuse can be the result of a single motivating factor or the combination of various factors and all to varying degrees. Domestic violence will not be disappearing anytime soon from our society but in the recognition of the causes and lasting and damaging effects of such abuse, one may be better educated and prepared to identify it and stop it from ever occurring. In first attempting to understand family violence, one must first define it. There are four major categories which are to be included when talking about family violence and the dangers that it imposes on the victims involved. The first and most obvious is physical violence. This constitutes unwanted physical contact which can also include rape and murder. It can also include indirect physical violence as for example, the throwing of objects from one person or another with the intent of committing injury on the receiver of the object. The second major category of family violence is mental or emotional violence. This constitutes verbal threats of physical violence to the victim, his or her children, animals or the use of possessions of any kind. Verbal threats also do not have an exact time frame associated to it as the threat of physical violence can be impending or is relegated to some inexact time in the future. Facial expressions or threatening body postures can also constitute an example of emotional or mental violence. The third is economic or social abuse. This is where one member of the family controls the other’s money in such a stringent sense that the victim is under strict economic dependence upon the perpetrator to a degree that a sense of empowerment is concluded and usually is the chief motivating factor. Social abuse is when the social life of the victim is dependent completely upon the perpetrator as he or she dictates who, the victim will see and how often. The victim usually suffers from a decrease in the number of friends in comparison to the time when the victim was not under the control of the perpetrator. Lastly, the fourth most common form of family violence or abuse is spiritual abuse. This is the prevention of the victim’s spiritual faith to be practiced in the home. This can also constitute a repeated harassment of the victim’s faith and personal beliefs to the point of ridicule. This also takes a toll on the victim but is one that has not received the same amount of coverage from violence prevention groups and therefore, there is less known as the repetitive of the violence as well as its direct effects upon the victim. All forms of family violence is harmful to the individual but the one that is the most common as well as the most dangerous is physical violence within the home. Often times, this relates to sexual violence. â€Å"Sexual violence is defined as the use of physical force to compel an individual to participate in a sexual act which is against the will of both people involved. † (Cook, 2003 pg. 23) When one of the participating parties is forced into the sexual act, this is an example of sexual violence. Also, the sexual advances upon somebody who is unwilling to refuse the advances, whether that be a result of the victim being intoxicated or his or her mental or physical disability preventing the victim from refusing. This is an example of sexual violence as well. It is a sad fact but one that is well established despite men’s reluctance to report as being victims of both sexual and physical abuse by their partners, it is much more common for men to be the perpetrators than women. One of the impediments to achieving an exact study on this problem is the fact that many men will not report such cases to the police out of fear of embarrassment as well as the police or their loved ones from taking the incident seriously. It is estimated that as many as 70% of all abuses of women towards men goes unreported. (Cook, 2003 pg. 118) This reluctance speaks to the misunderstanding of society as to the importance that the recognition of female abuse towards men. Mental and emotional violence which has a direct and negative effect upon the psychological make up of the individual is one of the four main categories of family violence. One aspect of this is when a threat is made from one person to another which promises bodily harm in the immediate future as well as an indeterminate time in the future. However, this is only one aspect of the psychological violence which occurs most often within the home. Harmful and repeated words of aggression or an attempt to bring down the family member with repeal hostile words or gestures in an attempt to maintain the supposed authority of one individual over another. A threat of a physical injury only constitutes a percentage of the abuse which can fall under the category of psychological abuse. This abuse is basically any intentional verbal assault which is designed to maintain the believed authority of one person over another. â€Å"When it is perceived that the victim is slipping away from the authority of his or her perpetrator, the abuse will often times intensify. † (Jones 2001 pg. 14) This feeling of a loss of power will only increase the abuse so when a victim feels as though the abuse will stop or is coming to a stop, often times, it is simply the calm before the storm as a more intensified version of the abuse is to soon follow. Psychological abuse can also use the children as weapons as the parents are seeking a divorce and the custody of the children is at stake. One parent will use the child to alienate the parent and to make the other feel as though he or she is powerless in their child’s life and that the authority, influence and love which the parent has present in the child’s life, is no longer valid and will soon be completely erased. These are very powerful feelings which often times can evoke a powerful response. In a very sad case in Hazel Crest, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago in the fall of 2006, John Jacobs, a forty one year old man in the middle of a bitter custody battle with his wife over his only child, an eight year old girl, the man, an avid pilot, piloted his plane along with his daughter inside and purposely, flew his plane into his ex wife’s house, killing both him and his eight year old daughter. The mother was not home at the time of the incident. The suicide note that the man left for his friends, and the testimony of those who knew the family was able to substantiate his story; that his wife was daily threatening him with their daughter and the possibility that she would never see her father again. Before killing both himself and his only daughter, Mr. Jacobs stated in his ransom note: â€Å"Julie, ( his wife) you have done everything in your power to try to take my daughter away from me. That is not right and I feel compelled to do the only thing that I have any power over. For your efforts, I will now take the daughter away from you forever. † (Pearson, 2003 pg. C3) This of course, was not a justified reaction to the parental alimentation which the mother reportedly used as a weapon against his ex husband. Hurt feelings were at a premium and when the child is used as a weapon, parents often times, do not possess all of their rational faculties. This was one very sad and tragic example of what can happen when the emotional abuse of one person over another reaches its zenith and the victim will often times become the aggressor in response as he or she feels completely helpless by the abuse and now seeks to eliminate the gap in power between the victim and the perpetrator which had existed. † (Roberts 2002 pg. 114) Often times in such cases, the courts are dragged in to take sides and in the process, usually will contribute the parental alienation as well. Economic abuse is when one person, usually a spouse, has complete control over the finances of the family and over the other person. This goes beyond the responsible actions of one who seeks to place his or her family on a budget and adheres to the strict restrictions himself, as well as what he imposes upon the other members of the family. Economic abuse occurs when there is an unnecessary and very fiscally stringent limitations placed upon the other’s spending habits while at the same time, not following the advice of his own actions. This is designed, not for the sake of fiscal responsibility but in order to create a dominion over the other in the form of financial power. If one does not have the economic freedom to act in accordance with his or her own financial earning power, then the person who controls that money, also controls the person who earns it. When one speaks of family violence and abuse, economic abuse often times is forgotten as physical abuse monopolizes the conversation. However, over time, economic abuse can be just as effective in the pursuit of one person to create or maintain control over another. This is true because â€Å"at the center of all abuse, whether it be physical, emotional or economic, there exists the desire of one person to create or maintain their control over another person† (Roberts 2002 pg. 200) Now that the various types of abuse has been defined, it now behooves the reader to realize the various facts which are associated with domestic violence. However, one must realize that by its very nature, domestic violence in all of its various forms, will usually remain underreported. However, these are some of the established and published statistics which are available to the public. In 2001, there occurred in the United States, 588,420 incidents of intimate partner violence (FBI 2004 pg. 15) Those incidents cost the United States between three and five billion dollars on medical expenses and an additional 90 million dollars is lost to businesses as the victims of domestic violence are therefore compelled to miss work out of a medical necessity or from the embarrassment that often times is associated with being a victim of intimate partner abuse. In the United States, 35% of violent crimes against women, occurred as a result of their intimate partner’s abuse within the home in 2003. ( FBI 2004 pg. 117) This is a stark comparison to the fact than less than 3$ of violence towards men occur as a result of their intimate partner as well. This latter figure and the fact that our society does not take seriously the occurrence of violence towards males, the reported 3% is only a ballpark estimate and there is no way of knowing exactly what percentage of men are being victimized by their intimate partner within the home. 23% of men of men who live with their homosexual partner, experience physical violence. 3. 2 million men experience â€Å"minor† abuse such as pushing, shoving and slapping from their intimidate partner. Nearly ? a million men are stalked annually and it has been reported that at least 22% of men have experienced some form of physical, emotional or sexual abuse in their lifetime from an intimate partner during their lifetime. (Cook 2003 pg. 118) except for the above mentioned, there seems to be a shortage on the information about men as being the victims of abuse of various kinds. This will continue until the stigma is completely erased and men feel an absence of guilt and embarrassment from being the victims of such crimes. The embarrassment comes from the fact that society perceives men as being stronger than women and therefore, it is always possible to fend off the attacker. In this erroneous assumption, one believes that the only form of abuse is physical. If that were the case, then society would be correct a majority of the time as men usually are stronger than women but this does not exclude a woman from using a weapon of any kind in which to overcome the difference in physical strength. Over 70% of men who were victims of physical abuse by their wives or girlfriends, were used on them, some sort of object which was then used as a weapon. However, often times, abuse does not take the form of physical violence and as it was seen in the case of the Jacobs, emotional abuse can for some people be more damaging than any form of financial or physical abuse. A man who is torn down every day for not fulfilling the expectations of his wife or girlfriend, who is made to feel as though he is not good enough and undeserving of her, who feels inferior in comparison to not only her, but as a man himself, will likely react in a wide array of different ways in which he seeks to regain control of the power which he felt he once had or as he feels emasculated by the entire process, the man now seeks to gain any sort of dominance over the perpetrator and in the process often times, is transformed from the victim to the perpetrator and physical violence will many times follow. Also, when there first is psychological violence, physical violence will likely follow. As it was touched on previously, the causes of domestic violence revolves around the fact that the victim, either intentionally or unintentionally is challenging the power and control of the perpetrator who is committing these various forms of abuse upon the victim. The need to control their victims also surrounds feelings of lose self esteem and the belief in the inadequacy of the person and that through the control of the victim, the gap which exists in their self esteem can somehow be corrected. Also, the more that these efforts fail to fill that â€Å"gap within their self esteem, often times, the abuse will intensify. † (Cook, 2003 pg. 134) However, there are other causes of abuse and often times, it is the childhood environment in which the perpetrator was subject to and which predisposed him or her to abusing a loved one in the future. A man is six times more likely to abuse a loved one if he was abused himself. A man is seven times more likely to abuse his loved one if he came from a broken home where the parents got divorced after a prolonged period of fighting and four times more likely to lack the emotional capacity to abstain from any aspect of the various abuses, if the person came from a broken home in which only one parent had always been present. (Roberts, 2003 pg. 190) Also, if a boy grows up in a family where his father routinely mistreated his wife, then when that boy grows up to become a man, as the sociologists all say that individuals are products of their environment more than then biology, it can sometimes become a certainty that the boy will grow up to repeat what he had spent his life witnessing. † (Jones, 2001 pg. 113) Substance abuse, mental illness and a low self esteem are among some of the various motivating factors which are somewhat to blame for a perpetrator’s likelihood to commit violence towards an intimate partner. What can be agreed upon, is the fact that intimate partner abuse can be the result of one chief motivating factor or is the result of various factors and all to a varying degree. This is what contributes to the complexity of the problem and the fact that spousal abuse, in all of its various forms, will not be eradicated from the social scene any time soon. Another cause of spousal abuse comes from the ability or desire of the man to devalue the woman for a wide range of reasons. This relates to the overwhelming percentage of spousal abuse in which the woman is the victim of the aggressive and hurtful behavior of the man. This is called dehumanization or the reduction of the other person to the importance of nothing at all; less than an object. Something that id disposable and therefore can be replaced and is of little importance. Only when the perpetrator values the victim as not only a person, not only an individual but one that is of a great value and cannot be replaced will the occurrences of abuse either stop of be curtailed. † (Cook, 2003 pg. 210) This also speaks to the gender differences of abuse. This is certainly not always the case but men’s abuse is preceded by physical violence and women are more known for psychological violence. However, an important issue to recognize is the fact that often times, physical abuse so preceded by psychological abuse and as a result, hospital records report a higher percentage of females seeking treatment than men for spousal abuse. Another factor in the high rate of physical abuse of women in comparison to men is the idea that women, had a predisposition towards being the victims of violence. In Erin Pizzey’s controversial book on abuse of women, Prone to Violence, Pizzey who was the founder of a women’s shelter in England stated that some women had a predisposition towards being the victim of abuses since they were seeking out the â€Å"bad boys;† the ones who were known to act out against society and therefore had within them a sense of danger which some of the women would find exciting. In the same book, Pizzey stated that of the first 100 female victims of spousal abuse, 62 were in her opinion, more violent than the men that they were running away from. Her book does not state if she thought that these women were instead made to act out violently because of the experiences that were placed upon them by their abusing spouses. These findings, no doubt, were the cause of a controversial discussion as to what was the cause of spousal abuse. Nowhere did Ms. Pizzey blatantly state that it was the fault of the women for being abused as it is not the fault of women who enter a bar wearing provocative clothing and gets raped. What is similar is that women, according to Ms. Pizzey, possess the power to many times, prevent the abuse from occurring by responsible behavior. This is not to say that women are to blame for the abuse since there does not seem to be any legitimate cause for the abuse of anyone, regardless of their gender, age or relation to the perpetrator. What next must follow is that the law will become involved. This is done reluctantly as the judicial system wishes to stay out of such affairs. This changes however, when one or more of the many crimes which are associated with spousal abuse, are deemed to have occurred or is about to occur. This includes but is not limited to murder, manslaughter, rape, threats to kill, kidnapping, false imprisonment, obstruction of justice and criminal damage as well as harassment and blackmail. When the above mentioned is present with a spousal abuse case, often times it is designed to create or maintain control over another person or the overreaction that the victim had towards the abuse of the perpetrator. In any event, the initial presence of the abuse increases into more than just a private family dispute. Often times, the presence of police and the judicial system often times will compound the problem. In a recent issue of the television show COPS, an individual’s common law wife called the police as she has become the victim of physical abuse by her husband. The cops responded to the call and tried to talk rationally to the man. The presence of the cops enraged the man and as he was being tackled to the floor, yelled that he was going to kill his wife and that he would never forgive her for what SHE had done. The police stated over and over, once the man was subdued, that they had not intention of arresting the man, despite the fact that it was obvious that the man had caused physical harm to both their home and to the woman but she was not going to press charges, the man was not going to be arrested until he decided to assault the police. Not only was the feelings of the man hurt and he was now more enraged by what he perceived to be the incorrect actions of his wife, the court case which followed, only prolonged the negative feelings that the man had towards his wife. Also, both the family disturbance and the court trial that was to follow, occurred in front of their small child. It seems unlikely that all three people will walk away from this event totally unaffected. The negative effects may last for decades to come in all three individuals. This speaks volumes as to the lasting dangers that domestic violence has on those who are involved and those who witness it. In an ideal world, everyone would find that one person that they were meant to spend the rest of their lives together in heavenly bliss. This still occurs but those are the lucky ones. Nearly every one of the millions of couples which have gotten divorced in America, either one or both of the people involved, were victims of one form of abuse or another. This is one of the leading reasons why divorce so severely scars the parents as well as the children involved as such abuse does not disappear quickly. Therefore, it would behoove all those involved, to abstain from such abuse on others, especially their loved ones and in front of their children. This is easier said than done for most people but if those who have a disposition towards either being the victim or perpetrator of physical violence, can recognize both the causes and effects of this most dangerous and harmful abuse, they can therefore be given much more of a chance to avoid its pitfalls and to enjoy the happiness of a mutually loving relationship; free from physical, emotional, economic and spiritual abuse which plagues the happiness of millions of people in this country and around the world. WORKS CITED Cook. P (2003) Abused Men: The Hidden Side of Domestic Violence Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers Jones, A ( 2001 ) More Than Victims: Battered Women, the Syndrome Society, and the Law (Morality and Society Series Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pearson, D. Man and Daughter are Killed in Tragic Plane Crash. Chicago Tribune October 14, 2006 Roberts. A ( 2002) Handbook of Domestic Violence Intervention Strategies: Policies, Programs, and Legal Remedies New York: Oxford University Press Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the U. S. , 2004 (Uniform Crime Reports: Crime in the U. S. ) Federal Bureau of Investigation Washington D. C Government Printing Office