I don't know much about the causes of domestic violence, or the manner in which it is expressed, so this is interesting information.
But I can tell you that continued exposure to domestic violence was one of the reasons I chose to leave law enforcement and find a new career.
Domestics were the number one response call I ever had to deal with. And they were very often the same couple, over and over again. Although I did occasionally see women who abused men, most often it was men who abused women.
And this is the part that I can't explain, because I don't understand the psychology behind it, but I always make people mad when I tell them this - in my experience, it takes two to tango.
One to be the abuser, one to take the abuse.
It starts from the moment of contact. The police knock at the door (after getting a hang-up 911 call, or a neighbor or child calls, etc). Usually there is some hassle getting the door open, then it is flung open and we have to deal with two very upset and angry individuals, both screaming and carrying on, and often one or both very drunk or stoned or both. Sometimes the guy will have fled by the time we arrived, having figured out that the call was made - sometimes we find the wall phone in the street, where he threw it after ripping it out of the wall, etc.
But he'll come back, because he can't stand the thought of his wife or girlfriend talking to us without him there to scream his side of the story into our ears.
In some jurisdictions, the rule is that on domestic violence situations, somebody goes to jail that night. The city will prosecute if necessary - so even if the wife retracts or refuses to press charges, hubby goes bye-bye.
When the hand-irons go on, that's usually when the trouble starts. Wife gets upset, begs us not to take him, and when it become clear that he's going to the crossbar hotel for the night, she gets abusive with us, and sometimes violent.
Know who bails him out? She does. Or her mother. Often that night if she can.
And by that time, he's blubbering and crying about how sorry he is that he belted her a couple times, and promising on his momma's eternal soul that he won't ever do it again, and please forgive him and he'll gladly get treatment and stop drinking, blah, blah, blah.
We offer her a place at the local shelter - it's in a secret location, he won't be able to find her, and there are resources to help her get counseling, find an attorney, get a restraining order, help her with the kids, and so on. Think she'll take us up on it? No. And on the rare occasion that she does, she checks herself out the next day or so and returns, stopping only long enough to beg money off her relatives to bail his sorry *** out of jail.
In my experience, men who hit women will always hit women. There is no such thing as stopping. They will do it again and again and again. Sometimes, a woman will be beaten badly enough to actually leave, and some women won't stand for it and will leave the very first time it happens (and good for them). But if he does it with one woman, he'll do it with the next. And each one will have some knowledge of what happened to the last one, but she'll think he has changed, or that she can change him.
He hasn't, and she can't.
There will always be men who hit women. There will always be women who will put up with it. I don't understand it, and it's ugly and evil and bad. I don't blame the women who cannot seem to stop going back to or taking back the guy who hits them, but neither can I understand it.
