Trick your ex-wife away and hold her hostage. Beat your common-law wife until she has bruises and a concussion. Drive his wife and five children out of the house and move tenants into the house. There are hundreds of such cases across the republic, and most of them go unpunished, as we have already written about. Today Vox Populi offers to explore the sequence of steps that a woman needs to take when faced with violence.
Photo: Natalya Sludskaya, Timur Batyrshin, photo from open sources on the Internet
Took hostage by deception and kept him in the mountains
Kuralai (name changed) lived with her husband for 20 years, and all these years her husband beat her. Eventually they divorced, and Kuralai began to live with two daughters, 18 and 15 years old. The woman had already begun to get used to her new life without beatings, but one day her mother-in-law called her asking her to come visit and bring the girls she missed. The mother-in-law said: “Don’t worry, I’m an old man, I won’t do anything to you, everything will be fine.”
On March 8, Kuralai came to her mother-in-law for three holidays and disappeared with the girls for three months. Neither relatives nor neighbors had any idea where they had gone. In agreement with his mother-in-law, the husband came to her, actually took his ex-wife and children hostage, took her to a peasant farm in the mountains 80 kilometers from Chilik, took her mobile phones and forced her to live with him and work on the farm.
Only three months later, one of the girls managed to steal her father’s phone and call her relatives with a plea for help, and the relatives turned to the NeMolchi.KZ foundation.
Dina Tansari
For the leader of “NeMolchi.KZ” Dina Tansari, this story is an ordinary one, like hundreds. Dina called the police, and when a group of police arrived at the farm, they were greeted by a smiling Kuralai. The woman said: “Everything is fine with us, we have livestock, work, farming, we will stay here.” The police, confused, called Dina to clarify whether she was really sure that the woman needed help, because she did not look like a person who was beaten and oppressed.
Then Dina asked to call Kuralai on the phone and said: “I am the head of a foundation that protects women and children from violence, just move away from the police and answer me three questions.” When Kuralai heard a woman’s voice on the phone and realized that no one but her would hear the questions asked, she began to talk completely differently. And she answered all three questions: “Yes, my husband beats me,” “Yes, I am here not of my own free will,” “Yes, I want to leave here.” Having secured the support of the foundation, she took her daughters, got into the car and drove away, escaping from her rapist husband.
Later it turned out that her ex-husband intimidated Kuralai, told her that he had bought all the police officers, and if she complained to them, he would blow her head off. Why she herself did not take measures to get out of captivity and save herself and her daughters - she could not answer this question.
“When you are beaten for years, you lose your sense of self-preservation,” explains Dina Tansari. “You adapt, you no longer feel anything, neither moral pain nor physical pain, and most importantly, you don’t believe in any salvation. Therefore, there must be specialized units that can competently conduct such cases, understanding the specifics of such crimes. How to conduct an examination correctly, how to behave during interrogations, how to relieve the victim of guilt. Such units in other countries are proving to be very effective in their work.”
Misconception #4
A man hits a woman, but he really loves her
Here the situation is as follows: firstly, maybe he really loves, but does this mean that everything is allowed to him?! Love is understood differently by everyone. For the abuser, as a rule, this feeling is associated with a desire to control and dominate.
However, confusion often arises when vivid sensory manifestations are mistaken for true affection. Love, however, is more than ardent passion. It includes caring for the object of desire, and such care that does not run counter to the desires of the latter.
The desire, for example, to isolate your partner in order to protect her from the harmful influence of friends and relatives, is not very similar to a manifestation of love, at least because it can go against the woman’s desires and cause her pain.
One should separate love (the feeling that may live in the offender) and violence (how this feeling manifests itself). If a man beats a woman, then it is no longer so important whether he loves her or not. What matters is that he causes her suffering. The violence used is a fact that makes sense to resist, regardless of what other feelings may be behind it.
In fact, domestic violence against women is a topic shrouded in many myths, but these four misconceptions, in my opinion, most often prevent you from breaking off a relationship with your abuser.
So, to summarize: a woman may find it difficult to leave her rapist because she blames herself for what is happening to her (agrees with the accusations of others). As a result, he believes that by changing and “becoming better,” he will be able to convince his offender to stop (will satisfy him). She sacrifices herself (or bravely endures this test), believing that this is a benefit for her children.
All this, of course, may seem like good reasons, but they are wrong. Ultimately, only the rapist is responsible for what he does.
Here we do not take into account his own history of training in violence. Of course, he has his own, often objective, reasons for behaving this way - childhood traumas, an instilled belief in patriarchal power, etc. But this is not an excuse, because ultimately a person always has a choice: how to live through his traumas and how to implement the attitudes given in childhood.
Now that the myths are over, let's turn to the objective difficulties and dangers that are associated with breaking up an abusive relationship.
The fact of violence cannot be left unpunished
What specific steps should a woman take if she decides to file an application for her husband?
- If there is a fact of beating, you need to immediately contact the police. After this, you will have to go with the police to conduct an examination to record the beatings.
- If necessary, the police officer is required to issue a protective order; it prohibits the offender from approaching the victim for 30 days. Children are also subject to this regulation.
- If a woman calls the police for the first time, but is dealing with systematic beatings, this must be indicated in the statement.
- If she has previously gone to the hospital with a concussion or bruises, if she has witnesses - neighbors or relatives who know that she is regularly subjected to violence - this must also be written in the application. You must indicate the reason why you did not contact the police before - for example, you were afraid.
- If we are talking about systematic beatings, you definitely need to take out a protective order and go to the end. That is, until the trial. Whatever decision the court makes, it will be a decision, and the district police officer will be obliged to place the offender on administrative records. This means that he, as an offender, will be under supervision, and the district police officer will be obliged to control this family. Accordingly, the risk of subsequent beatings is still reduced.
- If a woman lives in her own home, she can demand that, in addition to the protective order, her husband (or ex-husband or cohabitant) be evicted. So far, according to the law, no one has the right to evict a husband who lives in his own home, and if it does not belong to him, the woman should put up a barrier from his visits.
Photo: Timur Batyrshin
- Based on the statement that the injured woman wrote to the police, she needs to contact the guardianship and trusteeship authorities. Because during a divorce, the question of dividing the children will definitely arise: rapists always manipulate children, this is their main tool of influence on the victim. Contacting the guardianship and trusteeship authorities will allow the victim to write a statement with a request to register her family, since children also suffer from domestic violence. If it comes to divorce, the woman will have documents in her hands that she has repeatedly contacted the police and the same number of times to guardianship. Documents that testify to this will help her get rid of fears that her husband will sue her children.
- If the husband violated the protective order, he must again go to the police and file a complaint with the court. Then the court will have to make a ruling “On special requirements”. They are a little stricter than a protective order: this document is issued for a period of three months, sometimes up to six months. If a man uses aggression precisely when drinking alcohol, this should also be reported to the police. And then, by the decree “On Special Requirements,” the rapist will be prohibited from drinking alcohol, and violation of this requirement will threaten him with arrest for several days.
- If a woman has been beaten several times - for example, three or four times in a year - then she can demand that the police open a case under Article 110 (torture). This also applies to pregnant women: even if a husband beat his wife for the first time, but knew that she was pregnant, he immediately faces Article 110, Part Two - criminal liability for up to 7 years. That is, a woman needs to know that regular beatings are no longer an administrative article, but a criminal one!
- If, after the beating, a woman was admitted or went to the hospital with external injuries or injuries to internal organs, all extracts and treatment protocols must be preserved. If patience runs out and a woman wants to go to court with a complaint of torture, these documents will help her prove the facts of violence. All of them will be included in the case, and each such paper is another argument against the rapist, so they must be accumulated.
“It’s scary to say the word “accumulate,” admits Dina. “But most often, domestic violence occurs through the method of accumulation. Analyzing the woman’s first request for help, we begin to uncover the past: it turns out that she was already in the hospital, more than once, and everyone turned a blind eye to it.
We constantly raise the issue that statistics should be kept not only in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but also in the Ministry of Health. If doctors keep statistics on beatings, are required to declare that a battered woman has come to them or contacted them on her own, and register her, we will have a complete picture of how many women and how often they are subjected to domestic violence.
By the way, in our country now a concussion is classified as a minor beating, a broken arm can also be classified as a minor one, and this helps the rapist evade responsibility.
Misconception #2
Domestic violence against women will stop if they become better (more affectionate, more skillful, more beautiful, sexier, etc.)
Violence is not just an action - it is an attitude. An abusive man may or may not love his partner, but he definitely needs power, and it requires constant confirmation.
Violence is born where the offender has an oppressive feeling of powerlessness. This is why violence will always be repeated. The reasons why an abuser needs power so much are varied, but are often compensatory in nature.
For example, once in childhood such a person was deprived of the opportunity to make decisions on his own, was under the yoke of someone whom he was unable to resist (we are not talking about normal parental demands that the child obey and behave appropriately, but rather the central place , here the word “oppression” occupies.
“When you are 18, you will decide for yourself what to do, but while you live with us, you must obey. We feed him, we give him water, you know, but he also decided to set his own rules. No thanks! - such parents are indignant.
By using violence, a man who grew up in such conditions proves to himself over and over again that he is not powerless. Once upon a time he should have obeyed, but now someone appears (he who seeks may find!) someone weaker than him.
No matter what a woman does, no matter how hard she tries to be better, the violence will continue until the abuser reconsiders his values and accepts his weakness in order to learn to be truly strong.
Showy strength hides vulnerability, a sense of inferiority, inner weakness and still leaves a person in a state of powerlessness. True strength lies in having the courage to admit your powerlessness (which happens to everyone), and give yourself the work to overcome it, without causing harm to others.
Aggression sits inside
A woman who has experienced violence needs moral and legal support. But husbands who use aggression towards those closest to them also need help. Dina believes that those who are crippled are the ones who are crippled, and psychologists should also work with them.
“It should be built like labor camps.” Something between a prison and a hospital. Let them work hard, work with specialists at the same time, change their consciousness, and realize their fall. Our entire policy is aimed at saving a woman - treating, supporting, bringing her back to life. But the husband remains the same. Even if you kick him out, he will find another woman, go to his mother, beat his mother, start beating his sister. Here we need to work comprehensively. The woman is protected by the police, she finds refuge in crisis centers, and the men are left with their unresolved problem, with the aggression that still sits inside them.
According to Dina, we also need to look for new forms of work with crisis centers. For now, the crisis center is certainly a salvation: a woman finds shelter, bed and food there. But ideally, it is necessary to restructure the work of the centers so that they are focused on the social adaptation of women: so that after everything that has happened, she can find her place in society.
“We need to teach a woman to defend herself, give her legal support,” says Dina. — Explain how to properly navigate the authorities: in our country, such knowledge is very useful, since in the Kazakh authorities no one welcomes anyone with open arms, you need to be able to fight for yourself. Issues of socialization are important: undergo training, get an education, go out into the world, gain economic independence from her husband, explain what support from the state she is entitled to. Sheltering, hiding, feeding, protecting from her husband is an urgent measure aimed at giving a woman a temporary respite.
- Let's take one of the latest examples. The husband and wife have a joint household, a large house, and five children. And the husband kicks the woman out, takes away the house, and moves in tenants. The wife was sheltered by a crisis center, she waits out an acute period there, then comes out - and she has no starting points. A woman needs to be taught: here the guardianship authorities will help you, here the juvenile police, here the crisis center, and here the police. In our country it is difficult to find help that would radically change the situation.
Problem number one: no one wants to take responsibility for domestic violence. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is now forced to do this - due to the fact that criminal and administrative responsibility are separated, the police distribute this responsibility between themselves and the courts. But there is no body entirely responsible for combating domestic violence.
If we had a Ministry for Family and Children Affairs, we could ask from this ministry what kind of legal, legal and social assistance and where can victims of violence get it? Then it would be possible to control the guardianship authorities, the police, schools, and courts. It would be possible to keep statistics, which we still do not have, then the work would be more efficient.
“But the Ministry of Internal Affairs carefully hides this statistics from us: how many people are registered for violence in Kazakhstan, how many dysfunctional families, how many women who do not go to the police because of beatings, but only to the hospital, how many children who suffer from that there is violence in their homes. Many teachers also see such children, know about their suffering, and even try to help them, involve them more in school life in order to distract them from problems at home - but this is a personal initiative of people, they do this regardless of the state program. Why not make it mandatory to keep records of families where everything is dysfunctional? But there is no comprehensive work here, there is no responsible person. There is no minister who would be responsible for this.
For now, everything is at the level of recommendations. There is a recommending body - the National Commission, and there is a recommending body - the Committee for the Protection of Children's Rights under the Ministry of Education. These bodies cannot entrust something to someone by order, and they do not have a budget from the state to act.
Misconception #3
An abusive man can be a good father, so it makes sense to tolerate abuse for the benefit of the children
According to various studies, about 90% of children whose mothers are abused become unwitting witnesses. Domestic violence against women has a significant impact on children.
It has been proven that people who regularly witness violence have the same (or very similar) psychological consequences as the victims themselves.
In addition, as a rule, if there is a violent type of relationship in a family, it extends to children. Can a person whose actions cause significant harm to the health of his children be called a good father? This, as you can understand, is a rhetorical question.
The victim of domestic violence is not to blame!
They gave me an example by asking a question.
– When you come to a supermarket and see goods lying on the counter, you don’t steal them, do you?
- I say "No!
- The consultant asked the question: “Why don’t you steal, they’re provoking you to steal them, they’re lying there?”
It's the same with domestic violence, don't fall for tricks to convince you that you instigated the behavior.
Cruelty is inside the aggressor, but not inside the victim.
They advised me to read the book More details ➤, why he does this, in order to somehow distract himself. I never read the book, but I looked it up.
