| Your Relationships, Your Life Written by: Carrie Pestritto When newspapers and celebrity gossip sites started reporting that famous singer, Rihanna, was brutally beaten by her boyfriend and fellow superstar, Chris Brown, on February 8th, many found it hard to believe. Rihanna and Brown were known as a “perfect” couple: both talented, beautiful, and with squeaky-clean images (even though Rihanna’s third album is entitled “Good Girl Gone Bad”). Yet, domestic violence, particularly among women of Rihanna’s age, is a common occurrence; the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that young women between the ages of 20 and 24 are at the greatest risk of “nonfatal intimate partner violence.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and The National Institute of Justice, Extent, Nature, and Consequences of Intimate Partner Violence further say that 1 in 4 women experience domestic violence in their lifetimes. Professor Katherine van Wormer, PhD of the University of Northern Iowa School of Social Work has been following the Brown/ Rihanna case and believes that this sort of domestic violence occurs frequently between young people, saying, “I’m talking about this happening with people as young as fourteen. This sort of relationship is associated with early sexual involvement— young girls in a serious relationship have a very high rate of being abused, compared to girls who start dating at around eighteen or nineteen. When a young girl’s first relationship is abusive, she is naïve and partially blames herself or thinks that this is the norm. She usually will not tell anyone she being abused by her boyfriend, or if she does tell someone, it is a friend who does not know any more than she does, whereas an older woman is more likely to go to the police and report any battering.” After Brown and Rihanna were seen together in Miami on the weekend of February 28th, the media began speculating that the two had reconciled. Van Wormer says that girls often stay with their battering boyfriends or significant others, because of Stockholm syndrome-esque feelings of sympathy and dependence or because they think that they deserve that sort of treatment. Many of the battered or alcoholic women van Wormer worked with in a group were able to help each other recognize their problems, but were not able to see the problems in their own lives. “They can see it in each other but not in themselves,” says van Wormer. “They comment and judge one another, but think that they are different and what is happening to the other women could never happen to them.” She further states that girls brought up in a home where the mother was beaten tend to have similar abusive relationships with men. Correspondingly, when looking at the background of battering men, van Wormer finds that boys who were victimized by their fathers when they were children or who have fathers who beat their mothers are more likely to be violent in a relationship. These battering men may be violent towards women they genuinely care about because they do not trust them completely. Van Wormer describes the type of man who tends to become violent in a relationship, saying, “He becomes emotionally dependent on this woman. He’s insecure and makes his whole life center on what she’s doing—he’s obsessed and this obsession is a forerunner of severe violence.” Van Wormer believes that this case can be very educational. “They should use it health education classes as an example of domestic violence and then can get into what is a high-risk situation and how to get help if you feel that you or someone you know is in this type of relationship. The main thing is to get these boys to change, either through mentoring programs or domestic violence prevention. Schools can do a whole lot to help. Young people need to be educated about this and learn about what a healthy, mature relationship is.” Chris Brown is currently taking anger management classes and released a statement on February 15th, saying, “I am seeking the counseling of my pastor, my mother and other loved ones and I am committed, with God's help, to emerging a better person.” Van Wormer believes that there is hope that Brown might change, but also states that he deserves to be punished and that jail time might be good for both him and Rihanna, as it would give her time away from him to “get a hold on herself.” Below is a quiz to see if your boyfriend or partner may be abusive compiled by van Wormer and Albert R. Roberts, PhD in their new book, Death by Domestic Violence: Preventing the Murders and the Murder- Suicides. You can go to http://www.greenwood.com/catalog/C35489.aspx to order a copy of the book. Teen Dating Abuse: Warning Signs Based on the literature on domestic violence, we have developed the following list of warning signs that a young woman should consider to determine if the relationship is likely to become violent. The warning signs are geared toward heterosexual female teens, but can be adjusted to pertain to same-sex or male respondents. ____ 1. Does your date or boyfriend brag about beating up or intimidating people? ____ 2. Does he ever suggest that he knows how to kill, for example by playfully putting his hands on your neck, then say he was only joking? ____ 3. Does he own or have access to a gun, or show a fascination with weapons? ____ 4. Has he ever forced you to kiss or have sex? Does he show an awareness of your wishes and feelings? ____ 5. Does he use illegal drugs, especially amphetamines, speed, meth, or crack? ____ 6. Does he get drunk on a regular basis or brag about his high tolerance for alcohol? Does he push you to drink alcoholic beverages or take illicit drugs? ____ 7. When you are with him, does he control how you spend your time? Is he always the one to drive or criticize you severely if you take the wheel? ____ 8. Is he constantly jealous? Does he control your friendships with other people and seem to want to have you all to himself? ____ 9. Is he rapidly becoming emotionally dependent on you; for instance, does he say things like ‘‘I can’t live without you?’’ Is his thinking of an all-or-nothing pattern (either you are his best friend or his worst enemy—often about past relationships)? ____ 10. Do you have the feeling that only you understand him and that others do not or can not? ____ 11. Note the relationship between his parents. Is his mother very submissive to his father? Is there heavy drinking and/or lots of tension in his family? ____ 12. Is there a history of past victimization by his father? ____ 13. Is there a history of animal abuse in his background? ____ 14. Has he ever struck you? Have you known him to lose control of his anger for certain periods of time? ____ 15. Has he ever threatened or tried to commit suicide? ____ 16. Does he get out of patience quickly with children or is he verbally abusive toward them? ____ Total ‘‘Yes’’ answers. If you have answered yes to two or more of these items, you should talk to a mature person before pursuing this relationship further. Before getting romantically involved with someone, consider what it would be like to break up with this person. Would you be able to cool the relationship and still remain friends or end the relationship if you wanted to? Consider how he would handle this. It’s a lot easier to get out of a potentially dangerous relationship in the early stages than to wait and see how things turn out, or to see if you can change a person. Pg. 154-155, Death by Domestic Violence: Preventing the Murders and the Murder- Suicides |
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