The dark side of domestic violence

Abstract

From the multiple forms of family violence, the aggression against women remains a serious social problem concerning many aspects which are still unclear. Even if family violence passed through ages affecting all social categories, people started to be concerned about its effects only in the XX-th Century, more precise in 1977. Even though family violence is very often found, it was constantly hidden by strong myths and false legends (“it’s happening only in the lower classes”, “women ask for it”, “this is the women s condition”) also society was afraid of touching the sanctity of the marital couple and the connection between man and his wife. Research in USA and Great Britain showed that violence against women reached endemic levels and has no connection with ethnic origin, race, social level, religion and education (Straus-1975, Boyd and Klingbeil-1979, Walker-1979). A lot of cases seem to remain unreported to the police because of several reasons: violence is happening in the protected environment of the family; many victims don’t want to report abuses and police together with social institutions avoid intervention in this type of violence. In the last decades a lot of efforts have been made to help the victims of domestic violence. Even if at the beginning this was a taboo social subject, in the last 20 years the press has helped to become one of the most disputed subjects. Starting with 1980’s many countries started to create special institutions to fight against women abuses. These institutions helped abused women to find alternative solutions to their problems, not only divorce or continuous terror. In the last years, municipalities together with courts and mental health services started to offer therapy to the violent husbands included in programs of group therapy. In this way if the victim agrees, the violent husband may follow such a therapy instead of prison punishment.