Who would hit someone they claim to love? Why would they do it? Who would stay with someone who hits them? Why would they want to?
These are a few of the questions that invariably come to mind when talking or thinking about domestic violence.
Having recently sat down with a perpetrator and two victims of intimate violence, 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown has developed a more nuanced understanding.
“I came away [from the interviews] very aware that this is a complex, complicated and insidious issue, that is made complicated by human emotion,” Brown told Women’s Agenda.
It is easy, Brown says, to ask why women stay in abusive relationships but the question belies the overlay of emotions involved.
“There is the desperation to be happy, there’s the commitment of marriage they made to stay together and certain expectations of how a happy life looks. And then they are confronted with actions that are completely opposite to all of that. These women are denigrated by the person who says they love them. There is physical and emotional abuse,” she says.
It is most followed by this person who both loves and beats them, begging for forgiveness.
Manipulation, fear and shame work in tandem to keep women in these relationships.
“There is the fear of stepping away and being hurt even more,” Brown says. “The shame also keeps them there.”
In a report that will be broadcast on Channel 9’s Sixty Minutes at 8.30pm this Sunday night Tara Brown also sits down with Steve, a man who was jailed for beating his wife.
“I think it’s quite a startling piece of TV because it reveals the mindset of someone who admits to abusing his wife,” Brown says.
Although we are increasingly hearing from women who are brave enough to speak up about their violent relationships, Brown says it’s rare to get a glimpse into the psyche of a perpetrator. And it was frightening.
“He admits he is still capable of inflicting hurt. He believes it’s wrong. That he shouldn’t hit anyone let alone his wife or partner. [But] he feels he has that capability to flare up,” Brown says.
“I don’t think he fully accepts responsibility. He still thinks in terms of “Well, I was provoked” or “I was feeling that way”. There is no level of acceptance in my opinion that there is no excuse for hitting your wife ever. That you need to control that and that you need to get out of that situation if you can’t control it.”
Brown came away from it believing we need to talk about this issue a lot more.
“We need women to know they have support and we need boys to know there is nothing acceptable about this violence.”