When victims of DV are jailed

I don't think you were having a go as such but I think you're being a bit patronising and making lots of assumptions. I want to defend what I've said because you were dismissive, I'm not bothered about you being dismissive of my opinion, that's fair enough you may not agree with me, but because you seemed dismissive of my right to have an opinion. With respect it is possible have an understanding of DV without having experienced it from a partner.

Sorry, but it's pretty obvious that you don't. An opinion, yes, understanding, no. I really wasn't having a go at you btw, I thought I was pretty clear, no need to be defensive about it.

I am glad that I've never been in a situation where my partner's been violent to me but you don't know me and it's untrue to say I don't have any understanding of this situation just because I have a different perspective to you.

Says someone lucky enough not to have been in the situation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a go at you in any way. In fact I envy you your lack of understanding.

Being in a situation where the abuser is your child's father must be a truly impossible one, the idea of that person getting custody or access must lead to utter despair. Statistically though most abuse is carried out by step parents, many of those cases described detail abuse from a man who was the mother's new partner rather than the biological father. Whilst appreciating that the blame for the abuse rests squarely with the abuser those children have no choice as to whether to stay in that situation. The sentencing does seem perverse and extreme but I think a parent's primary responsibility is to their children and their own victimisation doesn't completely absolve them from this.

Petula I think sometimes that people 'know' me on here and read my posts accordingly. I got a post deleted when I was being massively sarcastic once . It's all in the tone...

ah, sorry, clearly the pictures i have in my head don't translate very well to the written word without explanation!

sorry?

i just meant that it creeps up on people, it's stupid to suggest that someone in an abusive relationship should do what i would do if i were suddenly landed in that situation (call the police and get the hell out of there), because that's not what has happened to them

no one gets helicoptered into the middle of an abusive relationship

I agree that the mismatch between how different agencies deal with DV is wrong. Social Services and the Police blame women for staying with abusive partners, despite offering no real alternative, despite the numbers of refuge places being reduced every year, despite all the research which shows outcomes for children who witness DV. If a woman stays with an abusive partner, she is not only blamed for it, but will often be threatened with losing or will actually lose custody of her children.

The idea that a woman can easily protect her children from the man who is abusing them all is a total crock and shows a woeful lack of understanding of the dynamics of abusive relationships. Violence is almost never the first option for these men, they have a wide range of weapons in their arsenal, all designed to keep their victim where they want them.

In several of the cases in the article, the Police had been called, many times and had done precisely nothing. They are generally poor, often PoC and have NOWHERE ELSE TO GO. What are they to do, Carol? With your huge sympathy?

When you're in an abusive relationship, you go through the looking glass. Things that seem completely normal and easy for those lucky enough not to be in one are like wading through treacle. Honestly, unless you know what you're talking about, it's better to keep silence.

Sorry that happened runner. All too common.

Plus the chance of the father being awarded dual custody is higher in the US I believe. There is no agency like CAFCAS (who are far from perfect themselves) to protect children of abusive fathers.

It's not just the threats of violence/abuse either. It is the fact that some of these women know no different. They were brought up in abusive households; the relationships they have had and see around them are all abusive. Their boundaries are being constantly eroded (often without them even realising). Some even feel they deserve no better.

Your views, carol, come from a position of privilege.

MrsTerry raises an important issue. I was in a position where I was struggling to protect myself and my DC from ex (initially EA but slowly becoming more physical) while remaining with him because he told me that if I left him he would ensure he had contact and he would harm the DC. I knew there was a good chance that if I did leave him the courts would not block contact. I could not prove anything and most of the harm was emotional. At the same time this was happening, someone I knew through work was in the same position. She had left her EA ex but she was involved in horrendous court case and the judge flatly refused to believe that her ex would harm her DC. She had a break down over it and I still don't know how it was resolved. The problem seems to be a mismatch in the way that DV is dealt with by different professionals. It's well described in this paper bjsw.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/5/837.short
though you may not be able to get full text access.

If you spend any time on the relationships board here, Carol you will see that the greatest fear is sometimes that you will successfully leave, then the partner will get 50% or visitation. All those cases you see of men killing their children after women have left them... how do you suggest women prevent that?

If the options are that you are there with them, hopefully mitigating, and trying to protect, and taking the brunt OR that you leave then your ex gets to be alone with those children... I hope I never have to make that choice.

I am not saying there is a moral equivalence. I believe the perpetrator deserves significantly more 'punishment' than one of the victims.
I am saying, however, that the mothers in these cases are not guiltless.
They chose to have children and therefore adopt a duty of care. If the authorities do not support them, that is the fault of the authorities, in these cases the mother was wrong as no intervention could have ended in a worse result, in the interim, the children are beaten on a regular basis, with no possibilty of respite.

Carol, firstly you're missing the fact that these women are frightened. If a man is already hurting the children and he says he'll kill them if you tell anyone, it is not unreasonable to believe he'll carry out his threat and thus misguidedly think the thing that will keep them safest is to not report. Remember victims are very used to reporting and not being believed so they might well think it will make things worse, not better.

Secondly, your belief that there is a moral equivalence between the perpetrator of violence and the victim who fails to save other victims, is shifting the blame and letting the perpetrator off the hook. If the person who knowingly hurts a child says, 'It wasn't all my fault, someone else should have stopped me,' do you take any notice of that? Because that is what you are agreeing with.

Not that I expect you are going to take any notice of this. People who blame victims as you are doing usually do so for deep-seated personal reasons, not because logic is on their side.

In all the cases above, the maltreatment of the children had been on-going for a while, so not the threat of violence but actual harm to the children, who are unable to seek help. Unless the mother is imprisoned, they had the opportunity and duty to report this to the authorities.
I have huge sympathy for abused women/people but if you choose to have children, and with abortion available, it is always a choice, you must protect them ahead of your own issues.

Jesus Christ, that's depressing.

Sadly I have come across a very tiny minority of people like Carol in real life. No understanding of how these abusers operate.

In my brother's case, the reason he didn't leave, is he knew he couldn't leave and take his three daughters with him. XW had always told him, "if you leave, I'll hurt the girl," and while he's not sure if she ever would have actually hurt them, he was never prepared to take that risk.

If my brother's XW said that to him, Carol needs to imagine what kind of cruel and manipulating things the many abusive men are saying out there, that make women stay.

I can't get over the comments of the prosecutor in that article. She wants the women to be jailed because they weren't murdered. What does that stuff about 'being ready to lay down your life' mean? She makes it sound like it's an inevitability of motherhood. All it means in reality is that they guy would probably kill her first, and the child afterward.

Appalling.

As is Carol's post.