domestic abuse in arranged marriage....how common is this?

[ThatVikRinA22]

i am seeking to understand better the problems faced by women in marriages that have been arranged by other parties for what ever reason, and am seeking to understand why some different cultures seem to play down abuse within arranged marriages.

i cannot go into detail but, recent experience seems to suggest that this type of domestic abuse is quite common, yet unreported.

also that abuse is tolerated, and knowledge of abuse is tolerated among family. friends and colleagues within certain cultures, and dealt with "in house" rather than reported.

anyone care to talk to me about it? this comes from a genuine desire to understand and help those with whom i have direct contact with in my job who come forward.

i understand that sometimes its about visas....that women will put up with abuse to secure a visa to stay rather than risk being sent home in shame.

why else do women from some different cultures put up with abuse and why do some men from some cultures think that domestic abuse is acceptable?

enlighten me. i want to understand the issues. it will help me to help others who do come forward and whom i come into contact with.
thanks.

My limited experience of this, in a healtcare setting, is that some women who are first generation immigrants from Pakistan (come over to marry someone in the UK) are hampered by poor language skills, being in a very alien culture, often very socially isolated, with friendships being mediated through their new in-laws. The DV I am aware of in this context is often related to an 'inability' to concieve within an expected time.

I also see a considerable amount on DV within 'whiteBritish' culture, but on the whole these women, whether they choose to stay or leave, have a bit more knowledge of where to seek help / what their rights are / a friend's floor to sleep on in a crisis.

I think (in relation to many immigrant women) we (you and I vicar) as 'female brits' are sometimes seen as too much part of the powerful establishment to be easily accessible as advocates for them.

not talking about pros/cons of arranged marriage btw at all, just thinking about how a certain group of women who are affected are culturally more disempowered than others...

Silversixpence, I don't think the attitudes in the Pakistani community are limited to uneducated Pakistani's, I have seem them exhibited numerous times in educated, middle-class pakistani men too. Also there is an attitude in the pakistani community that those who stay in an abusive marriage are good virtuous women for staying and putting up with it instead of getting a divorce. my mum does this. She will point out female relatives or friends in an abusive marriage and say, look she's putting up with it, it must be her good upbringing. Also, for british women, they have the mental freedom to decide whether or not to end a marriage. For Pakistani women, often when they make that decision, there own family emotionally blackmail them into continuing with the marriage.

absolutely - i worded my OP badly i think - its not around arranged marriages its more a cultural issue, and of course sadly there is much DV in our own culture, its just the way its viewed, and sometimes dealt with that appears to be different.

ive talked to women who have had arranged marriages and fled violence with the full backing of their families, but ive also talked to women who have fled, and where everyone turned a blind eye, or played it down, and even encouraged them to go home and forget it.

ive also dealt with suspects who have been quite shocked that the police take the issue seriously, despite being highly educated professionals who have lived here for some time.

im sure that over time things will change, as they are slowly changing in all cases of DV, and i suppose much of the differing cultural attitudes probably only mirror those of this culture 50 years ago....

i just hope that things continue to change.

things definitely need to change, no woman should have to live with violence.

ajuba It sounds as though you know about this from an inside (the community) perspective so can't disagree with you as you probably know more about it than I do. I find it shocking that women would condone domestic violence on the grounds of honour etc but I think attitudes are changing. Certainly amongst our community domestic violence is not acceptable and I am sure a woman would not be criticised for leaving her husband in those circumstances. In fact, I know of several couples who have divorced and it has been accepted, without the couple having to 'validate' their choice with a reason.

ajuba your last post was one of the saddest things I've read on MN

How can we break this cycle of 'saving face' and women not being encouraged to leave abusers? I don't know what to say.

My Pakistani husband was very educated, however he was also indoctrinated by his upbringing in Pakistan. He believed that a woman should know her place, and was prepared to go to great lengths to attempt control over me; verbal, financial, and eventually physical abuse.

The threats he issued about me never seeing the children again/ cutting my throat was the only one that stopped me from 'leaving the bastard' - and his motivation was shame, the shame that would befall the family. He had been in the UK for more than thirty years

Oh and another thing, when I had two massive black eyes after he attacked me because I was cross that he was trying to move another woman into our house, his sister was saying 'we have to work this out any other way but divorce'.

ajuba thank you for such honesty - this is what i have found whilst investigating and while i was clumsy in my initial post, i actually want to get the message out that this is how it is in some cases. Attitudes need to change, but how you do that within a culture i have no idea.....

when i did my day with one of the services they said there are several issues, one of which is shame and dishonour,

another is if a woman is brought into the country on a spouses visa then she has to stay married to get leave to stay and if she is sent back before then it dishonours her family, and so she will put up with virtually anything to avoid the marriage breaking down.

The service i did a day with were offering support but had to embed it into other things, or else they told me no one would come. They told me that there is a culture of male dominance and shame culture which is not taught in islam.....religion has nothing to do with it.

i had to investigate something which shone the spot light on this issue, i cant go into detail obviously, but i didnt realise how bad things can be for women, even professional women, within other cultures, where the norm is for the men to assume superiority, and have no regard for the laws of the land in which they are living, and Im not sure how widespread the issue is, and im not saying its commonplace because i have nothing to base that on, but it opened my eyes.

Sorry to hear of your experiences SirSugar - hope things are better for you these days

likewise sirsugar - thank you for such honesty. I was afraid after i had posted that this people might try to turn it into a race issue - which its not, but i do think its a cultural issue, and the more people sweep it under the carpet because talking about it is scary, talking about other cultures can be construed as something its not iyswim....

my life bears no resemblance to how it was before he died, which was quite frankly, hard work. I am on very good terms with his family whom I am fond of despite my late H's cruelty, and obviously they are DCs family too.

Its interesting that my niece has come to UK in the last couple of years, because of an arranged marriage. I am very aware that it has not all gone as smoothly as planned and she almost returned back to the family home due to 'issues' with her DH. I have discussed a few things with her and she is aware that she is very, very welcome at my house at any time for however long she needs to be here.

I am now,extremelly content and happy, with DP, who is white British.

I'm glad things are better now SirSugar with your new partner. Good you can offer such support to your niece

Vicar, those are the issues I've seen and very difficult to get help to those women when they have no one to rely on and face exclusion from their culture.

There is a lot of work going on in Indian for the women there referred to as "untouchables" I don't know if you're aware of it but raped/divorced women there are shunned and the work being done is to educate the women and change local attitudes.

Sirsugar, glad to hear you are happy now.

The thing is though that lots and lots of white British women will have no support from their families if they want a divorce. Their parents will refuse to believe them, or think they deserve abuse. We see threads like that here all the time.

There are tons of white British male abusers who cannot believe the law has any interest in what happens in their house and are shellshocked by police intervention.

I know you mean really well by this thread and I think from all your posts you seem like a great copper so I hope this isn't taken the wrong way but I think when dealing with EVERY domestic violence victim you have to bear in mind the possibility they may have no support - and their abuser may have plenty. You can't assume people's families aren't themselves abusive wankers who think their daughter deserves to get hit . So many victims grew up in houses where this is normal behaviour.

I can't speak for everybody asian in the situation of DV, but generally, women in DV situations from abroad will not put up with DV for a visa, but so that their family does not find out about the state of play. Many times it is to spare them the ordeal. I remember my mum telling me of an asian lady who was british born and bred who's H would hit her but she was staying with him so that her elderly father would not have to endure the pain of finding out that his daughter is being mistreated. I remember her saying that it would kill her father if he found out that she was being hurt and he was frail and fighting cancer. She couldn't put him through her woes too which in her own words would 'kill him off'. :(

i am really well aware of the issues surrounding all cases of DV holdme....i try to treat each on merit. I was the victim of domestic abuse as a child, so i feel quite clued up on that issue, and i ended up with no support, at 15 i left home and do not have any contact with my family to this day. The support was all my step fathers - Social services worked with him - not me, even though he broke my bones during one beating.
im not unsympathetic to any case of DV, truly. I just find the isolation within certain communities must make it even harder to access any support unless those women are extremely strong willed and no where to go to get support.

There IS a marked difference between cultures. I really dont know how anyone can deny that.

Yes, there are plenty of white british male abusers, but there is more easily accessible support for white british women than there is for asian -and by that I mean predominantly -muslim women.

i would, on balance and judging from my own experiences of investigating DV, agree with that squeaky.

women from our own culture can and do call police, without shame, not all follow through with a complaint, but often do, and do eventually call police, though im very much aware that the incidence of DV averages out at 35 instances before help is called for....i never even thought of calling police when i was a victim, but i was a child, and it didnt occur to me.

that said, i have found that women from other cultures will not under any circumstances call police, and when help is sought from family or friends are encouraged to put up and shut up by those within their own communities. The desperation of the women i am dealing with now is obvious. She literally had no where to go, because when she turned to friends, when she ran, she was encouraged to go back. It is only because she was a woman of means and highly educated that she had a way out. i dread to think what some women put up with who have no means of escape. it shocks me that educated, professional people, live in this way. and if educated professional women live like this, what becomes of uneducated women, who possibly don't speak the language, who possibly dont work and who are isolated apart from the family they live with.....

The cries of those women largely go unheard, Vic. If they don't have the language to ask for help, it's often that case that it's only when neighbours or other concerned individuals intervene that their sad existences are revealed.

The only way to alleviate their suffering is to raise awareness. Although these victims may be unable/unlikely to attend public meetings, the message can be carried back into their homes by educating children of the undesirability of violence in the home, in much in the same way as they're taught to say 'no' in order to avoid stranger danger.

May I suggest that you make contact with a couple of the numerous Asian and other women's groups that operate in your area? It could be that your local LEA has some initiative planned and, if not, maybe they need a kick up the arse encouragement to plan a series of school visits by police/other groups with accompanying literature in a number of different languages.

I'd agree in part with Izzyini, that asian women's services need more support and funding but there's not much that can be done when the court system here doesn't always protect the victim in dv cases (rochdale case) and important men of any origin who commit crimes are given lenient sentences.

That saying the same can be said of any women experiencing dv and a lot of non asian women have the same problems and even when someone steps in, nothing can be done if the woman is too scared to leave.

People have mentioned people putting up with DV because they're on a spousal visa. This certainly happens, but just so people know, DV sufferers on spousal visas can make an application for Indefinite Leave to Remain independently of their spouse if there has been DV. They don't have to have done the full 2 year probation period. it isn't easy, but it's possible.

Vicar - when someone is in an 'isolated' community, they can view the rest of the world with distrust, uncertainty, wariness, fear at worst, or just feel forever outside it, at best. Even in an integrated community, their community has prime place, and everything else is 'other'. The police force is 'other', support groups are 'other'.

I grew up in a group which had religious and racial differences, although looking at me you wouldn't know it (a white European background) and visually and linguistically I blended in. But there were constant 'little' things that kept me isolated. My Saturday mornings were taken up learning my 'cultural' language. So I couldn't socialise with friends not within the community at that time. Sundays were religious days (morning and evening!). I only had about 4 hours free time during the day, so again usually spent it with friends of the same culture. This had the effect of leaving a slight distance between myself and friends at school. I 'seemed' fairly popular and was a part of a number of groups. But that was a survival mechanism for me, by spreading my time over a few groups no one group realised just how little time I spent with any school friends outside of school time.

The constant little comments from elders in the group were demoralising. From my grandmother begging me not to get my drivers licence so that my future husband could drive me around, or begging me not get my hair cut because I wouldn't be able to wash and dry Jesus' feet, the constant derogatory comments when my sisters and I wore jeans instead of skirts. Comments about wearing make up (with a subtext of being a whore although noone actually said that ). Women were not allowed a position of authority over men in the church. In church shoulders had to be covered so no strappy tops, or even sleeveless tops and definitely no trousers. NONE of my school friends knew about this because I didn't share it with them. I DID cut my hair, I did get my licence, I wore jeans as often as I bloody well could. But it all came with agro. It was a constant fight.

In a small community when something about you becomes common knowledge it is part of your identity forever (and ever and ever). You hear all about great uncle so and so who did such and such when he was 20 years old (even though he is now 75 years old). You learn to become secretive. You learn to keep things to yourself. You don't share inner family secrets with anyone outside of the immediate family. You share other things with your extended family but no one else in the community, etc, etc.

But I was strong, my sisters were also strong (but in many ways not as strong as me) and fortunately for us our mother was supportive. I married outside of the community, as did over half of my siblings. We all worked in good jobs. However, there was a lot of alcohol abuse in the community, and while my immediately family was free of it, there was a lot of it in the extended family and now one of my sisters has become an abuser of alcohol. Another of my sisters married within the community but to a 'bad' member - he drank alcohol - and was ostracised. He was an abuser, it took her years to speak up and leave him. Her MIL knew without being told though, and just advised her to drink 'camphor' . Clearly she had suffered the same abuse from her own husband. If you left your husband you were not permitted to remarry and stay within the church.

I would raise merry hell to protect someone else, but I rarely told others if there was anything bad going on in my private life. It's taken me many years to change that, and to share things with my friends.

It's isolating, and you learn to live within yourself and your small sphere. It's a conditioning.