Mechanisms and criteria for assessing women victims of violence

By Ahmed Abu Ayyash, director of the Nablus branch
The cycle of the violent event
It is a closed cycle that widens with the repetition of violent events, and it affects the victim over several stages. This cycle begins with simple events the woman is subjected to, in shock at what happens to her, and therefore she uses various means to deal with the violence directed against her by changing her behaviour, believing that she is the cause of the violence that happens to her. The events of this cycle begin gradually and their pace and their incidents accelerate until it becomes a reality in all its stages every day and more than once or more than one incident a day. Therefore we shall learn about the stages of this cycle through the sequence of events and by giving some examples.

The events the woman and the man pass through during the stages of the cycle of the violent event:
1. The tension stage: the beginning of the appearance of violence and its increase
2. The explosion stage: the violence grows more severe and the physical, psychological and sexual abuse increases.
3. The "honeymoon" stage: the abuser apologises for his acts, becomes affectionate, pledges and promises not to repeat that.
The first stage, "the tension stage":
The woman:
• She is subjected to some simple situations of violence such as: (a light blow, a slap, insults, shouting, and at widely spaced intervals)
• She tries to calm the husband or to keep away from him with the aim of overcoming the situations of violence she is subjected to. Example: (if the man is irritable she tries to keep away from him and not to clash with him, yet the violence happens because he becomes convinced that she is ignoring him and provoking him, or that she does not ask what is the matter or what is wrong with him. And if she asks and shows concern for him she may also be subjected to violence because he is angry and does not want anyone to speak to him.) So she is perplexed, trying to avoid the situations she has been subjected to and to change her behaviour in order to please him and reduce her exposure to violence.
• She behaves cautiously, and is gentle and obedient. Example: (she tries to reduce friction with him, she fears his unjustified anger, she keeps things brief and tries to answer his demands even if she is not content).
• She accepts the man's violence and becomes convinced that she deserves the beating. Example: (with the repetition of the incidents of violence the man puts the blame on the woman, that her behaviour drives him to beat her and that he will bring her up properly and teach her a lesson).
• She denies that she is subjected to violence. (It is difficult for the woman to believe what is happening to her of violence, perhaps because she chose her life partner, or spoke up for him, or married him after a long love story, or married under compulsion against her will. So when she discovers the violence it is difficult for her to believe it or to admit the existence of violence, because society will blame her for her choice and hold her responsible, and therefore she tries to control the situation and does not tell anyone what she is subjected to of violence).
• Finding logical explanations for her husband's violent behaviour. Example: (when I closed the cupboard door I made a noise and this made my husband wake up and get up in a bad mood).
• She controls the external factors so as not to stir his anger. Example: (she warns her children not to make a noise, or tidies the house, or prepares his clothes, or prepares the food, etc...).
• She changes her behaviour to please the violent man. Example: (she cuts off her relationship with a friend because her husband does not like her, she refrains from visiting her family because this angers her husband, she changes her way of dressing).

The second stage, "the explosion stage":
The man:
• The severity of his violence increases. Example: if the violence used to occur once a month, its incidents increase to once every two weeks or once a week or more than once a day)
• The violent man is aware that he can change his behaviour.
• He tries to create justifications for himself for using violence. Example: (he will bring her up properly or teach her a lesson, or she does not understand and is stubborn).
• He stops beating her when he feels she has learned the lesson.
• The woman: it is difficult for her to predict when the violence will occur. Example: (she has tried in every way but has not succeeded in stopping the violence, so everything she does and everything she has tried to do to lessen the violence has not succeeded. Therefore she feels fear all the time because she does not know when it will happen).
• She suffers from pressure, tension, fear, too little or too much sleep, depression, stomach pains and headaches.
• That ending this stage depends on the man. Example: (if he acknowledges his violence and seeks treatment).
• At this stage the woman must hide or flee from the violent man in order to preserve her safety. Example: (at this stage the woman is in danger and the violent man threatens her with killing, for example, or with the children, and he may carry out his threat against her or kill her. This is a dangerous stage and the woman must turn to someone who will protect and support her).

The third stage, "the honeymoon":
• Both parties feel a desire and a willingness to settle matters.
• The husband shows his love for the wife, treats her gently and buys gifts as an expression of his love for her.
• The violent man deals positively with his wife.
• He tries to compensate the wife for his negative behaviour, promises her that he will not repeat his acts and asks her forgiveness.
• This behaviour generates in the woman's soul the hope that her husband will change, which encourages her to stay with him.
• This state may continue for several hours to a week or months, and this depends on the development of the cycle of the violent event.
• The relationship returns to the first stage, then the second, "and the honeymoon"
• And this cycle does not end except by setting out radical solutions or by a tragedy occurring.
The theory of power and control
This theory puts forward the view that the need for power and control is behind assault whatever its forms, and that that need for power and control springs from weakness and failure in the violent person, and from his inability to face the truth, which gives him no justification and confers on him no right to use his power and control towards any other creature.
This theory shows us in tangible form the methods the violent man uses to exert power and control in various forms towards the victim, who is usually the wife, the sister, the daughter, the beloved or the children, and so on, or any party expected to be submissive and obedient to those with power in society.
According to this theory, the violent man uses several methods towards the victim he assaults, which include:
1. The method of intimidation: it aims at frightening the victim by means of looks or by carrying out acts or movements that would frighten, such as shouting, destroying property and furniture, or using threats in their various forms.
2. The method of emotional abuse: it aims at breaking the victim's psyche and making her feel dissatisfaction and displeasure with herself, by describing her and calling her by bad names, making her feel and doubt that she is mad, insulting and humiliating her, making her feel guilty, and using tricks and games that provoke her nerves.
3. The method of isolation: it aims at controlling the course of the victim's life, by isolating her from social life, or restricting her social relations and preventing her from visiting those close to her, and convincing her that this isolation is for her benefit or arises from intense love for her and jealousy over her. With time the victim becomes socially isolated and barred from disposing of the family's money and resources so that she remains dependent and tied to the marriage.
4. The method of disregard and blame: it aims at belittling the things the victim does and her thoughts and feelings, not respecting her feelings when she is upset or distressed, disregarding the insult he caused her or disregarding her existence, while placing the blame on her that she is the one who drives him to behave in this way.
5. The method of exploiting the children: it aims at making the wife feel guilty towards her children and exploiting the children to press her to meet the husband's wishes, or making them a means of communication between the husband and his wife. At times the man resorts to threatening to deprive the wife of her children if she disobeys his orders.
6. The method of imposing manhood: it aims at treating the wife as inferior, as if she were a servant, and taking all the important decisions in the house without giving importance to her opinion. The man behaves as the master of the house or "the king of the castle", and defines his role and the wife's role accordingly. For example, he decides that the wife must stay at home according to the traditional role society draws for her as a mother and a carer for internal household matters of cleaning and cooking, and in return he defines his role as the breadwinner and therefore the master and the one who decides in all matters.
7. The method of economic dependence: it aims at preventing the woman from working and taking her monthly salary from her if she works, giving her a limited allowance for household necessities only, which makes her economically dependent on the husband. This form of control is often accompanied by depriving the wife of any opportunity that would help her develop her knowledge or take part in managing the household economy or the family's affairs.
8. The method of coercion and threat: it aims at forcing the wife to carry out acts she does not want and that distress her, threatening to leave her or to take his own life, or forcing her to carry out illegitimate acts and threatening to do certain things such as beating her or beating the children, and threatening to spread rumours about her if she does not obey orders.
Shock
It is what happens to any person subjected to a sudden change, which brings about a change in the course of their daily life and creates an imbalance as an immediate reaction, through which the person loses the use of the skills they were used to using before with any problem they faced.
Shock occurs as a result of:
1. Being subjected to a direct experience. (Rape, sexual harassment, violence)
2. Being exposed to hearing news relating to others. (Death, divorce, infidelity, beating)
The reactions resulting from shock:
1. Physical reactions: disbelief, a feeling of fleeing or an inability to give any reaction, where the body secretes adrenaline, which may cause vomiting, rapid heartbeats, sweating, trembling, tension. This state does not continue for a long period, and afterwards the person feels exhaustion, a feeling of sickness, loss of appetite...
2. Emotional reactions: emotional reactions produce a crisis that is interwoven or repeated with one another and has several stages:
• The first stage: it takes the form of hysteria and excessive movement, or of astonishment, immobility and depression. There are two types of these reactions:
- Suppressing feelings and not speaking about them, which leads to a loss of trust in those around her, or as a defensive means of overcoming the event.
- Expressing feelings, which is reflected in an explosion of sensations, anger or fear, or shame or disgust.
And the following feelings result from them:
Expressing feelings / suppressing feelings
Tension / immobility
Weeping, screaming or laughing / a rapid or faint pulse
Trembling and physical tension / sweating
Clenching the hands / low blood pressure
Excessive activity / a pale face
Receptiveness / nausea or vomiting
Speaking rapidly / astonishment, "blankness"

• The second stage: denial, not dealing with what happened and trying to control the course of life.
• The third stage: anger. Feeling anger towards what happened, or towards the causes that had an effect on the incident, or towards ourselves.
• The fourth stage: a feeling of loss or a feeling of bereavement, whether that is towards work or death, or if the incident resulted from rape or violence, then it results from the loss or the physical harm that occurred.
• The fifth stage: sadness or mourning over what happened.
• The sixth stage: normality, restoring balance or the stage of reorganisation. The victim begins trying to carry on daily life.
3. Psychological reactions: they have more than one physical, emotional and psychological indicator.
• Emotional reactions:
- A feeling of fear
- A feeling of being threatened
- A desire to take her own life
- Depression
- Excessive sensitivity to everything happening around her
- Reliving the experience
- Loss of trust in herself and in others
- Moodiness and sudden changes in behaviour
- Difficulty sleeping, disturbing dreams and nightmares
- Anxiety
- Isolation and withdrawal from friends
- A decline in academic attainment
- Staying away from the place where the incident occurred
- A feeling of guilt

• Reactions (confusion in understanding and perception):
- Confusion in understanding and perception
- Thinking and memory
- A sudden move from one subject to another
- An inability to distinguish between the serious and the trivial
- Confusing illusion and reality
- Disordered thinking
- Distorting facts
• Physical reactions:
- Problems with eating habits
- Pains in various areas of the body that may result from the assault, or pains for which there is no medical explanation.
- Fear of the possibility of pregnancy or of contracting sexually transmitted diseases "as a result of rape"
- Dizziness or headache
- Difficulty breathing
- A feeling of exhaustion
- Problems with the immune system
The person also feels fear and tension, and their emotions become acute, disturbing their balance and affecting their capacity for logical thinking. This may require of them a great effort to adapt to the new reality. And so it is too with regard to an event that threatens the safety of body and soul.
Post-traumatic:
Sudden shocks lead to what is called Post Trauma. This acute shock leads to an imbalance or creates a psychological distortion in the victim because of the inability to deal with the crisis. The scientific definition of "post-trauma" is denying the incident and not dealing with the crisis resulting from the event.

The reactions of the woman subjected to family violence
1. Fear: fear of being harmed again, or of feeling rejected by those close to her or by the individuals working at the organisation, and fear of being killed. Certain kinds of obsessions may be generated during that period.
2. Denial: denying the problem or denying its gravity. Some may place the blame on others, and she may say "this is unreasonable" or "I have a problem but not that".
3. A sense of the gravity of the event: a lack of control over choices or resources, a feeling of terror and anger, a desire to change the course of her life entirely, such as moving to live in another place or going to a new job, and a feeling of the great size of the expectations others have.
4. Frustration: being subjected to oppression because of speaking out about the problem, and the continuous confrontation with the indifference or hostility expressed by the official institution, bearing in mind that the support systems do not work as they should, and the woman may feel that she is unable to face the situation.
5. Indifference: a lack of clarity in the desire to end the relationship or to stay, and the other person in the relationship may be loving and violent at the same time, and the woman may be forced into fundamental changes in her way of life although she is not convinced.
The causes of the ill-treatment of women
Understanding the nature and causes of the violence directed at women is essential for any professional working in the field of family protection, and this matter has been and still is a great challenge for professionals and academics. If there is one single truth reached over the past years, it is that there is no single direct cause for the occurrence of violence, and it has no relation to the socio-economic level, religion or race, since its occurrence depends on multiple factors that collide with the family, and these factors interact and reinforce one another, producing violence against women. Accordingly, violence is generated as a result of the interaction of "risk factors" ranging between the abusive man, the woman and the surroundings. It must be noted that the existence of "risk factors" in a particular family does not necessarily mean or lead to the occurrence of violence, because of the multiplicity of the factors and their interaction, and the professionals who deal with these cases must adapt to each one individually and avoid generalisation in diagnosis or treatment.

Below we set out the risk factors relating to violence directed against women.
1. Traditional attitudes in society, which accept an imbalance in power and influence between men and women.
2. Traditional attitudes in society, which look at the woman as the property of the man, and that she is there to be directed, controlled and disciplined.
3. Widespread attitudes that look at violence as an acceptable legitimate pattern carried out by the man to release frustration, anger, disappointment
or to solve his personal problems.
4. Social norms that encourage the woman to be passive.
5. The abuser having been exposed to previous violent behaviour in his family.
6. It is acknowledged that some perpetrators of abuse are addicted to or habituated to alcohol, and/or to the distress of poverty and unemployment, but there is
no indication that these factors are a direct cause of the abuse.
7. Psychological illnesses are present in a small proportion of the perpetrators of abuse, close to the proportion present among the general public, but
some of them suffer from emotional or behavioural disorders.
8. The absence of personal communication skills in the abusive man, and his inability to control himself.
9. Physical illnesses in abusers have a small role in the occurrence of abuse.

And in many cases the wife does not complain for the following reasons:
The reasons for refraining from reporting and complaining
It is observed in practice that many victims of violence refrain from reporting the crimes committed against them, and the reasons for this failure to report are many. It may go back to the nature of the crime itself, such as the crimes of abortion and sexual crimes in general, particularly those that occur within the family, since this kind of crime takes place in secret, and people usually prefer to keep the scandal quiet rather than have the authorities intervene to punish the perpetrator and whatever social shame that may bring which would remain all their lives. The refraining from reporting may be due to the wish to take revenge on the perpetrator, and perhaps to fear of the revenge of the perpetrator and his relatives. The refraining from reporting may be due to fear of falling under criminal penalty or social disapproval, such as the woman of ill repute who asks a midwife to abort her and then suffers harm as a result, or the man robbed of his money by one of the prostitutes after he has had relations with her, and likewise the woman victim of rape after she had taken the first step in luring her rapist and then stood between him and herself so that he raped her. The refraining from reporting may also be due to not being convinced of the wisdom behind the criminalisation, such as the woman who allows one of her close relatives to have relations with her. And the victim in crimes arising from the use of the computer may refrain from reporting in order to conceal the method of committing the crime so that it is not imitated by others, and out of fear of adverse publicity and the loss of the confidence of the shareholders in their business.
But the clearest and most serious of the reasons for victims of violence refraining from reporting is the prevailing belief among them of a lack of trust in the criminal justice agencies, a lack of respect for them, and the wish to stay away from the criminal process in general and from the police in particular. It is not difficult to grasp this feeling if the individual is certain that only a small proportion of the crimes known to the police are those in which a conviction is handed down.
Giving effect to this right requires that the victim's recourse to the authorities be without procedural obstacles or material cost, and that they be given the opportunity to express freely the facts of the complaint, without interruption. They also have the right to express their point of view and the grounds for their concern. The police must help them to recall the details, without irritation or mockery, even if the case is trivial in their eyes.
It must not be forgotten that the victim of violence may not report or complain for reasons they consider valid, such as not knowing the perpetrator, or to cover up the scandal, or because of a lack of evidence, or because of their own judgment of the appropriateness of setting the criminal case in motion or not, in complaint-based crimes. And whoever has the right not to report at all has the right to report some of the facts and not others, and they also have the right to judge the suitable time for submitting their complaint or report, bearing in mind the limitation period and the reasonable period so that the evidence is not lost. Delay in reporting the crime must not lead the police to reduce the importance of questioning the victim. And in giving effect to this right, victims of violence may submit their complaints against the police themselves, if they find negligence or bias on their part. It goes without saying that they have the right to make observations on the police's work regarding their case, and indeed regarding its general policy in combating violence, without that having any effect, whether of favour, arbitrariness or coolness, on the police officers towards their case.
And in many cases the wife does not complain for the following reasons:
(1) She tries in a positive way to change the man so that he gives up the abuse.
(2) She hopes on the basis of earlier promises from the man.
(3) Her feeling of guilt that she is destroying the family.
(4) Her fear of the man's threats.
(5) She has no social and economic resources to rely on herself.
(6) She has no place to turn to.
(7) Another reason for the woman staying in the home is a psychological condition, namely "attachment to the abuser": an emotional bond forms between the woman and the man who abuses her.

How to identify the case
Identifying cases of the ill-treatment of women may be easy and simple, such as seeing a bruise or a wound, and may be complicated, such as needing to elicit information through direct questions requiring a specialised researcher. The indicators of severe abuse are the occurrence of a physical injury requiring medical care, or the occurrence of injuries to the children, or if the violence results in the mother and the children leaving the home. It must be noted that academic studies have shown that in one of every six cases of ill-treatment of children, the mother is also subjected to abuse, and accordingly the mother must be asked directly about her being subjected to abuse.
The intervening worker (the specialist) must be alert to the general indicators of the possibility of the woman being subjected to abuse, namely the woman's chronic complaint of poor health, her frequent visits to the doctor, the use of medical sedatives, a history of a suicide attempt, the existence of abuse of her children, her entering into states of agitation, tension, anger, irritability and insomnia, her suffering from confused and muddled thinking, her inability to take decisions, and her holding rigid views about the role of men and women. As for the general indicators in the abusive man, they are a history of ill-treating a woman or ill-treating a child in his family of origin, a suspicion of his being physically abusive to his children or a sexual assailant, being habituated to alcohol or drugs, and the existence of the following traits: impulsiveness, fits of anger, jealousy, a feeling of grandeur, dependence on his wife, immaturity, and holding rigid views about the role of men and women.
The behavioural patterns of the abused woman are
(1) She appears shy, fearful, confused, changeable, passive, and may be in a state of weeping.
(2) The assailant does not move away from the victim and answers the questions on her behalf.
(3) The existence of a delay between the time of the injury and the time of arriving at the doctor.
(4) The woman appears hesitant to give detailed information about the nature of her injury.
(5) The victim's explanation of the injuries conflicts with the nature of the injuries.
(6) The woman victim minimises the importance of the injuries.
As for the patterns of injuries in the abused woman, they are:
(1) Multiple bruises to any part of the victim's body.
(2) Burns from household implements, the heater, cigarettes, or caustic substances.
(3) Injuries to the face, tearing of the gums and broken teeth, fractures of the jaws.
(4) A perforated eardrum.
(5) Old untreated fractures.
The psychological manifestations in the abused woman are:
(1) Depression, unable to endure, feeling lonely, etc.
(2) The family becomes isolated without mixing with friends or relatives.
(3) Severe depression that paralyses her movement.
(4) Her condition resembles the psychological condition of a hostage.
(5) She may suffer an acute bout of insomnia.
(6) She feels palpitations of the heartbeat.
(7) A bout of shortness of breath.
(8) Fits of severe weeping.
(9) She may suffer a neurotic insomnia disorder.
(10) A suicidal tendency.
(11) Misuse of drugs.
(12) Psychosomatic symptoms.

The victim must understand that beginning a new life without violence is a long process accompanied by distress for many women, and depends essentially on the resources available in society to help the woman and her children in the fields of social services, in providing a safe place for her and her children to live, and also in the field of education, vocational rehabilitation, reintegrating her into society, and providing legal support for her.