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Russia backing family violence

In the invisible manual of “How to be perpetrator of family violence”, (which I swear all perpetrators have read,) it says “Tell her ‘No-one will listen to you anyway'”.

Russia is now about to put into place a national policy that family violence is OK, providing that it doesn’t cause “physical harm” (a very grey area). A policy that gives a perpetrator of violence a green light, which is backed by the state – ensuring that “no-one will listen anyway” when victims of violence are finally courageous enough to speak up.

In reality family violence often starts small and escalates over time, so reporting what at first seems to be the ‘difficult’ or challenging behaviour of a partner seems unnecessary and almost petty. At this stage it is likely that the victim does not believe what they are experiencing is family violence. (In my research I have estimated this scenario applies to around 60% of the women.)

Ask a survivor family violence which is worse – physical, or verbal and psychological abuse? The answer will always be the latter because it’s possible to fully recover from a physical assault, but there is no recovery from a verbal and psychological assault – the trauma can remain for a lifetime without intervention.

The conclusion? Family violence is not just physical – it is emotional, verbal, psychological, financial, sexual and so the list goes on. It’s necessary to address all forms of violence if we are to truly make a positive impact.

Russia, whether intended or not, is playing an active role in the increasing incidence of family violence by normalising the presence of violence in families and silencing the voices of women who have worked so hard and so long to be heard.

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A very good day

After persevering through many years of marriage with a man who I thought was just a really difficult person, I had reached a stage where I no longer tried to rescue him each time he screwed up. I had stood back and allowed him to deal with his own problems – I was no longer the Florence Nightingale coming to mend and heal the wounds – and it was working well.

One day, there was yet another incident that followed his same pattern, (a pattern I recognised so very well) and finally he said: “I can’t fool you anymore, can I?”  It was at that point that I realised he had just admitted he had been intentionally “fooling” me for years and I had somehow broken through the mind game. I had survived years of his verbal, emotional, psychological, financial and sexual abuse – I was a survivor of family violence.

On that day things changed for the better and after that, I had many more good days. I didn’t know that over the years I had quietly developed a number of strategies that were effective in coping with his abuse. When I began working with other survivors of family violence, I naturally shared my strategies with them and was surprised to find that they worked equally well for them too. That is when I started to create trainings specific to the needs of the women, as they recovered from the traumatic effects of family violence.

It’s exciting to see that more than 450 women have now been able to understand why their partner did what he did and why they reacted as they did in response to his abuse. A perpetrator’s greatest fear is being found out and losing control. Family Violence Mindset Solutions is about exposing the why and empowering the women and children to create a new “normal” that is vastly different to what they have had in the past.