Definition

Domestic violence/domestic abuse could be defined as violence or abusive behaviours by members of the family as well as ``intimate partners´´.
It includes, physical aggression, psychological and emotional abuse,sexual abuse, e.t.c.

However, the awareness, definition, and the perspective taken on domestic violence varies from country to country and also on the individual persons.

www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/digest6e.pdf

ARTICLES ON DOMESTIC VIOLENCE IN TURKEY:http://www.blogger.com/www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkey-signs-international-treaty-on-violence-against-women-2011-04-19

http://www.blogger.com/www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/02/20/domestic-violence-in-turk_n_168661.html

Causes and Effects of Domestic Violence

Causes of Domestic Violence

Generation Cycle

“81% of men who batter had fathers who abused their mother.”¹

When children are beaten by a family member (especially a parent) they have self-doubts and they have a strong sense of inferiority because they think they are doing something wrong. They are frustrated and want to prove their power and worthiness. Therefore children who were victims of domestic violence have a very high chance to become abusers. Children who see their parents battering other family members learn that violence is a way to solve problems. They take their parents as role models and become abusers too. Domestic violence is for this reason a vicious circle.

Substance Abuse

“Women whose partners abused alcohol were 3.6 times more likely than other women to be assaulted by their partners.”³

Drug and alcohol are no direct causes of domestic violence even though abusers often use substance abuse as an excuse for their behaviour. Due to alcohol and drugs however abusers often lack of self-control and are very short-tempered and so they release their aggression.

Masculine Authority

Due to traditions men feel inferior to women and so they think can do what they want to their wife as she is their property. Some men feel that if they do not have absolute control over their family they are not real men and their honour is hurt. Men therefore batter their wives and children.

Unemployment

“An extensive 2004 report by the National Institute of Justice found that the rate of violence against women increases as male unemployment increases. When a woman's male partner is employed, the rate of violence is 4.7%. It's 7.5%when the male experiences one period of unemployment. It's 12.3% when the male experiences two or more periods of unemployment.”²
While unemployment may not be a primary cause of domestic violence it adds to anger and dissatisfaction in families. This aggression is then released to a family member by emotional or physical violence.

Unawareness
Victims often do not report domestic violence and even deny actions because they are scared of the consequences of the abusers. Many women also do not know who to contact and are afraid they will not be understood and supported by their family and friends.

Mental Illness

Domestic violence is not linked to mental illness because most abusers only abuse their victims when nobody sees them. This proves that they are very well aware of what they are doing and do not suffer from some kind of illness. Some abusers however have psychological issues because they once were assaulted.

Effects of Domestic Violence

When I researched the internet on the ‘Effects of Domestic violence’ I crossed a very informative document from UNICEF (“Domestic Violence Against Women and Girls”; especially pages 8-9 deal with this topic. The effects are both physical and psychological at various levels.

http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/digest6e.pdf

Causes and Effects of Domestic Violence on a National and Personal Level

Domestic violence is an issue of great importance in Turkey, because many women and children are affected by it. Men abuse their women physically, emotionally and sexually mainly because relatives pressure them to prove their masculinity and authority. Particularly in rural areas men and women do not have an equal position in society therefore men believe they have the right to abuse their women. When families have financial strains the husbands/fathers may also become violent because they cannot bear the pressure. Despite the high number of abused many Turkish women try to hide their situation because they are scared of their families’ punishment. Many Turks also believe that a certain amount of fierceness - especially towards children - is necessary to raise children in a disciplined manner. The most common outcome of these actions is physical injuries. However, much graver is the fact that hatred and aggressiveness is passed to the next generation.

Personally, I think that domestic violence is mainly caused by ignorance of both the victims and the society, a childhood of violence and the pressure exerted on men to prove their power.

Especially in rural areas, due to the lack of education and tolerance the unequal position of both sexes causes tension. However, domestic violence is not only an issue in rural areas. As a matter of fact I think people around me could also be victims of domestic violence, even though my classmates come from rich well-educated families that are well respected members of our society like doctors politicians, authors, professors, engineers, lawyers etc. Despite the fact that education is not an issue in this case; the role of women is dictated by long-lasting traditions. For example in the upper class there is the constant pressure on the parents to make sure their children are doing well in school, have the correct behavior and are dressed according to the newest fashion. This can lead to aggressiveness or rejection towards the children or wives. The consequence is that some parents try to buy their children’s love to make up for the lack of time and care. The violence women or children face in higher social classes can be as bad as in the lower social classes. Therefore I believe domestic violence is not linked to social class.

I do not think domestic violence is largely caused by unemployment, mental illness or substance abuse, even though they may encourage it, because many families face these issues without violence.

Even though the causes of domestic violence may be very different I think the effects are similar. Victims often cannot bear domestic violence for a long period without having some serious mental and/or physical damage. The consequences may become worse if there is no awareness of the issue in the community. If victims do not openly speak about domestic violence the problem will stay secret and become worse because the abusers are not stopped. Many victims -especially if they come from higher social classes- are very worried about their reputation therefore they hesitate to express their problems.

Bibliography:

For the text above I the following sources:

1. A PDF from the National Coalition against domestic violence (NCADV). This document had very interesting facts but concentrated more on numbers than on explanations. http://www.ncadv.org/files/DomesticViolenceFactSheet%28National%29.pdf
2. This page summarised and explained the main causes of domestic violence. Therefore it was useful for the start.
http://www.allaboutlifechallenges.org/causes-of-domestic-violence-faq.htm
3. The PDF from www.womensaid.org.uk answered many questions about domestic violence and its causes. It however mainly concentrated on domestic violence against women. (Since this was a PDF I cannot give a link. The PDF was titled: "Domestic Violence: Frequently Asked Questions Factsheet 2009"
4. The last source I used was from UNICEF. It explained the causes of domestic violence in great detail but also had summarising tables. The document gave information about domestic violence against different groups but concentrated on domestic violence against children and women.
http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/digest6e.pdf

Pictures from: http://www.erkline.com/sign-in-domestic-violence.html , www.peterhorstneumann.de

1: quote from "The Effects of Domestic Violence on Children" N.J. Department of Community of Community Affairs, Division of Women

2: quote from http://womenslawreports.blogspot.com/2008/10/domestic-violence-increases-with.html

3: "Risk factors for injury to women from domestic violence". Demetrios N. Kyriacou, Deirdre Anglin, Ellen Taliaferro, Susan Stone, Toni Tubb, Judith A. Linden, Robert Muelleman, Erik Barton, and Jess F. Kraus. The New England Journal of Medicine 341:1892-98। December 16, 1999.

Statistics on Domestic Violence

• This image shows how prevalent domestic violence is in our societies, both developed and developing. Although all of us are affected by domestic violence, research has shown that 85% of domestic violence victims are women. The age group most affected of all is 20-24. About 1 in 4 women have experienced physical domestic violence at some point in their lives.
• It is also frightening to acknowledge how many women accept and justify domestic violence for a valid reason. Such reasons include burning the food, going out without notice, arguing, etc...; the most widespread reason which could justify violence was neglecting children. Research also showed that domestic violence acceptance was inversely proportional to the level of education a woman received. The education level of a woman affected her views much more than her social status or income. In recent years justification of domestic violence began to fall rapidly among women. As an example, acceptance fell by 52% in Ghana from 2003 to 2008, from 85% to 37%. In a study of 80 countries only two showed and increase in domestic violence accepetance: Cambodia and Jordan. This survey was conducted by UNICEF, and took place in 80 developing countries located in Africa, Asia, the CIS, and the Pacific. The highest levels of domestic violence accpetance were in Africa.
• From the justification of domestic violence serious problems arise. A lot of people do not go to the police and the perpetrator goes unpunished. A survey has shown that only 1/4 of all domestic violence incidents, 1/5 rape assaults, 1/2 stalkers are reported to the police. When people do turn to the police, in a lot of countries (especially developing) domestic violence is viewed as a private matter and police do not interfere. Without police involvement, it is not rare when domestic violence results in death. One in three of homicide victims were killed by their partners; a big percentage of these victims faced domestic violence.
• Domestic violence also has a high economic cost since a country has to pay for the healthcare of the victims and the days that they have taken off work. Especially in developing nations, this results in a vicious cycle where domestic violence drains money which the government could use for the prevention of the violence. In the U.S.A about 5.8 billion dollars are spent as a result of domestic violence. These statistics and the statistics in the first paragraph come from the NCADV, National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, a non-profit organization.

Sources:
1.The image comes from the International Museum of Women homepage: http://www.imow.org/wpp/learn/maps/index . The site also contains other maps on restrictions imposed on women in different countries, the wages women get as compared to men, and the involvement of women in governments.
2.http://www.ncadv.org/
3.http://www.childinfo.org/attitudes_data.php

VAWA

The Violence Against Women Act. This was a federal law passed by the United states as a part of the Violent Crime Control and Law enforcement act of 1994.The VAWA has emphasized its efforts on creating a coordinated community response to domestic violence in other words their main aim is to rise awareness and caution the community against domestic violence, in the United States. An I-VAWA was created with the conjoined efforts of the Amnesty International, The Family Violence Prevention Fund and the , Women Thrive World Wide organization this act was carried to an internationally global level. This act has been a major contributor to dealing with domestic violence .This organization helps and supports millions of women and girls who have come face to face with not only domestic violence but any kind of abuse or crime that they were subject to or victimized by.

MATRI

Matri is an American organization with a motto that is : “ Helping women help themselves. They are a nonprofit organization that helps women from South Asia deal with domestic abuse and violence .this organization propagandizes itself through newspapers in South Asia its ads are mostly published in mainstream publications. It is certainly not a large-scale organization and depends mostly upon volunteers wishing to help women in need, however what they do counts since there are very few organizations that deal directly with this issue. The volunteers are a number of people with a variable knowledge of languages that receive a brief course of how to become counselors on domestic violence and get to work immediately. Apart from moral support in the forms of counseling this organization also provides financial aid , in the forms of : free transportation, provision of a living space ( often for a short period of time that allows the victim to recover and get back on their feet.) , economical support in the early stages of independent lives of victims of domestic abuse.

FVPF

The Family Violence Prevention Fund works to create a violence free community a

nd reaches out to help those whose lives have been devastated by violence. The FVPF has been breaking new ground for a long time now and recently reached new audiences including teenagers and men. This is valuable to our project because they have recently been trying to reach and raise awareness amongst an age group that we are also targeting at the moment. This is a Much larger and International organization that has made large contributions to the International Violence Against Women Act. They wrote the platform for action in the UN confer

ence on Womens rights in Bejing and launched one of the first campaigns in public education to raise awareness on the issue. They are currently running a lot of problems dealing with various aspects of domestic violence. One of their interesting programs is “ Coaching men into boys” They believe that providing good role models for young boys and will benefit the society and reduce future domestic violence. The CBIM was started out in 2001 as an awareness campaign designed to inspire men to educate their students and sons to respect women and to caution them against domestic violence. However now this

program has grown into a curriculum that is given to coaches or teachers in schools and they apply it to their athletes or classroom. They also do things like aid victims of domestic violence in and out of the courtroom they provide judicial as well as financial aid. The program that they have recently started with teenagers not only teaches them what domestic violence is , how to avoid it and whom to contact but also how to build healthy relationships so that you don’t have to deal with domestic violence in the first place.

Bibliography :

http://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/section/our_work/

http://www.publishamerica.net/product87827.html

http://www.ncdsv.org/publications_vawaact.html

http://www.maitri.org/agency.html

( for my posts )

Domestic Violence Solutions

It is impossible to completely stop domestic violence all over the world, but it can be decreased. First of all, domestic violence awareness must be raised. A lot of people regard domestic violence as a private problem and are afraid to relate their experiences to anybody who can help. This is especially true for communities in developing countries where some forms of domestic violence are deep-routed traditions. But, this does not mean that all of the community supports these traditions and goes on implementing them. Through awareness and community involvement attitudes towards domestic violence can be turned around. Raising awareness would:

• make those who face violence, especially people in denial or isolation, consider the issue
• provide those who are abused with direct solutions like informing people of the abuse hotline
• make the public constantly conscious of domestic violence, conscious that this is a problem that has to be solved, conscious that people around them may be facing this violence; concious that they may face violence in the future
• contribute to the formation of new norms in society which dictate that domestic violence is unacceptable
• start dialogues about violence in families and in communities bringing people one step closer to the commencement of solving the issue

But, on its own public awareness does not bring about action. A few solutions which lead to action are:
1.Involving the community in services which work to abate domestic violence. A community:

• knows what problems different families may be facing, and some families where domestic abuse happens
• or members of it are the first place to which most people would turn to if disclosing situations of violence (People would first share their troubles with their relatives and friends. It is important that the community knows how to react to this.)
• is aware of the cultural circumstances which the abused or abusers live in
• is affected by domestic violence as a whole. Its constituents should be given a say in how to combat the problem
• often has individuals who are aware of the problem and are willing to take action
• could form the social environment where domestic abuse is unacceptable

As action a community would:

• participate in projects already run by the government and social services
• exert social pressure to stop domestic violence
• at the same time avoid stigmatization of the abused and the abusers
• incorporate domestic violence as a conversation topic in events like a gathering, etc...
• identify the social measures taken against an abuser, since especially in poor or immigrant communities there is a fear of turning to government officials because of the risk of deportation, arrest, or children being taken away into foster care
• make stopping domestic violence a priority by understanding how it is caused by and is causing other types of problems like violence in the streets, etc...

2. Link efforts to stop domestic violence with those that aim to stop violence against children or at times with programmes combatting substance abuse, violence on the streets, etc... Studies show that these issues are inter-related and stopping one is impossible without stopping the other. This especially true for domestic and child abuse.
3. Providing a stable and appropriate environment by adressing issues of poverty, health care, justice, substance abuse, etc... in communities in which these problems are prevalent. The bad situation of the factors listed above are some of the causes of domestic violence.
4. Provide the abused who wish to leave their abuser with a temporary shelter, if possible a home, a job, an opportunity to care for theri children, most of all a safe environment.
5. Programmes should also regard domestic violence cases as individual. Some women do not want to leave their home for valid reasons. They should not be pressured or stigmatized against. Programmes should aim to aid them in different ways e.g. psychological.
6.Victims could be provided with psychological help by organizing supporting groups or one on one counselling.
7.Abusers should be provided with a chance to learn how to combat the urge for domestic violence. Workshpos on this are gaining popularity around the world.
8. Countries, especially in developing nations should make stricter laws on domestic violence and put more emphasis on enforcing these laws.
9. Provide education to women and girls. In developing nations the neglection of education for girls leads directly to domestic abuse. Without education women are subordinate to men and depend on them for a living. Without education women might think that living being abused is the only possible way.
Sources:

1. http://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/userfiles/file/ImmigrantWomen/PFV-Community%20Engagement.pdf
2. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2010/10/27/bts.obama.domestic.violence.cnn
3. http://www.vawnet.org/Assoc_Files_VAWnet/BCS18_EP.pdf

Also written by: Anna Zheltukhina

Survey Results

These are the results to a survey about Domestic violence, we distributed in our school and sent to a school in Israel. To view the graphs please click on them.

This is a poster I designed to raise public awareness and to promote our blog. I hung this poster up in my school.

Domestic Violence Awarenes Poster

I had written an email to Mrs Schmidt while we were working on this project .......

here is the exchange we had :

Hello Mrs.Schmidt

I am a student in an international school in Turkey called BLIS (Bilkent International and Laboratory School). I am currently working on a project on Domestic Violence. Me and my classmates are currently working on the creation of a blog. We are trying to raise awareness on the issue amongst our peers and the community of our school.As you might know In Turkey domestic violence is a common problem, especially in eastern regions where there is less development.In fact there was a case recently when on a popular TVshow a woman stood up and said that she was constantly being abused by her husband but she did not know what to do and who to contact.She said she didn't know how to respond and at the same time remain a good Muslim, the show host advised her to bottle up her feelings and continue living with her husband.In Turkey four out of every ten women are abused by their husbands and recent study s have shown that 90 percent of these women don't seek help many simply because they don't know who to ask or because this kind of help is not available to them.this is why we thought that this was an important topic that our school community ( which is much isolated from this) should be aware of. So far we have started our blog and created a survey , to distribute to people in our school and also other schools.

I have read a lot about your inspirational story however I couldn't actually find a copy of your book in any of the local bookstores.We would be honored if you could visit our blog , your comments , criticisms would be much appreciated!

http://blisdva.blogspot.com/

I was also wondering if you could take our Survey at https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGVNWi1rS004OS0zRGdmOTlqWi1RWkE6MQ

We would be very interested in your Ideas on how we can raise awareness on this issue. Could you also please tell us more about yourself and your own experience with domestic violence ? How would you advise people who are going through domestic Violence , what would you tell them to do ?

with your permission we would also like to make a blog entry about you and your story/book.

Thank You !

Best Regards

Maria

Hello Maria,

Wow, lots of powerful and important questions, so I will do my best to answer. First off my book is only available via Amazon.com, I also have a link on there with my name offering an autographed copy of my book as well as an Embracelet of Hope (click HERE)

Doing what you are doing, writing a blog, sharing awareness and tools for others, but most importantly, NOT being silent is the best thing you can do to raise awareness about DV. It's the dirty little secret no one wants to talk about, but too many are effected by it. How do I talk to others about it? I carry business cards on me with my book title and website. It's a way to "break the ice" and it always amazes me how many respond with the fact they they have been or know someone who has experienced DV.

One of the foundations I'm climbing for in September (please visit www.climbforempowerment.com) does work to raise global awareness as this is a global issue. They're called "The Pixel Project", their link is on my website. They provide resources for women all around the world who need help. The other foundation is Girl Child Network Worldwide and they teach girls to become leaders in their own communities.

My book goes into more detail about my story, but I do have some info posted on my bio at my main websitewww.kathleenmschmidt.com

As for women going through it, the best thing is to listen to them, re-assure them it is NOT their fault (many get caught up in the victim blaming). I know there are many cultures with belief systems that force women to stay with their abusers, husband or not; it does not justify the abuse.

Let me know if you have any more questions and thank you for reaching out!!

~Kathleen M. Schmidt

it was so exiting to actually contact a real author !!!!