It’s very hard to tell the difference.
Corporal punishment was outlawed in California schools after a number of cases of outright beatings of children by school officials that resulted in hospitalizations.(I’ve seen the photos). What one considers corporal punishment, another sees as child abuse. Where do we draw the line?
If you saw someone beating a dog on the street or in a yard would you call the cops? How about a woman? I would w/o hesitating, even though I didn’t know the extenuating circumstances or back story.
I remember an old DA with 30 years of experience dealing with child abusers telling me the ONLY thing that stops abusers is JAIL. Counseling, anger management programs, 10-step programs, whatever-the-hell it is — not one of them work, not one. Most of them grew up abused as well.
All we can do is prevention, tell young girls the red flags of abusers, have abusers tell their stories (of course, teens think we’re wrong and don’t know what we’re talking about — until THEY come back years later as one of the tellers of surviving abuse). And, as I mentioned before, some women allow the new man to beat the living hell out of their children because they’re afraid of being alone or don’t want to lose the man.
One young women I worked with two years ago was found this past January along the side of the freeway — murdered and thrown out of a moving car like a piece of trash. She thought she’d escaped her abuser... She left behind a three year old and a baby.
Just a question for you - do you work with abused children, or survivors of those who have continued the cycle and turned into perpetrators? I was under the impression you were dealing with these children to prevent them from continuing their mistakes, dealing with adult women in an abusive situation is a different beast altogether. All I know is that my Mother was a rock for me, and without her I don’t know what I would have done. When I was grown and after she was gone I realized just how badly she had been abused by him before I was ever even born... Ultimately, he was even responsible for her death and although I managed to get him charged with elder abuse, he was never charged with attempted murder. I probably could have won a wrongful death suit against him, but I was too young (24yo) to even know there was such a thing until a year later. The way you spoke in a post about mothers being too stupid, or too afraid to leave - another post of yours about the woman who ended up murdered points to another reason why so many stay. A LITTLE compassion, at least when there isn’t participation and tacit approval is called for with these women.
NOTE to men who have suffered from false accusations by bitter ex-wives and such - and those who are abused by the WOMEN in their relationship - please trade all of the gender descriptions above, and in all of my posts on this thread to know where my heart is. I by no means want to imply that it is only men who are perpetrators of horrific abuse in many ways, shapes, and forms. I know very well that is not the case as my own nephew was almost killed by my sister, and it was her new husband who took the rap FOR her, and obviously didn’t do anything to stop it before it got to the point where my nephew would be dead if not for some extreme life-saving surgery and the grace of God. Too many in our world make assumptions that only men are capable of the type of rage, hatred, anger and control issues behind acts of abuse.