Since domestic abuse has been such a hot topic here...

Since domestic abuse has been such a hot topic here, I thought I would post this article I found today on msn.com. It's titled "An Open Letter to Rihanna". The writer is a woman who was in an abusive relationship and got out.
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Dear Rihanna,

As I write this, the tabloids and TV news channels are obsessing about your relationship with Chris Brown. They want to know why you two reconciled, how many attacks you may have hidden before the one that made headlines in February, and what you'll do if he's tried and goes to jail. Reporters go on and on about battered women and their maddening tendency to forgive the men who hurt them, not realizing their words blame the victim. I know how that must feel. They could be talking about me.

When I was in my early twenties, I fell in love with a "perfect on paper" guy (Ivy League degree, big Wall Street job) who beat me and degraded me in ways I never could have imagined. I did not leave him the first time. Or the second time. It wasn't until four years after our wedding day that I finally staggered out of our marriage as unrecognizable to myself as you must have found your own bruised, swollen face to be. So I'm not going to tell you or anyone else to leave someone you love and expect that will solve all of your problems. I know from experience that leaving is easy. The tough part is figuring out how to pick up the pieces of yourself and make a new life.

I was 22 when I met my abusive lover. I'd just graduated from Harvard and had landed a great job at Seventeen magazine in New York. He was funny, self-deprecating and scrappy in a way I adored. One night he told me that he'd been abused as a child. I listened and I loved him, confident that I could be the one to help. A few of my friends tried to warn me off dating a man with a temper and a rocky past, but I didn't listen. I thought I could handle it.

Then, on our island honeymoon, he attacked me twice while I was driving the rental car. I had gotten lost looking for a barn where we were supposed to ride horses; his reaction was to punch me so viciously that my head hit the side window. A few days later he threw the cold remains of a Big Mac at me while I drove on the highway. At first I excused each attack. He was stressed, I told myself. But eventually the abuse became routine. He pushed me down the stairs, poured coffee grounds on my head and once pulled the keys out of the ignition as I went careening down the highway at 55 miles per hour.

All the while, I kept his assaults a secret. It never occurred to me that someone outside our relationship would understand; I was sure they would blame me for provoking him or think I'd blurred the line between a heated argument and abuse. I did not know then that The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 2 million women are injured by their husbands or boyfriends each year. Three of those women die every day.
It wasn't until my ex-husband almost killed me that I realized we weren't just an ordinary couple with some problems. Six months earlier I'd given him an ultimatum that if he hit me again, I'd leave. To celebrate such a long happy stretch -- and our anniversary -- we planned a trip to Paris. The night before we left, he attacked me. It was as if he'd been saving up six months' worth of anger; his beating was that brutal. My denial broke; for the first time I was scared, terrified actually. Neighbors heard and intervened. The police came. And I left my marriage.

I made a list of all of the people I had to tell. At the top was my mother. I was so scared to disappoint her, but her response was to give me a gift: a gold ring in the shape of a butterfly. I couldn't think of what I had to celebrate, but I got her point immediately: cocoon, butterfly, new life. I knew I was being transformed into something more beautiful in her eyes. And each time I went to the police station or to court to file another restraining order, my mother's present reminded me that while I may have felt like damaged goods, I wasn't.

I left my marriage broke and broken -- physically, emotionally, financially and socially. It took me years to pay off our debts, to enter a room with an easy, confident smile, to fall in love again and trust that the man I loved would not raise a finger to me, ever. But I did. My message to any woman who's been betrayed is this: You have another life waiting for you. You may be isolated, but you're not alone. I hope to welcome you into a very exclusive girls' club. One filled with wise, wise women whose experience with abusive love rests deep in the past.

Looking at my life now -- my quiet, kind husband, our three kids, a satisfying career, a beautiful home -- you'd never guess that I spent my twenties hiding cuts, bruises and a broken heart. At 22, before the beatings started, I thought I was merely lucky -- lucky to have my degree, my job, my cute apartment, my boyfriend. But I don't place my faith in luck anymore. Some of us take our lessons in love straight up. Everything I have now I earned with hard work and hard lessons, plus a stubborn faith that I deserved, despite everything, to live happily ever after. We all do.

With love and support,
Leslie Morgan Steiner
Author of the new book Crazy Love, a memoir of her abusive relationship

 

Thank you for posting this. All of us ... all women everywhere ... must continue to raise awareness and work to rid the world of this scourge. I believe we must include men in our efforts. I don't believe that most abusive men are psychopaths, and I believe they can overcome their problem if they want to. But in the meantime, women must not tolerate abuse.

Thank you again for your efforts

 

I feel bad for Rihanna. I wish people (iow: the tabloids) would just back off. Any kind of abuse, regardless of the age or gender of the victim, is not fun celebrity gossip; it's an incredibly humiliating experience. This is what disturbs me about our popular culture: that people seem to think that what the tabloids are doing is okay. I don't care how rich they are, and I don't care how famous they are. The line has to be drawn somewhere.

I hate tabloids. With a passion. They need to get off of Patrick Swayze's ass, too. The man is dying of cancer. What the hell is wrong with people?

 

Nice letter... a few thoughts though...

You shouldn't include men in this... they already are. Domestic abuse isn't either an issue that is only about men abusing women, and isn't only to be dealt with by women. It has to be dealt with by everyone.

That is in no way to say everyone should be involved in everyone's problems (ie tabloids).

Men don't abuse women... little boys in mens bodies do. Having a temper has nothing to do with it either... I have a temper, I don't abuse women, children, the elderly or the less abled.

Some (of both genders) think that they have the right to treat others in such manners, those people are not adults, regardless of their age. They are stuck in the adolescent stage of hitting out of frustration because they never learned other ways to deal with it.

We solve this (everyone, of both genders), by making sure that those around know they aren't alone or isolated, and that they don't need to hide this stuff or think they will be blamed by intelligent adults.

 

We also solve it by not letting men get away with beating women. The courts should send a clear message ... you beat up a woman, you pay for it ... bigtime.

 

Try truth: The Feminist View Of Domestic Violence vs Scientific Studies http://www.lectlaw.com/files/fam27.htm Read the whole article and then we can talk about who abuses who more.

 

It's amazing how people will try to twist things, and somehow try to make it seem that men beating up women isn't really a problem.

 

Did anyone here say that it's okay for women to abuse men?

 

And it's sad how women cause more violence in the home but no one wants to talk about it. Read the article. It's enlightening! Abuse of any kind is wrong. I never said that it isn't a problem. Again in this forum I have to remind another person to not put words in my mouth. The problem is not gender. Until people stop chasing the imaginary phantoms that feminism has created the problems will never be addressed, nor fixed. Our culture learns to be violent from our mothers, not our fathers. Look it up. Yet, 3.1 million reports of child abuse are filed against men each year, most of which are false accusations used as leverage in a divorce or custody case. The number of violent men has decreased dramatically. The number of violent women have increased dramatically. It seems that the education that men have received in dealing with anger is working. So why then are we not educating women on how to handle theirs? Do you think it's because the truth isn't politically correct?

 

Nope. But the bigger problem is that women do abuse men in larger numbers then men who abuse women. But that is being completely ignored. Why?

 

Until people stop chasing the imaginary phantoms that feminism has created the problems will never be addressed

Imaginary phantoms. Righttttt ...

The most obvious way to deflect attention from a problem is to claim that it's not really a problem.

 

hi i would really like to thank mystik lilac for posting this to us...............its true that untill we raise our voices against such activities nothing actually can help...........

 

I dont think anyone thinks the Rhianna / Chris Brown case is all one sided, even on the physical side.