Equipos de Protección Personal y Ropa de Trabajo

Many victim interviewees did not identify themselves as being abused for a

considerable time, even when the abuse reached a level where they required police intervention. Normalisation had two components: either the abuse and violence itself was seen as normal and part of everyday life; or accepting the violence as part of being in a relationship was seen as normal, as evident in the following

observations.

Kim: Did you recognise at any stage that he was abusive or did you think of yourself as being abused?

Lynette: I guess I felt sorry for myself and wondered why did I marry this guy. Why is this happening to me? But I never really did anything about it. My next door neighbour was getting abused as well by her husband….. I‘d seen her with a black eye and stuff too and she never done anything about it. We could hear them sometimes arguing because their bedroom was close to our bedroom; we could hear them argue and her scream and stuff. But police never came. So it was kind of, well it happens to everyone, I‘m not the only one.

Carol: Well I just thought that it was normal, maybe not normal for other people but that was just normal for us.

Rachael: It had probably been going on for days. I can‘t remember. Everything‘s still a blur. It was daily, so I don‘t actually know – it was normal to me and then sometimes it would just be worse.

In some cases, normalisation of violence was conveyed inter-generationally. In the following passage, Sarah describes how her understanding and tolerance of her partner‟s violence was influenced by both his and her own family of origin.

Kim: And his family saying it wasn‘t really that big a deal, did that influence you in the past?

Sarah: Yep, yeah. Get over it. Don‘t be a sook. The first time I probably left him, I actually went out to dinner with his dad and he told me stick with him. I was like that with his mum but she stuck with me and I‘m fine now…..So I think back and think well I‘m not sticking with it. That‘s the most silliest thing to say to somebody; stick with the violence and it will get better at the other end.

Kim: So do you think that at the time that it was happening, that in some way your judgement was affected about what was okay and what wasn‘t and what was normal and what wasn‘t?

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Sarah: Yeah, I think because I grew up with my parents; my dad was very violent to my mum. I remember my dad trying to run my mum over. I remember him smashing stubbies over her head and try to throw things at her while she had my little baby brother in her arms…. I guess I minimised the violence between my partner and me too because he didn‘t actually do any of that to me. Like he didn‘t become that extreme and I guess that‘s how I thought oh well, I haven‘t been punched up or anything. Like my mum would be beaten to a pulp and hide behind me and my bed so he wouldn‘t beat her up any more. But that didn‘t happen to me so I guess that‘s where I got well it‘s not that bad. He‘s just pushing me around and verbally abusing me and a couple of slaps here and there but he‘s not trying to kill me. So I guess in my mind I thought, it‘s not as bad as my mum.

Even when women seek to name the abuse in their lives they are often confronted with the forces of a patriarchal culture that promotes male dominance and demands suffering and endurance from women. Maria described the role of culture in the way her mother-in-law perpetuated the intergenerational cycle of violence within their extended family.

Maria: I come from a culture where it is really a man‘s world. Men can do and say whatever they want to women and we have to accept that….His mother used to say, no, you haven‘t suffered enough, you have to keep going on; that‘s nothing. I‘ve suffered more than you have. And I was intimidated and always thinking what will people think of me.

Participants tended to attribute the abuse to problematic dynamics within the

relationship rather than to controlling or violent behaviour of their partner. The ways in which victims labelled their partners‟ behaviour, demonstrated in a selection of quotes below, provides further evidence that IPV was not recognised.

Lauren: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly right. That‘s not me, I‘m not a victim of domestic violence, you know, he‘s just a really, really bad husband.

Rachael: I know I never deserved to be hit but I did cause a lot of the arguments, I did, but that doesn‘t justify being hit.

Rita: When I was pregnant I can remember that he threw very big shoes right on my tummy. So that‘s when I start to think he‘s having some

problems. I didn‘t realise that he‘s, I think he‘s just angry, everybody can do it if you're angry. But then he started pushing, and then I‘ve got some marks, whenever we had disagreements and fights, I‘ve got some bruises. He started with this until finally he slapped me……….. I never thought that I was an abused woman, not until I started attending the sessions (at a local domestic violence service).

81 There was also a tendency to pathologise the partner‟s behaviour or attribute it to alcohol or drug problems. Under such circumstances, victims perceived a need to get help for their partner rather than seeking help for themselves.

Kim: So what do you think stood in the way of working out the problems? Sophie: He‘s an alcoholic and also there‘s some sort of mental health thing that‘s never been formally assessed or diagnosed…..I tried to get him help but he wasn‘t interested. He‘d sort of start, have one appointment and then just stop seeing people. Started on antidepressants and then stop them himself.

Erin: There was one time when he had a knife to my throat and I had my baby in my arms. I had to act tough. I said, look, I‘m not scared; if you're going to do something, do it. My sister was there because she had said that he had cheated on me with the junkie girl. And I was upset. I didn‘t touch him or anything. I just said, look we‘ll go to her house and we‘ll find out what is going on. And he just lost the plot. At that time he was using Normison tablets. They‘re a jell capsule. They took them off the market because junkies were shooting them up, and they made him a bit funny, you know.

Normalisation not only limits victims‟ ability to perceive the need for help, it limits the type of help they are likely to seek and the extent to which they will take up the services offered. There is often a disparity in perspectives between victims and the police that needs to be bridged before communication can be effective or before a course of action appropriate to the victim‟s circumstances can be determined and acted upon. Police can respond in ways that either confirm or challenge women‟s normalising interpretations. There was evidence that police can and do make an important contribution to counteracting the negative influence of normalisation of abuse by providing women with alternative perspectives that name abuse. These responses are explored in chapter six.