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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Violence in the Home (III)






I happened to run into a friend on the street, and we got to talking about what was happening in each other’s lives, as you do when you haven’t seen one another for some time.. Then we got into “For Men’s Eyes Only” and I was explaining the role I thought this column has to play and some of the topics that are being covered, such as “Violence in the Home”. He responded, “What about it?” Judging by the way a cloud came over his face and the tenor of his voice in asking the question, I quickly concluded that I had a hold of a live wire.

He wanted to challenge me, but by me insisting that I was only going to be the listener I came to gain an insight into the mind of this particular abuser. What follows are the opinions of this individual.

The Objective

It is all about respect. A man is the head of his family. In his own home he is to be treated as lord and master. All before him shall bow down and pay homage. His wife shall do her duty always and she must show deference in the way that she talks to him, and in the things that she says; in the way that she dresses for him, in the manner of her submission to him. She must even take care to affect the proper walk, showing a total lack of confidence and self-assurance.

To his children he is all. He is the fountain of all knowledge, and where he contradicts their teachers and other relatives, he is to be regarded as being right and correct. What takes place in his house is absolutely to be of no concern to any other person, including the authorities, or his church.

History

He was one of a family of thirteen children and the family environment was the same as that which he has chosen for his own family. In his father’s family the children were always deeply respectful of both parents, and his trouser belt was the enforcer. Someone always seemed to be receiving a flogging for something or the other, such was the strictness of the family regime. Whenever one of the children did something that displeased their mother, the most dreaded words she could say was, “just you wait until your father comes home!” The child would begin to cry from that moment, and usually it got worse the closer to the time when the father would be expected home.

Supporting Environment

The most important factor in the continuance of the abuse was the support of the family’s religious beliefs and the church to which they belonged. The Church elders always preached that the role of the husband and father was indisputable, no doubt reinforcing their own positions, and that the manner in which the man of the house saw fit to discipline his family was his concern alone.

He said that his wife once went home to her mother, saying that she could no longer take his treatment. Her mother, whom she had said she had witnessed taking a beating on many occasions, simply called in the head of the church and a couple of elders, and they prayed over her. Then they called her husband to come and take her back home. When he got her home he simply had to lay down the law with her.

Discipline

No week should be allowed to pass without all of the family receiving at least one visit with the strap, so as to ensure that no-one forgot, not even for a minute who was boss. This was especially so in case his wife had been watching Oprah Winfrey or some other person who would fill her head with nonsense. However, he insisted that in the case of all of the discipline that he dished out, it was done with a loving, considerate and velvet hand. It was God’s Will that the man be strong and reliable.

His personal relationship with his wife

He insisted that his wife loved him totally. She showed it in every thing that she did. She maintained the home according to his standard and never wavered by either doing more than was expected, nor falling short. When they were out in public she walked in the shadow of him, and she made sure that he would be proud. She never looked at another man.

Whenever he wanted her sexually she was always there for him to do his bidding.

Would he ever change, or could he accept that he might be wrong to treat human beings as though they were his personal slaves?

“No!”


Copyright (c) 2008 Eugene Carmichael