SECOND OPINION: Young women must realise what they are getting into
IS YOUR BOYFRIEND an abuser or is he just really into you? A young woman I know is spending more and more time with her new boyfriend. He loves her so much he wants her with him all the time. Recently she told her parents she wants to leave college and move in with him. He thinks education is a waste of time and he will look after her. Her parents are at their wit’s end and have tried everything to make her see sense.
Young women get into situations such as this very often and, unless nipped in the bud, these controlling relationships invariably become more abusive, involving physical, emotional and sexual violence. Women end up living terrible lives of pain and fear because of decisions they made when they were young and without realising what they were getting into.
The Women’s Aid campaign 2in2u, aimed at 18- to 25-year-old women, which began on St Valentine’s day, has been largely ignored by the media, even though the World Bank estimates the health cost of violence against women aged 15 to 44 is similar to the cost of illnesses such as cancer and heart disease. The 2in2u campaign is important because better informed young women might realise they are in an abusive relationship and get out before it becomes harder to leave.
Research shows that when women end up in abusive and violent relationships, the men involved were possessive and controlling right from the start. In these controlling relationships, the boyfriend decides what she wears, isolates her from family and friends, bombards her with texts and checks her mobile phone to see what she is doing.
Checking someone’s mobile phone is not normal behaviour, nor is an expectation that a girl will spend all her time with her boyfriend and distance herself from family and friends. Unfortunately, the young woman involved may think he is “just really into her”.With the added complications of hormones confusing the issue further, she may soon find herself in a relationship that feels wrong – and getting out may not be easy. What she must do is run like hell.
The campaign website, 2in2u.ie, provides a quiz, with questions such as: Does your boyfriend complain about your friends and say you spend too much time with them? The questions are a bit ambiguous and there are too few answer options, but it may help young women to clarify their thoughts about a new relationship. For example, how much time is “too much”? The answer is as much time as you like – it is your life, although this is not the quiz’s “correct” answer.
Another quiz question is: Does he comment on how you look or dress? The quiz’s “correct” answer is: He gives me compliments but that’s it. The reality is that most men have been asked by their partners, “Does my bum look big in this”, and their girlfriends or wives rely on them to give an honest answer.
The abuse of women by husbands and partners is a universal phenomenon. Its prevalence ranges from 15 to 71 per cent depending on the country, the dominance of men in that country and whether violence against women is considered acceptable. Women are more likely to be abused if they are young, old, poor, pregnant, have children, or are members of an ethnic minority.
In Ireland, at least 15 per cent of women experience severe abuse and violence by an intimate partner and this figure is probably an underestimation since the UK figure is 30 per cent. Ireland has inadequate data collection mechanisms but referral figures for the abuse of older people are gathered by the HSE and are an indication of the scale of
abuse in Irish society. Last year, 2,046 of these referrals were made to the HSE.
The National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence (cosc.ie) was developed because of Ireland’s disjointed response to what are actually crimes. At present, six Government departments and more than 100 NGOs are involved in responding to abusive situations and it is COSC’s job to get them all working together. This organisation is making progress and one of the things it wants to do is get intimate partner abuse onto the second-level curriculum. You can sign up for their newsletter on the COSC website.
In the meantime, what can parents do if their daughter gets into an abusive relationship? The answer is to get out the best china, metaphorically speaking, and pretend to make the boyfriend welcome. This is your only chance if you want her to know you are unconditionally on her side. She will be sure to look for your help when it all goes wrong.
Dr Jacky Jones is a former regional manager of health promotion at the HSE