My most recent “aha” moment
I was reviewing a 1998 article on the co-occurrence of wife abuse and child physical abuse and in it, the author referred to the increased number of DV-related newspaper and television documentaries that occurred during the seventies and eighties. This caught my attention.  I did a ProQuest Washington Post search and sure enough, there they were. Many of these media reports used such phrases as “most unreported crime” (Washington Post, March 6, 1976); “wife beating on the rise” (Washington Post, November 19, 1975); and “wife beating hurts children” (Washington Post, March 13, 1985). I started to wonder if there was any reference to co-occurrence prior to the seventies. So I offer the following:

This is an excerpt from a story that ran in the New York Times on December 17, 1853:

Wife-Beating Mania

(Originally published in the London Times on December 2, 1853)

The other day, Thomas Redden, coach trimmer was brought before Mr. Bingham, charged with cruelly beating his wife. The wife swore that on the previous night her husband came home tipsy to his tea. The tea was not ready. She was cleaning the floor at the time when he took hold of the table and dragged it over her. “He said he’d show me how to get the tea ready another time. The children fearing what might happen ran out of the room screaming for the landlord to come to my assistance.” When they came back he struck one of them, eight years of age, and a girl, violently on the face, and was proceeding further, to ill-use her when the woman interfered. He then left that child and went to another. Here again the wife interfered, getting between them, when he struck her on the side of the head, and nearly stunned her. He then went again at the child, she again preventing him, and receiving blows upon the head and face. “After throwing a cup of scolding tea at me he went out, but returned at supper time. When in bed he began digging his knuckles into me, and pinching me cruelly, calling me, at the same time, the most disgusting names. I begged him to cease his violence, as my head was very sore.” He said it would be a sight worse for me what he got done with me; that he would murder me and the children too before morning”

Desperate, the woman eventually sent the children out in their nightclothes to get a police officer who promptly arrested her husband. She told the court that she was a “married English slave” that had endured on a weekly basis her husband’s violence and brutality.

Fast forward 250 years...
The year is 2003, and Susan Still is cowering in the master bedroom, battered and bruised as her husband yells filthy invectives at her, grabs, shoves, hits, kicks, and beats her while their then 13 year old son videotapes the abuse and her then 8 year old son watches. Her husband and batterer often memorialized his violence which he would replay for his own enjoyment and to further terrorize and humiliate his wife. Susan Still not only endured physical brutality as his “white ho slave,” she was also forced to call her husband master, to check in with him when she arrived at work and throughout the day, to ask permission to hug her 8 year old son or make a sandwich. Even more horrifying, her husband often forced the children to join in his verbal and physical abuse her of their mother. The damage to the children was most telling during the husband’s trial which earned him a 36 year prison sentence. The oldest, a daughter, and 21 at the time, testified that “our family was like the Cosby’s” and that her mother’s injuries were probably self-inflicted even after viewing the father videotaped violence. The 13 year old son who videotaped the abuse seethed with resentment as he was forced to testify against his father The 8 year old son broke down and sobbed as he testified that as long as he could remember, his father had abused his mother. The father’s 36 year sentence was the longest ever handed down in a domestic violence case in the state of New York. The judge’s reasoning was that the damage done to the wife and the children was so profound that it warranted the maximum sentence allowable under the law (Buffalo News, May, 24, 2007). Susan Still courageously shared her story on a May 8,, 2007 episode of the Oprah Winfrey show.

The system did not rescue Susan Still and her children. She never called a domestic violence hotline. And child protection didn’t rescue her children. Susan’s saving angel came in the form of a co-worker and friend who knew nothing about domestic violence or child protection. Susan’s angel was not constrained by ideology or statute. The only thing this co-worker knew was that she cared about her friend and co-worker and she was going to help from where she was. I think Susan Schechter would have called this REAL HELP.