08 September 2016
Domestic Abuse
It’s all about control.
by Lynda Goetz
Apparently, one in eleven adults in the UK listens to The Archers. The weekly audience is some five million. The fascination with the storyline about Rob and Helen Titchener, which has been going on for nearly three years, has become national news in itself. On social media, opinions have generally been supportive of Helen, although some people have felt that the whole plot is somewhat over the top and melodramatic. However, several charities have pointed out that Helen has her counterparts in reality and that the airing of this story, in which her manipulative husband Rob slowly undermines her personality and confidence to the point where she finally snaps and is currently on trial for his attempted murder by stabbing, has helped bring such situations to public attention. According to Polly Neate of the charity Women’s Aid, calls to the National Domestic Abuse Helpline (0808 2000 247) increased by 20% between February 2015 and February this year, which she feels is, at least in part, down to ‘The Archers effect’. The charity Refuge, which also advised the BBC during the development of the storyline, likewise feels that the fictional airing of the subject has helped enable women abused in real life to reach out for help, according to a report in the BBC News magazine in April this year.
During the period over which this story has been unfolding, the law in England and Wales has actually changed to help people like Helen. Under S76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015, a new offence of ‘Controlling or Coercive Behaviour in an Intimate or Family Relationship’ was created. This came into force on 29th December 2015 (http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/a_to_c/controlling_or_coercive_behaviour/), and recognised the previous difficulty of proving a pattern of behaviour amounting to harassment in a domestic environment. The abuser appears to the outside world to be charming and caring, but once they have won over their partner they gradually strengthen and increase their control over that person until he/she is isolated and their life and behaviour dominated to such an extent that they have little autonomy. In Helen’s case she was effectively cut off from meaningful communication with her family and friends; Rob has persuaded her that for the sake of her health she shouldn’t work and she shouldn’t drive (following an accident), and has dictated almost all aspects of her life and that of her son Henry, whom he has persuaded Helen he should officially adopt. Helen’s mental state becomes increasingly fragile and Rob uses this to increase further his control. In a fictional situation, the radio listeners are aware of all this and the insidious nature of Rob’s ‘take-over’ are clearly apparent. To those around her none of this is obvious until it is too late and this is all too often the case in real life. Many victims themselves do not seek help until crisis point is reached.
The most commonly used statistic in domestic abuse is that it affects one in four women in their lifetime and one in six men. However, it was pointed out a year ago by Professor Sylvia Walby of Lancaster University that the way the Office of National Statistics (ONS) reports these statistics is fundamentally flawed. This is partly because there is a ‘cap’ on the number of recorded crimes against one victim and partly because the figures take no account of the relationship between victim and perpetrator (they could, for example, be brothers) or the gender of the perpetrator. The fact that the number of incidents against one victim is capped at five, thus denying the importance of repeated instances, is clearly misleading and must inevitably skew the statistics. Polly Neate, who has commented widely and authoritatively on the subject, feels that the way the statistics are presented has also led to what she calls the ‘unthinking mantra’: “Domestic abuse doesn’t discriminate, why should we?” In her view, if the statistics were to be properly presented then it would be evident that domestic abuse is overwhelmingly against women and is absolutely not ‘gender neutral’. That is not, she points out, to deny that men can be victims of domestic abuse, but she considers, probably rightly, their needs to be different.
Men who are the victims of domestic abuse, particularly in heterosexual relationships, tend overwhelmingly to feel shame at their predicament. Their partners may attack them with knives, throw plates at them, dislocate their jaw or isolate them from their family, but they are hardly going to want to tell anybody. I remember listening a few years ago to a radio programme about male victims of abuse; one of the participants, a man of 6’2” who had been subjected to domestic abuse by his wife, saying ‘I was brought up to believe that you never hit or used force on a woman, so how could I retaliate? What would people say if I told them my wife hit me? What sort of man would that make me look like?’ The difference in strength generally between men and women does evidently militate against people thinking of men being the victims of heterosexual domestic abuse. (The specialist service Respect http://respect.uk.net/work/male-victims-of-domestic-violence/ works with male victim of abuse).
All abuse, however, is fundamentally about control and who gets to exercise it. The fact that a fictional radio drama has highlighted this and brought it to the forefront of the national consciousness, at the same time as a law has been passed legislating about behaviour which has remained largely behind closed doors, can only be a good thing. It might be unrealistic and seriously melodramatic to expect the Archers to next have a plotline which addresses domestic abuse against a man, but when the current editor of The Archers Sean O’Connor moves to East Enders to become its executive producer, perhaps he might like to initiate something there?
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