Single Fathers Association director: Violence begins in the home

The society of TT is a hostile and violent one.

It stems from the environment in which a child is brought up and transferred into various types of relationships, resulting in, among other things, domestic violence, director of the Single Fathers’ Association Wendell Grant said yesterday.

He said the aggressive way in which people drive and the road rage people display on the nation’s roads also attested to his statements.

“It begins in the family of origin and migrates outwards. It is imperative that we recognise that the family of origin is the production line of the citizens of any nation. If the production line is defective, we will have a defective product. And that is what we are witnessing in our society.”

Grant was speaking at the Royal Divine Solutions symposium, Domestic Violence–Breaking the Silence, hosted at Cunupia High Secondary School, Cunupia yesterday. He said Government treated the symptoms instead of the root of the problem, and noted that if the core of society–the family–was disregarded, there would be no success in dealing with domestic violence.

A person did not wake up one day and decide to perpetrate domestic violence–it started at home from a young age, Grant said, and the first place a man experienced domestic violence was as a child at home through name calling, emasculating words, licks, and more.

He recalled attempts he made to report incidences of domestic violence against himself to the police and he was met with hostility or apathy, and in the courts people tend to believe the woman instead of the man.

Grant said the most important resource was the human resource. “We can’t protect one aspect of the human resource and disregard the other...We need to treat the problem as a human problem, violence perpetrated by human beings with weaknesses, shortcomings, infirmities, however you want to call it. If we leave out one sex and try to protect and treat with the other, what will happen? We will continue to experience what we are experiencing.”

Isheba McClary, organiser of the event and a counsellor in Virginia in the US, wholeheartedly agreed. She said children who were exposed to domestic abuse at a young age–whether they see it in the household or experience it themselves–often grow up to do the same thing and perpetuate the cycle.

McClary pointed out that someone hearing profanity, inappropriate comments, name calling, fights and other types of mental and emotional abuse between adults over the years, they would do the same thing when they become adults and it becomes a cycle of abuse. She said all abuse–physical, sexual, emotional, verbal, financial–was a way to exercise control over another. Abuse could take the form of isolation, intimidation, using children against a parent, limiting access to children, keeping one person out of financial decisions, preventing a person from doing or getting a job, threats, and more.

She urged people not to take threats lightly. Whether it be the threat of suicide, violence to a family member, or to a person if they leave. “Remember abuse is about power and control. So when a person realises that they lost control over you, all things are possible and you don’t want to risk yourself to be in a situation that could potentially lead to death.”

However, McClary said physical abuse was not the worst form because, although cuts and bruises heal, the effect on the mind was harder to mend. She said telling a child they were stupid, ugly, could not do anything right, or anything negative affected their mind, their self esteem, and stayed with them throughout their lives if they did not get counselling.