Wife beating, baby battering, Irish style

Janet Martin reports how women suffer strangulation attempts and attacks with razors, knives, broken bottles and clenched fists and how children in Irish homes suffer battering and sexual assaults.

IT TOOK MARY just a month to learn that all was not well with the muchhhailed Family Law (Maintenance of Spouses and Children) Act. She's no lawyer. Just a housewife, as they say. Though not, you might hope, typical. At 11.30 pm one Thursday, her husband Bob reeled in, blackened her eye, punched her in the stomach and threattened to smash a chair over the cot where their baby slept.

Within three weeks she had had him barred under the Act from the house. Justice is swift. Sometimes. Temporary too. The District Court Order was to have lasted three months. In the meantime Bob was to pay her maintenance. At 6 pm the following Friday he was at the house, ostensibly to pay it, which he did, except that he let himself in with his own key, and he stayed.

'What could I do?' says Mary. 'He broke the order, but the court was closed. It didn't open again until the next Monday.' Meanwhile he broke her nose.

Mary's isn't a particularly severe case of battering. In fact the young male solicitor who represented her in court was quite surprised when she got the barring and maintenance orders, for Bob had never appeared in court before. Others mention attemppted murder. Women allege strangulation and suffocation attempts, attacks with razors, knives, broken bottles, clenched fists and feet, deliberate burns and scalds, bites, fractures of nose, teeth, ribs and other bones, dislocations of shoulder or jaw. One woman says her husband intersperses the beatings by dousing her with holy water. One study showed that one in fifteen reegularly battered women has, at some stage, been beaten unconscious. It says while other stories are more severe or dramatic, the following description by one woman is typical:

'He hit me with his fists, feet, and bottles, smashing me to the floor; then he started to kick, sometimes with repeated blows to the face and other parts of the body. He has kicked me in the ribs and broke them, he has tried to strangle me and taken me by the shoulders and banged my head against the floor. During my marriage of nearly four years, I have received constant bruises all over my body; this has been more so during pregnanncy. I have received black eyes, cut lips, and swollen nose. Most of my bruises have been to the scalp where they do not show. On one occasion I had bruises to the throat and abdoomen and was unable to speak; on admission to hospital I was found to have multiple injuries and broken ribs.'

Domestic violence is a frequent feature of Irish family life. However, the extent of it is unknown. Researchhers, social workers, court officials can only guess at national statistics based on their experiences in specific geographical regions. For instance, the AIM Women's group in Dublin reports that one in four women seeking advice on a particular problem mentions violence as an additional one. The AIM group in Galway put this at 70 75 per cent. A district court official in the Dublin metropolitan area has, for his own information, compiled figures which show that one in three women seeking maintenance provisions through the courts cite violence.

The figures are misleading for, in fact, they hide violence where material and social hardship is not occuring øonly in these cases are people forced to seek the help of outside agencies.

Crime rates disguise the facts even more successfully for these include the whole gamut of 'offences against the person', from murder to common assault, and make no distinction beetween assaults by spouses and any other kind. Even if distinctions were made, domestic assault cases - which run annually into thousands - are, in fact, known to be options exercised rarely by battered spouses. Barring orders are more frequently used and are, in effect, three months' cooling off periods issued by the courts, during which time a husband is expected to stay away from the family home and his wife, but the police have no powers to arrest if the order is contravened. A common assault conviction carries a statutory penalty under which a hussband can be bound to the peace for two years and/or a maximum of six months' imprisonment. Generally the husband appeals} in which case he is released and home again that night for a return bout. Alternatively, he goes to jail and his wife is deprived of an income for the period. Neither, it appears, is a very satisfactory option.

If doubt exists then about the exxtent of family violence, there are none at all about it being a problem that grows ever more apparent. In spite of this there is a silence that is deafening on the part of Government agencies, so chiefly the problem rests on voluntary women's groups.

The Dublin Women's Aid organizaation, which offers emergency accornoodation to battered wives and their children has, in three years, seen a dramatic increase in demand for accoomodation. In the year to July 1977 they provided 19,000 bed-nights for over 210 families.

Since they began in 1975, similar voluntary services have begun in Bellfast, Derry and Limerick. Three more are planned in Coleraine, Cork and Galway. A Waterford convent also operates an emergency shelter.

Child abuse, including frequent reeports of sexual assaults on children, is another, although arguably different facet of domestic violence. The study by Son a Smith and Patrick Deasy for the Crumlin Children's Hospital in Dublin (also a referral centre for the entire country) estimates that child abuse accounts for a minimum of one in 700 childhood hospital admissions. And, according to the authors, increased awareness and recognition would at least double the incidence. This is borne out by Amelda McCarthy and Paul McCrea who looked at children referred by different agencies to the Mater Hospital's Child Guidance Clinic because of behavioural problems. They say there is little awareness of battering by the referring agencies, even where it exits.

Sexual assaults on children is the latest contribution to the picture. The tiny year-old Galway women's centre which opens only one day a week says reports come in at a rate of 3 per cent of all requests for help. AIM group in Dublin quote one senior garda officer as saying that if wife abuse is the social problem of the 'seventies, incest will be the social problem of the 'eighties.

While there are doubts about the links between child abuse and wife battering, there appears to be no doubt that the two do, in fact, occur frequently together. AIM and Women's Aid say it is the wives (battered themmselves) who complain of husbands who do the bashing, although Amelda McCarthy and Paul McCrea have found that it's mothers who are more often responsible.

Not surprisingly, however, it is the suggestion that wife-bashing is a weird and exotic sexual turn-on or that some women sub-consciously seek men who will batter them, that is the body blow to feminists.

As Erin Pizzey , in her book Scream Quietly Or The Neighbours Will Hear, put it: 'If a psychiatrist wants to see battered women as natural victims, that's the way they'll appear to him.

One psychiatrist who visited the house (Chiswick Women's Aid) would not give up this point of view. He stuck to it despite all that we said to him. In the end the argument was not resollved, but he went out into the garden. Janet and Jenny were so angry at him they booted him up the arse with a football. Even then he didn't react ˜he kept his cool and his opinions to the end of his visit and, sadly, took them away with him unchanged.'

His is the prevailing view. One former Garda Commissioner says it is why they are reluctant to become involved in domestic 'squabbles'. His flair for understatement seems to carryover into the courts.

'Nobody likes dealing with family pro blems', says Maurice McMurrough of the Family Law Centre at the Metroopolitan District Court. He is directly concerned with cases which are heard in what is popularly called 'family courts'. In fact there is no such thing, though matrimonial hearings generally are held in private. Since, however, they have become the focus of feminist attention I much criticism has been levelled their way. Some justices, for instance, are known to be sympathetic in their treatment of women. Others not. Even Justice Delap, who during his time in the family courts earned a reputation of belonging to the former group, does not escape criticism. He recently expressed regret that the law makes no provision that would enable courts to give husbands, barred from their homes, visiting rights to their children.

'Irish maleness!' says Nuala Fenneil, who started the AIM Group and subbsequently Women's Aid. 'There is a simplistic belief that you can separate the husband who is a bastard to his wife from the man who is father to the children.'

There is criticism too over the absence of facilities prior to court appearances for it is not uncommon to find a queue of women waiting for the opportunity to pour out the intiinate details of their domestic affairs to court officers in the full hearing of everyone who happens to be there. They have no alternative.

Solicitors, for their part, are notorriously unwilling to take on family casework, For one thing, it doesn't pay. Indeed a measure of their unwilllingness is the fact that the Free Legal Advice Centres (FLAC), which are operated by law students in Dublin, reckon to have dealt with 6,000 family law cases in eight years of operation.

Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the champions of battered women have been other women. In Ireland) the single Establishment exxception is the Catholic Hierarchy whose Commission for Justice and Peace has recently issued a minute Teachers' Study Guide called 'Violence in the Family'.

The assertion of women's rights has created the climate for exposure of the previously hidden facts of wife abuse, says Gayford in his sympatheetic study of women in Chiswick. Specifiically they found, a natural publicist in Erin Pizzey , who quite unintentionnally stumbled into the pro blem when she and other Chiswick women set up a centre for the purposes of social conntact. Since 1971 the centre has become a refuge and a model for hundreds of others in Britain and Ireland. In Britain there is now a National Women's Aid Federation. The Derry, Coleraine and Belfast centres come under the Northern Ireland Women's Aid Federaation. 'It helps when we are trying to get money out Of the Government', says Audrey Middleton.

In that respect they have had some success although the biggest catch £60,000 - came to them indirectly through a charitable housing association called Belfast Improved Houses Ltd. The offer was made after an incendiary destroyed the Belfast refuge. Within

The pattern in the Republic is quite different. There are no real links beetween the centres and hardly any at all with Government money. Limerick's centre is run by Adept, an off-shoot of AIM, Galway's, will be run by AIM and the Dublin centre by Irish Women's Aid. Cork, alone, is being purpose-built and in a rare gesture from officialdom, Jack Lynch laid the foundation stone. Each is negotiating with their regional health boards for money. Dublin's experience seems to be typical. Help from the Eastern Health Board comes mainly in kind, (bedding, blankets, soap, detergents) but also in the form of, so far, annual grants of between £1,600 and £2,300. This is swallowed up almost totally on rent; a problem sollved recently when they decided innstead to squat in the disused Overseas Club in Harcourt Terrace, which is owned by the Legion of Mary. The matter, says the Legion, is in the hands of their solicitors.

Women's Aid, meanwhile, is still hoping it will get the tenancy. It is a vast and draughty building converted into a hostel but not for the 27 families presently in residence.

The decision to squat followed an outbreak of gastro-enteritus in the five-bedroomed house they occupied until last August. At the time, 117 people lived there.

Refuges follow the self-help principle with women taking the decisions at three-times weekly house meetings, although Dublin now pursues a policy of employing professionals, including one man; both facts raise eyebrows elsewhere. Latest to join the seven member staff is Bernadette Barry, a researcher, whose brief is to provide some much-needed data on the whole subject of family violence, to investiigate associated issues like housing and health and to evaluate the work of Women's Aid.

In practical terms it is the women themselves who are uncovering most of the problems. Recipients of Suppleementary Welfare Allowances are often under pressure from officials to take out maintenance proceedings against their husbands. However, many more, says Elish McCull~i.lgh, the Dublin centre's liason officer, aren't even aware of the existence of Supplementtary Welfare. In effect, it is a source of income if they do decide to quit their husbands and their homes. Rates are aligned to other non-contributory payments.

The principle difficulty, though, is finding somewhere to live. At present Dublin Corporation's housing list is closed until April 1, so rio new appliications are being considered. 'It means if a woman leaves her home today she will have to wait three months to get on the list and possibly another six months to get a house,' says Elish McCullough. 'In the meantime, the onus is on Women's Aid to provide her with accornodation. That's nine month§ in a chronically over-crowded hostel, so she is under pressure to give up and go back.' Which is exactly what most women do.

Even those who stick it out have problems. A wife who leaves a local authority house andhe.r husband living there is still, technically, housed. She cannot be offered another while he continues to occupy the first. Occaasionally a husband is offered alternative single-person accornodation which makes the family home available to her. The chances are, however, she won't want to live there so she has to apply for a transfer. This is, in fact, relatively simple to effect - provided there are no arrears. Usually there are. And there is no system whereby a slate can be wiped clean. Nor do the regulations provide for the 'mind-boggling prospect of a family splitting with some of the children going to live with one spouse and others with the other, and so beecoming two families, requiring two houses.