- Joined
- Jan 26, 2003
- Messages
- 22,213
Date: 6/9/2009 8:08:08 AM
Author: cara
Saying that he *may* not have been required to leave his is not the same thing as advocating it. Just because something is possible does not mean it is advisable. You also deleted my first paragraph in which I discussed him leaving and also in which I implied that it is bad to harm your wife and mother of your child (even if she is beating you.) I thought other people had covered his best option - leaving and calling the police - and I didn't realize that we weren't allowed to discuss lesser options.
My second paragraph which you quote here is asking a question - is he *required* to leave? - not advocating that position. Even if there were a valid legal defense in this case (which I am not sure that it is in case of domestic violence), it would not be *advisable* to put yourself in a position where one could be charged with a crime and then try and defend yourself. It would be especially inadvisable if one is a man trying to claim justifiable defense against a woman, your wife. The optics is just horrible, and as you can see from this thread, many people assume that any man can fend off any woman's attacks without harming her or threatening her life. I'm not sure that is a valid assumption.
The details I posted regarding why he might not have left, which you quote, begin to add reasons why fleeing would be a less good option from his perspective. If he doesn't leave (which I agree he should do), should he just tolerate the abuse? Try to fend her off without harming her - even though she is a strong woman and it may not be possible to walk that fine line of fending without hurting, given that he has chosen the non-ideal course of staying rather than fleeing? In the first paragraph of my first post, I also stated explicitly that I thought it was unlikely that his escalation was strictly necessary, and that it was more likely he just got mad. But from the fourth hand details TGal has provided here, we can't be sure. You can't be sure. Maybe he had some variant of battered woman syndrome and couldn't really see leaving as an option or the abuse ever ending, even if we rational people spectating can clearly see he had options. Maybe he really had immanent fear for his safety or his son's safety if he turned his back on her to leave. Maybe, given his choice to stay, he had to escalate to get her to stop, he could not just fend her off without seriously hurting her or threatening her life. Not the likeliest scenerios, very difficult to prove in court, but not impossible.
cara, I read your entire posting. I am afraid that I still do not really understand "where you are coming from" if you believe (as I do) that his leaving would be the ideal solution. I do see that you have put a great deal of thought into the matter and I will certainly not argue that my lack of comprehension is due to a flaw in your logic. It may just be that I don't get it!
I will answer the hypothetical questions you posed to me, however. You asked what I would suggest that the husband do if he had did not take what you and I agree is the "ideal course" of leaving. Her is my best off-the-cuff shot.
I think that if he does not think that his child is in imminent danger (i.e. that he does not think that she will try to use the child as a weapon at that point by somehow holding him hostage, threatening to harm him), that he should go to a secure place in the house with a phone-away from the child to avoid having her attach any significance to his seclusion and his "holding" their child-and call the emergency number for the police immediately.
If she has already made the child an issue, he should take the child with him into a secluded room and then call the police emergency number from that room.
AGBF
