Domestic violators should be kicked out

I read with great interest the item you carried last Sunday on the TVM programme Tista` Tkun Int! and its initiative to raise funds for a new shelter for battered wives and their children.

As one who along with my children was in this position and although my marriage was annulled and the violator has been leaving us in peace, I will always feel very strongly about this subject. Let us start with the family itself.

Can anyone who has never been in this position ever begin to understand what it`s like? To see the person who is supposed to protect you, bash you and your children around. To see the terror in their eyes when they feel the violator is in a bad mood. To see other normal families do things that to them is an everyday routine but for them is only wishful thinking.

Even going to the supermarket as a family is out of the question, football, parents` day. Things that the ordinary woman or child may consider boring, even tedious, people living with violence would definitely not consider them likewise.

Apart from the terror and both physical and mental pain inflicted on the family, there`s the stigma, the fact that your children`s friends are warned to keep away so as not to get involved, so your child becomes an outcast.

The mother has to bear the pain and anger the children go through, apart from her own emotions. Believe me, going to get certified for bruises inflicted on you and your children, then filing a report and prosecuting is no joke. At the end of all this where do you end up? Right in the presence of the violator who started all this in the first place!

The police rightly feel frustrated when after all the trouble to arraign the man in court they find out that the wife has forgiven him. But on the other hand, are they with her and the children when the man to be taken to court is living with them in the home? Do they have to endure even more violence and threats and so many things that go on during this waiting period, only to find that the violator gets only a slap on the wrist?

Do they have any idea what it`s like to come home after a court case, to be confronted by the person who put you and your children through so much pain, only to have him even more sure of himself, more violent and aggressive, not only to you but to the whole family, that he got off so lightly? I can go on.

Building more shelters is not the way to control or to help this situation. The only way is to evict the violators from what they consider as their domain. I cannot see why the wife and children should have to resort to a shelter while the husband keeps on living in the house. Can anyone tell me what wrong did they do?

Most of these violators, once they see the difference of a secure home with all its benefits, to their being kicked out, will most probably come to their senses. At the moment they have nothing to lose.

I repeat, building more shelters, although done in good faith, is not the solution. Only new laws about violence in the family will finally corner these men. The Church is rightly worried about the increasing number of separation cases, but then, as everyone will tell you, counselling does not help where there is an addiction-like violence and the violator keeps on getting away with it.

Much harsher penalties need to be imposed. Not fines, I can assure you, it will only be taken from the wife`s housekeeping money. You cannot connect with these people; in their way of thinking, what they do is justified, it`s the wife`s fault.

The only way for this to stop is either eviction when repeated violence in proven, or even jail; no mother in her right senses will break up a family just for the sake of it, but on the other hand if a woman puts up with violence, the pattern will only repeat itself in the siblings. Men and even more children have to learn what is acceptable and what is not.

I repeat: only eviction from the family home or even jail will stop these people. They have to know the meaning of pain, terror, desperation, nowhere to go, so many emotions that families living in violence have to endure, to fully comprehend the situation.

I honestly cannot stomach the fact of the need for more shelters when there is such a straight-forward solution.