I know that for some/maybe even most people it is hard to mingle in the life of another human being. And you don't want to get involved into stuff that isn't your business. That's understandable, and of course when interfering you should be certain of what is going on before reporting. Before I experienced domestic violence for the first time, I always said to everyone: "This will never happen to me, I will end the relationship right away". And so say many women with me, and so have many broken their "promise" to leave as soon as this will happen to them.
Of course this is due to many kinds of reasons, and not every case is the same. But let's get back to where I wanted to talk about in this post. Some cases of domestic violence are, for example, when one partner gets too drunk while going out for a drink in the pub, and the other partner is telling the first partner to slow down, because there is too much alcohol involved. The first partner has a bad drunk, and starts to fight unreasonable to the second partner. At a certain point the first partner gets violent, because he/she phrases: "I am not drunk, and will not stop drinking, you are wrong and shut up". Maybe you recognize this, I certainly do from the past. Then there will be a physical fight, sometimes it will get out of hand a lot because the drunk partner has no clue anymore about what is bad and what is the limit. In this case there will probably be witnesses, as we are speaking about a public place. Most people will not burn their hands to mingle in these situations, because they can see clearly that the drunk person may lash out at them when interfering.
But luckily there will sometimes be 1 or more persons to make sure the second partner is save from the aggressive manners of the drunk one, and may even call the police. In this case as there are witnesses that confirm the beatings of the one partner to the other, the police will most likely arrest the drunk person and the other can probably go back home. I can tell you that, although it may feel embarrassing to you at the moment it happens, you are "lucky" to have witnesses. Of course you don't want to be in that situation at all, but this is as a comparison to the other possibility I will get to now.
I was "unlucky" that I've been beaten up inside the house, with no witnesses, even though sometimes I screamed so hard as I could, hoping that the neighbors would hear me scream, and called the police, this never happened. If my ex beated me up, he usually made sure he grabbed my phone including the landline phone, so I was not able to call the police. He would keep this up for hours most of the times, because he knew if I got the chance, I would call the police. Looking back on some situations, I think he may knew on forehand that the neighbors were not at home, because sometimes he would stand in the doorstep of the backyard, screaming all kinds of horrible things to me. To make me feel as little as possible, while I sat there on the couch after he had beaten me up. If I wanted to go upstairs, he would make sure I couldn't, or he would continue upstairs...
Several times I was able to call the police on him after a few hours of this aggressive behavior. But because he was so smart to make sure he did not beat me in the face, for example he did this where my hair is growing, and I have long hair. So to see the damage I would have had to shave my head. Because there were bruises, every time. He also could give me head-butts but also on the side of my head where you would not see this directly. But the pain was there just as heavy as it would have been on my face. But because he did not make too big a mess throwing stuff in the house, the police would see two people in a fight, and did not see through the situation, that I was scared to death of him.
He would sit on the couch with the biggest scary smile looking at me, when the police officers looked at me for hearing my version of the story, and then they could not do anything else but leave. Simply because there were no bruises visible at that moment. One time they went to the neighbors to ring on their door, if they heard anything, but nobody answered the door. They later on told me if the neighbors had been home and had confirmed my story, they would have taken him to the police office at least.
After I had left the house to a shelter with the kids, there came a time that the house he stayed in had to be stripped, because he was moving out also. And I needed to get parts of my stuff out too. I saw the direct neighbor and she told me that she had no clue of what was happening. The people at his work (where the neighbors also came once in a while) started to gossip about what happened, and so they found out that he was violent many times. And that I took the kids to a women's shelter to make sure we were safe. She told me that she and the other neighbor didn't hear anything and they would have done something when they had known. I could not believe it, they hadn't heard me screaming any of those times it occurred?
I kind of felt alone and even thought they were supporting his behavior before she told me this. But after this, I believed they really had no clue, and my ex was smart enough to look if they were home, before starting the intense fights and beating. As the police told me several times, they have a stronger case with witnesses to confirm your story, I knew that I would never think twice about informing the police if I would hear violence at the neighbors. Of course it can be scary to mingle in others lives, but I know for a fact that my ex wouldn't had free-play for this long terrorizing me. And maybe they would actually have had a case against him in the early stages of this horrible game he played with the kids in between. Now there were only notes of a situation, without charges against him, simply because they had no case.
I don't know how things work in other country's exactly, but in Holland, without witnesses to confirm your story, you have to have significant bruises/damage that is visible to others. And in some cases it has to come to a very dangerous situation before the police actually does something. Kind of weird to know this, when you also know that domestic violence is one of the targeted points at the police, they always say that they are on it, and trying to make sure this is handled correctly. I have another experience with this, unfortunately. And I said from the beginning (when I left to the women's shelter) that if he would not be stopped, I would end up being one of the stories you see on the news, or read in the newspaper about family drama's. Where one partner makes sure the other will not have the kids either, if they don't get things their way.
Right before we left the country he reminded me of these thoughts, by putting a picture on Twitter with the words: "You won't believe what horrible thing this father did to his daughter" In the picture there were people swimming and the faces were photo-shopped, the father and my daughters faces were in it. When I gave this to the police officer on our stalking case, she was shocked and said the officer of justice gave green light to arrest him. Two days later all contact with the police officer was blocked, not replying my text messages, e-mails, calls, and even when we appeared at the desk (and she would be at work) they told us she would get back at us. Never did we succeed to contact her again, neither did social work. This makes you wonder who was behind that part? Weeks before she was very shocked by the story and active on the case, we even got extra police surveillance at night. After this happened, this was my last bit of hope on a good outcome, I decided if I can't be protected by the police, get out of the country as soon as possible. Things just got too scary.
She admitted to us that officers before her had not been handling the case well, and we were even used in a pilot from the police. This was to make sure in the future complicated cases like this will get noticed sooner, and should not be treated as all different cases, but as one big case to make sure they can do something. Unfortunately it did not work out for us anymore, in the future I would like to have a chat with this police officer, though. I still wonder what interfered so she suddenly stopped helping. But until this day I am still too scared to try to find out, because my gut feeling says there may have been a police officer interfering that has that kind of power to make sure my ex wouldn't be arrested.
In my case witnesses would have been of great help, and maybe my family would now still be together if I had hard evidence of witnesses. Please keep this in mind if you ever hear domestic violence. You can also report this anonymous if you want.
