Why women stay

It is an unhappy coincidence that I sat down to write about domestic violence just as news broke that a 10-month-old baby is in intensive care after being thrown into her cot by her mother’s partner.

The child suffered head and leg injuries and is fighting for her life. The man has been charged with attempted murder and the mother with negligence.

It is a sickening, almost unbearable thing to contemplate that a grown man can do this to a helpless baby (although we often hear of much, much worse), and even more gut-wrenching is the thought that a woman would stay with a man who is capable of such violent behaviour. 

Yet, as we have seen over and over again, women do stay, for various reasons, even when they are being beaten black and blue. The recent notorious case in the US of professional football player Ray Rice caught on camera punching his then fiancee Janey Palmer until she fell unconscious and he dragged her out of the elevator, has sparked a heated debate because Janey later went on to marry him.

This in turn led to the #whyIstayed and #whyIleft hashtags, which immediately went viral as women explained what made them stay despite the violence, and what finally made them snap and leave. One of the most poignant tweets I read was:

#WhyIstayed - the children
#WhyIleft - the children

In many cases, the woman, demoralized and emotionally, physically as well as psychologically battered as she may be, often decides to draw the line if the man lifts a finger against her children. Usually, the visceral, innate maternal instinct to protect her children kicks in and that is the final straw; that is the moment when she finds the courage and strength to say, “enough”.

In this case, that didn’t happen.

The couple was also charged with possession of hard drugs, so presumably this baby and the young mother’s two other children were being “raised” in an atmosphere of regular drug abuse. According to one report there had already been a court order against the man due to the children “living in squalid conditions”. 

The obvious question comes to mind: why were things left to escalate to this point?  Do children have to be maimed, injured or even killed for the state to step in and take them away from unfit parents? 

The answer to this is depressing - from what I know about care orders, it takes quite a lot for a child to be removed from the parents. And even when they are taken away, the contact with the natural parents does not stop. In fact, as foster parents will attest, I happen to know that the rights of biological parents cannot even be severed when there has been extreme negligence and drug abuse that has led to babies born addicted to the drug that their mother was hooked on during pregnancy. 

Some might agree with this, saying that the natural parents will always be the 'real' parents, and children suffer when they do not have contact with them, but in cases such as this one here, I really beg to differ.  

A woman who can stay with a man like the one in this case does not really deserve to be a mother. If that means I am being judgmental and harsh, then so be it. There comes a point when we have to stop being so overly concerned with the wellbeing of the adults in the picture, and turn our focus on the children - who, by the way, did not ask to be born into such a situation.

I defend women as much as possible and most of the time, I can empathize, show compassion and make allowances because I am not in their shoes and we all deal with life’s circumstances differently. I really try not to “blame” or shame a woman who stays with a violent man because I can understand that when someone has, over the years, whittled your self-esteem down to zero, it is very easy to end up thinking that you are not worthy of being treated decently.

But where children are I involved, I’m sorry, I just can’t. The kids’ welfare comes first and the child who is in your care should never be put in harm’s way no matter how “in love” you may be with your husband or boyfriend. This woman may have had three children but by no stretch of the imagination can she be called a “mother”. I truly hope this poor little baby survives, and if she does, I hope she is never ever given back to her mother again.