Wife-beating and no, this ain't no joke!

[mint]

Rumour has it that my French neighbour beats his wife.  Unable to really believe this, I asked a local French friend if wife-beating is somthing that really happens.

She assures me that it is "fréquent" and, without hesitation, names a few villages near us where this practice is current.

Does anyone in other parts of France know anything of the subject and can such a thing actually be happening in this rural idyll that many of us Brits live in?

[Clair]

It is quite common Sweet.

In many rural areas, the wife is held just a step higher than the dog and beatings are considered part and parcel of family life.

[Christine Animal]

It certainly can.

En France, tous les trois jours, une femme meurt victime de violences conjugales.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLtI6B8YG0g&feature=related

 

[mint]

This is truly terrible........yes, I know this probably happens everywhere in the world, the UK included.

But, poor madame la voisine, she is so tiny and he is a big brute.  Now, I understand why she hides herself in my doorway when he passes in the tractor.

I am also thinking back to last year when she had a broken wrist and, when I didn't see her for several days, I asked her son how his mother was and he said she was OK!

When I next saw her husband he said she fell and so did she herself say that......except, nobody gave me any details and I told myself that they must have thought that I wouldn't have been able to understand the French if they did tell me!

Arrrggghhhh, must remind myself to be kinder to madame and have more patience with her...

This has upset me so much that I really can't continue at the moment[:(][:@]

Yes, I realise this is only suspicion on my part but I don't expect I shall ever have actual proof!

[Cerise]

Sadly sweet17 this is an all too common part of rural life here. What upsets me almost as much, is the fact that the others, friends neighbours etc don't even seem to find it shocking. There is still the attitude 'She probably asked for it....'.

[Quillan]

I don't know of anyone wife beating (I have a very low opinion of wife beaters) but having a few French guests I have seen the men talk to their wifes in what I would call a very rude way. Put it this way, if I spoke to my wife like they did to theirs I wouldn't survive the rest of the day and would be eating my food through a straw for a few weeks.

Men who beat women are cowards, run away when challenged by another man and are the lowest form of life.

[woolybanana]

Well, my neighbour's wife is permanently in the house, said to be locked in. Other neighbours have heard violent rows. I have lived here 20 months and never seen her.

[Frenchie]

This is a helpline one can call even if he/she only has doubts about domestic violence

http://www.stop-violences-femmes.gouv.fr/

[Tony F Dordogne]

There was a big campaign against wife beating a couple of years ago in rural areas and the G men have leaflets, posters and similar points of information, details of organisations that can help etc in all the brigade offices.

I was bought up in a house where domestic violence - both ways - was, unfortunately, a regular tho infrequent occurrence and was also on the receiving end of it until I was about 17.   It was then I decided I was too big to be beaten any more, especially as I was a Police Cadet and the final straw was when I was being beaten when home for lunch one day in uniform.

I finally ducked and my mother punched the wall so hard she broke her wrist, father then started in on me and suffice to say on this last occassion, I walked away from it and he didn't.

When I was a young policeman in uniform back in the 60s there was a much more direct way of dealing with wife beaters and calls to domestic violence of women on men were - virtually - unheard of.  I do not condone the practice of direct action but bullies being bullied back by people they dare not respond to often made the point tho, of course, there was always the issue of whether the wife beater just got more 'careful' but the word usually got round he was at it again and they seriously didn't want a second visit from the Constabulary so it had some deterent value.

[Christine Animal]

Incest is another form of abuse which is also unfortunately quite frequent.

Deux millions de Français victimes de l'inceste

 

[MrCanary]

In my many years as a cop in the UK, I have attended more 'domestics' than I care to remember...

I am pleased to say that 'wife beating' as described above was very rare, but it did happen. Sadly, I attended more rapes than beatings and I do not mean just husband/wife rapes, but stranger rapes as well.

I also attended a couple of 'husband beatings'...

But as has been said above, men who beat their wives (or anybody else) in this way are a disgrace to the human race and invariably cowards. Where a man has a superior strength to his wife/partner etc, he should use it to protect her, defend her and provide for her.

The police in the UK take a very serious stance on violence and/or rapes, please, somebody tell me that the gendarmes are similar?

[Christine Animal]

[quote user="Mel"] Where a man has a superior strength to his wife/partner etc, he should use it to protect her, defend her and provide for her. [/quote]

          [:)]

 

[Frenchie]

[quote user="Christine Animal"]

[quote user="Mel"] Where a man has a superior strength to his wife/partner etc, he should use it to protect her, defend her and provide for her. [/quote]

          [:)]

 

[/quote]

I also thought that sentence was lovely [:)]

[Pierre ZFP]

Can I also say that is a brilliant and succinct message. I can't imagine living in a situation where my wife/partner was in fear of me. What is the point or 'pleasure' in such an arrangement? OK I put that badly but surely the best times are to be had with shared moments and memories.

I saw a poster and some leaflets at the Docs when I last visited to the effect the if you are the subject of violence, it's the agrresor ( yes usually male) that will be on the streets, not the victim of violence. I didn't really understand before I read this thread as I couldn't comprehend such actions. Naive or what?

[Patf]

Not to make excuses for such behaviour, but sometimes a couple is stuck in a terribly unhappy relationship and can't get out of it. Sometimes can't afford to separate/divorce, nowhere to go.

There's a situation I've come across here a few times: the wife has inherited the farm, marries, and husband has the task of working the farm but it's not his. Still belongs to the wife's family - so he feels emasculated perhaps?

[MrCanary]

Patf - so are you saying he beats her up and that makes it right?

Presumably nobody forced him to marry her?

And presumably he did marry her knowing of her inheritance, and perhaps saw some benefit for himself?

[Cerise]

I don't think that is what Pat is saying at all. In a society which still thinks it is Ok to beat your wife and ill-educated, unhappy person may do it - it doesn't excuse it, but may explain it.

Same thing with drugs really. There is a huge and I mean huge problem of drug taking among French farmers who haven't got wives (possibly because younger women are bright enough to realise that a life of being a drudge and possibly beaten is not that attractive!). Now you could say no-one forced these lonely chaps to be farmers but the traditional inheritance thing makes it very difficult for them to do anything else or get out whil Maman et Papa are still alive.

We come from a different culture. What Pat is saying is that while there is not an excuse they may see this as a reason.

[Clair]

Broadly speaking, there is an assumed and unspoken acceptance that the French family is patriarchal. This is a society where the chef de famille is the man, he leads, he decides and the family follows.

This is the case in most families where the man is over 50 and even more so in rural areas.

Not so long ago around here, an artisan killed himself after his wife left him. The locals held her responsible. The fact that he hung himself knowing their 15-year-old son would be

the one to find his father's body in the morning was irrelevant to the

court of gossip. In their opinion, she had no reason to leave, as he didn't even beat her.

[Frenchie]

[quote user="Cerise"] In a society which still thinks it is Ok to beat your wife and ill-educated,  hey , hey, there, please don't generalise, most French people think it is a horrible thing to beat a woman!! [blink][blink] unhappy person may do it - it doesn't excuse it, but may explain it. Same thing with drugs really. There is a huge and I mean huge problem of drug taking among French farmers who haven't got wives (possibly because younger women are bright enough to realise that a life of being a drudge and possibly beaten is not that attractive!).IMO it is not the reason why many young women find it unattractive to marry a farmer, that's because they don't like living in isolation, they see the countryside as boring, and the husband is gonna smell of cows, and he will never have a holiday, etc, nothing to do with thinking " he s gonna beat me", there are no more violent husbands in the countryside, the phenomenon reaches all categories of population!! And I mean ALL.

  We come from a different culture.True,   Yes, true, but unfortunately I doubt it doesn't really exist in the UK.. In France it is widely denounced now, following the death of the well known actress marie Trintignant, who died following a row with her partner. In the past it used to be hidden, so now they keep saying there's a helpline, there are posters in many docrors' surgery, etc, people dare denounce it more and more. Maybe many British women still suffer in silence....? .[/quote]

[Russethouse]

If British women suffer in silence it is their choice, there are refuges for battered women and have been since the 1970s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Pizzey

[mint]

[quote user="Clair"]

Not so long ago around here, an artisan killed himself after his wife left him. The locals held her responsible. The fact that he hung himself knowing their 15-year-old son would be the one to find his father's body in the morning was irrelevant to the court of gossip. In their opinion, she had no reason to leave, as he didn't even beat her.

[/quote]

OMG, this is quite incredible; and I thought I was a pretty well-informed sort of a person! 

Worst of all is that I now understand a lot more about les voisins.  Assuming that the rumour I heard is factually correct (and I have no reason now to disbelieve the person who told me), I see now many things to which I was blind before.

Now I know why madame calls at different times to her husband, why she's had 8 children and all 4 girls live in Paris whilst the boys are more or less local, why she gives me "commisions" to do for her (normally shopping or running her to the mairie or similar), why she never wears the nice clothes I give her, why the only time I've ever seen them together was when I invited them both in for aperitifs.

This suspicion that he beats her is now nagging at me.  Just as well that for the past year or so, he's given up calling on us and their house is out of sight (and sound, thank goodness) from ours.  I still see her everyday as she takes a short cut through our garden to go to her son's house across the road.

If I were to meet him now, I doubt I'd be able to greet him with any sort of normality.  I'd want to punch him on his big nose and call him a bully.  I won't do it, of course, because it might just make things worse for her, poor woman!

How very dreadful and I'm afraid it will be yet another reason why I want to leave my lovely house.  Yes, I know I am lucky to be able to leave and that leaving will solve nothing but I don't really want to be involved in another's pain.

It's all very well talking about refuges for battered wives (or husbands) but I don't suppose that refuges can keep you forever and, once you have attempted to make a break for it, won't it be all the worse for you should your attempt not succeed (for whatever reason) and then the man wreaks vengeance on your audacity to try to escape from regular beatings?

[Gardengirl]

It is terrible, and a bigger problem than many have realised; unfortunately many women who suffer from such beatings believe they deserve such treatment, and therefore don't try to escape such a life.

It's very sad about your neighbour, Sweet; I know you've been a good friend to her. It's also sad that it gives you something else to worry about.

[Russethouse]

It's all very well talking about refuges for battered wives (or husbands) but I don't suppose that refuges can keep you forever and, once you have attempted to make a break for it, won't it be all the worse for you should your attempt not succeed (for whatever reason) and then the man wreaks vengeance on your audacity to try to escape from regular beatings?

 The idea is that the help to get the victim back on her feet so that she wont need to return, of course thats the counsel of perfection and it doesn't always work.

[Pads]

I worked for years at the Samaritains and a large amount of the calls were from wifes and daughters who suffered rapes and beatings from the men in the household fathers and sons ...

Its easy for us as people who dont suffer from this to say why dont they get out ... but once your moral is at such a low peak ... you dont have the strenght to clean your teeth in the morning let alone plan to leave ... you live from one day to the next just trying to not make your self not be noticed, so they have no reason to start again.... and also the fear of the unknown can some times be harder than what you have to live with...

My hope is that the next generation will of learnt a little from the last ...but I doubt it

[Pads]

Also..... If any one knows of a lady in this situation... dont try to help by letting the husband know you know as this only makes it worse for the woman and may lead to her being told she cant speak to you any more ..Instead when you with her try to raise her moral in small ways , if you notice she has washed her hair , say how nice she is looking today... laugh if she makes a joke , if you taste her cooking praise it. share a joke , chocolate cake, time with her ... all these little things will mean so much to her and once she is on her way to having a little moral things can grow from there , she may find that strenght to get up and do some thing ...