Real security begins at home

The following commentary was presented March 2 at the Hearing on Real Security, at the William S. Cohen School, Garland Street, Bangor, which considered alternatives to a purely military strategy for achieving security, looked at the root causes of terrorism and some of the economic effects of the war on terrorism.

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For a battered woman, “Real security” is rarely possible. At Spruce Run, we talk with people everyday whose lives are filled with real fear – of ongoing emotional pain, of physical injury, and of the possibility that their children will be similarly harmed. Their calls to us are part of their quest to find safety – to be free from this oppression. There are no clear answers. Each situation is unique, and our work is focused on listening to their feelings, exploring their circumstances, and considering the options that might reduce the abuser’s ability to keep them trapped.

I am frequently asked what we need to do in order to help people be safe from abuse. For me this is central to what this hearing is about, because Sept. 11 was a day of collective terror, interrupting the sense of safety that most of us have lived with all our lives. This sense of fear, new to the majority of people in the United States, is all too familiar to people in many countries around the world and to battered women everywhere.

Many people picture safety for battered women and their children as a hiding place, thinking that somehow they run to other states, change their identities, and create new lives. This is exceptionally rare. In fact, the vast majority of abuse victims are not willing to be stripped of their identities, their families and friends, their communities, their careers, and every other thread of their life, regardless of the risks they face. Instead, they put together a new life, taking reasonable precautions, using the systems and services available to them, often forced to greatly compromise their personal values.

A woman’s “safety plan” to escape abuse and create a new life may involve any number of these things and more: calling a domestic violence project for support, quitting their job, telling friends, family, and others private things about themselves in order to enlist assistance, signing up for welfare and subsidized housing, calling the police and testifying in court. All of these things involve some loss of dignity, some possibility of increasing the danger they face, and none of it guarantees their safety. And yet, rarely do women kill their abusers or seek revenge. In their quest for safety – for “real security”- women will do almost anything rather than inflict violence or consequences if they can find an alternative that allows them to feel at least marginally safe.

This extraordinary lesson from the millions of abuse survivors in our country should inform our national policies. Battered women learn quickly that fighting back is very likely to increase the violence and have other negative consequences for themselves, their children, and people around them. Research has shown that since the development of services for battered women, the number of men killed by their female partners has sharply decreased, while the number of women killed by their male partners has remained about the same for many years. While abused women have consistently sought out and employed alternatives to violence, men who abuse have continued to feel entitled to dominance over women’s lives.

Perpetrators of domestic violence rarely face significant jail time, though the ability of the police to arrest and remove them from the scene of violence has saved countless lives. Having the abuser convicted for his violence does not, in and of itself, lead to real security for battered women. Abusers will likely continue to find ways of tormenting their victims. No matter what they do, some battered women never really feel safe, and many are angry about the lack of support they receive from the court system. In spite of all that, survivors of domestic violence create a sense of security by focusing on the things they must do to support themselves and their children now and into the future, building relationships and skills that will make their lives better.

Our real security will come not from our ability to kill but from our ability to enhance life both at home and abroad. Our production of weapons of mass destruction is no more correct than that of other nations, so we should not feel justified in punishing others for doing the same things we do. The rule of law – commitment to fair hearings and reasonable consequences for criminal actions – has been a great strength of our nation. Even though it doesn’t always work, and sometimes the system fails, it is still the right thing to do.

As battered women have demonstrated, there are no guarantees of safety. So we should do our best to work for peace in our daily lives and maintain our personal integrity – choosing life over death, freedom over revenge, and creativity over destruction.

Francine Stark is community response coordinator for Spruce Run in Bangor.