Men who abuse their wives and girlfriends

 

Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, dating abuse, and intimate partner violence is a pattern of behavior which involves the physical abuse by one partner against another in an intimate relationship such as marriage, cohabitation, dating or within the family. Spousal abuse is a problem that is entrenched in many societies around the world and Canada and the United States are no exceptions.

 

The overall rate of domestic violence in Canada remained unchanged in a compilation from Statistics Canada. In a report released in July 2005, the statistics showed that seven per cent of women and six per cent of men were being physically abused by their current or former partners. It is interesting to note that such abuses between male and female partners are almost neck and neck. However, in the United States, women accounted for 85% of the victims of intimate partner violence whereas men accounted for approximately 15%. I have no idea why the statistics in both Canada and the United States have such a divergence with one another. This particular article however will deal strictly with abuses by men against women.

 

What is really disturbing is that one in four women (25%) has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime. Estimates of such abuses from current spouses or boyfriends against women in the United States range anywhere from 960,000 incidents to 3 million.   

 

Women in violent relationships were more likely than men to report what could be considered more severe forms of violence. For example, women were more than twice as likely as men to report being beaten (25% versus 10%), five times more likely to report being choked (20% versus 4%) and almost twice as likely to report being threatened by, or having a gun or knife used against them (13% versus 7%)

 

Women ages 20-24 are at the greatest risk of non-fatal intimate partner violence. I find that information interesting because most car accidents that are caused by men are those in that same age bracket. I believe the answer to the question “Why” is simple to answer. Many men in their early twenties are still immature and lack empathy for others. Women of all races are about equally vulnerable to violence by an intimate partner.

 

Separated and divorced females are at a greater risk of nonfatal and fatal intimate partner violence than partners who are still together. The main reason is that the separated and/or divorced males are angry at their ex-partners for various reasons and can’t seem to recognize that separations and divorces are intend for the ex-partners to go their separate ways unless of course, there is an arrangement between the two with respect to shared support and care for their offspring. 

 

When the police get a call from a woman who says that she has been beaten by her husband or boyfriend, it is generally not the first time the woman has suffered from injuries from her husband or boyfriend. Sociologists and others who work in spousal abuse clinics are convinced that wife beating is seriously underestimated. But why is that so?

The answer is easy to arrive at. Many of the victims simply don’t call the police. They suffer in silence. It is ironic when you think about it. Primitive women chose to remain with one man whom they believed would protect them from being beaten and raped by other men. For a very long time now, the men whom they feared would beat them and rape them are their own husbands.

But why do many abused women in our current era choose to remain with their abusive partner; be he a husband or a boyfriend? The answer is complex.                                                                                  

I can think of four reasons. The first is that the abused partner believes that her abuser will change and stop the abuse. The second reason is that the abused partner doesn’t want to break up the family where children are part of the family. The third reason is that the abused woman feels insecure about her ability to live on her own. The fourth reason is that she feels superior to her partner and will accept the abuse to maintain the continued abusive relationship with her abuser. If you think the fourth reason is weird, it is. I have known of a case where a highly educated woman left her husband who was a doctor to marry a taxi driver. In another case, a woman from a highly respected family left her partner who was the president of a corporation to live with a man who was an unemployed member of the Hells Angels.

Why do men abuse their spouses or girlfriends? There are many theories that have been suggested as to why some men use violence against their partners. These theories include: family dysfunction, inadequate communication skills, stress, chemical dependency, alcoholism, lack of spirituality and economic hardship. Obviously if these problems could be reduced or eliminated, the abuse would be lessened or alternatively, eradicated.

Unfortunately, many abusive men believe that Holy Scriptures dictates as to how men should treat their women. St. Peter who was the rock upon which St. Peter’s Basilica was built, admonished women when he told them; “Ye wives. Be subjection to your husbands.” British common law (law made by judges alone) which incidentally was the origin of American law gave husbands the right to beat women as a form of chastisement. The noted British jurist (judge) Sir William Blackstone said many years ago, “The husband might give his wife moderate correction.” What he really was saying was that a husband may beat his wife but not to severely.” Nowadays, if a husband slaps his wife in her face, he can be subjected to punishment. In the Middle Ages, the wife was always subordinate to her husband and for this reason; he had the right to punish her for her misdeeds but not to the point of causing serious injury or death.

In Wales, a husband could beat his disrespectful wife a maximum of three strokes with a rod that was no thicker than his middle finger and no longer than his forearm. The term, Rule of Thumb came later from Blackstone when he ruled that if a husband is going to whip his wife with a rattan (similar to a bamboo stick) then the rattan was to be no thicker than the thickness of his thumb.

All that religious and legal nonsense is history nowadays although some abusive partners still use sticks and sometimes even large pieces of wood which of course its use as a means of chastisement is illegal. In fact, beating one’s wife is grounds for divorce as former NFL star Chad Johnson learned after he head butted his wife of 45 days. She filed for divorce immediately thereafter. 

Physical attack by the abuser is often accompanied by, or culminates in, sexual violence wherein the woman is forced to have sexual intercourse with her abuser or take part in unwanted sexual activity. That kind of abuse has been considered illegal now in Canada and the United States and no doubt elsewhere for many years. 

There are many forms of abuse where sticks are not the only ways that women suffer from abuse by their partners.  Consider the following cases that ended up in court.

Elizabeth M. She was hacked with a ceremonial sword by her husband who was a West Point graduate. Rosemary G. She walks with a limp because her husband crushed her leg when he purposely pushed over a large refrigerator onto while she lay unconscious on the floor. Niki R. She was blinded in the right eye when her husband smashed his fist into her face. Virginia K. Her baby was stillborn after her husband knocked her down and then repeatedly kicked her in her abdomen. Sue Anne B. Her right cheek has a deep depression in it as a result of her husband extinguishing his cigarette on her face.

Recently, the most outrageous form of physical abuse against a woman by her husband subjected her to incredible pain. Her name was Donna Jones. Her husband’s name is Mark Hutt. They lived in Ottawa, Ontario. As you can see from this paragraph, Donna is dead. Mark was facing a first degree murder trial for bringing about her death.

Over a period of time, this unfortunate woman had been subjected to various forms of physical injuries caused by her husband. These injuries resulted from two black yes and broken nose along with scabs still on her body from other injuries. She also had nine rib fractures, two of them recent, two old wrist fractures and a finger that had been broken by being bent backwards which later healed with a deformity. She suffered from these physical abuses as punishment for some perceived infractions she was supposed to have done. The constant abuse caused her to lose 61 pounds.

Her friends tried to convince her that she should leave her husband but she didn’t heed their suggestions. Her decision to remain with her husband was what finally killed her in December 2009. And worse yet, she died an extremely horrible death.

The 36-year-old monster (Mark Hutt) placed a huge pot of water on the stove and also put vinegar in the pot. When the water was scalding hot, he poured it over her. I am not going to attempt to tell you how painful that would be. Then the monster left her on a small mattress on the basement floor to die. While she was slowly dying from the horrible pain, he fired pellets from an air gun in which 29 pellets were imbedded in her skin. The third degree burns changed from being a pinkish red to a deep red until days later, her skin began to peel. Later, infections from the burns spread about her body. She was dead up to 12 hours before paramedics arrived at the home and found her lifeless body on a small mattress in the basement with soiled clothes stuck to her infected burns.

At this monster’s murder trial, he had the audacity to claim that she accidentally spilled the hot water over herself and had refused to go to the hospital for treatment. The jury didn’t buy that explanation and in less than a day, on June 10, 3013, the monster was found guilty and sentenced to the mandatory sentence of life in prison without eligibility to apply for parole until he has served 25 years.

How is it possible that this unfortunate woman actually ended up marrying a monster like Mark Hutt especially when her friends at work after meeting him, advised her not to marry him?

What they saw in him was what she didn’t see in him. He was and still is a psychopath. Not all men who beat their wives are psychopaths but when they submit their partners to injuries like that monster did to his wife, they are psychopaths.

Psychopaths have no conscience nor do they have empathy for others. They have no feeling of remorse for what they do to others. It doesn’t matter if their victims are family members, friends, co-workers or even strangers—they simply don’t care what happens to them or what they have done to them. It follows that these psychopaths will lie to everyone to achieve their ends. They bully their victims and also steal from their victims by using fraudulent means. These kinds of people obviously have no shame. This description aptly fits Mark Hutt has having an antisocial personality disorder.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the clinical diagnosis of a person suffering from an antisocial personality disorder is three of any of the seven traits of this disorder:

1.     failure to conform to social norms,

2.    deceitfulness, manipulativeness,

3.    impulsiveness—failure to plan ahead,

4.    irritability, aggressiveness,

5.    reckless disregard for the safety of self or others,

6.    consistent irresponsibility,

7.    lack of any form of remorse for what he or she does to others.

I am convinced in my own mind after having spent a year at University studying abnormal psychology and spending five years working with mentally ill prisoners as a group counselor and from what little I know about Mark Hut—he suffers from all seven of the traits recognized in persons suffering from an antisocial personality disorder. That is why his lawyer also admitted to this man’s jury that Mark Hutt is a monster. 

But why didn’t his wife discover these traits in him while they were going together before they were married? And if she did, why did she still marry the monster that would eventually murder her? If we can discover the answer to that question, perhaps fewer women will become spouses of such monsters.

For the answers as I fathom them, go back to the ninth and tenth paragraphs at the beginning of this article. What applies to the reasons why these women stay with their abusive husbands equally applies as to why they continue to go with them before they are married and then marry them.

I wish there was a way in which these unfortunate women can learn in advance as to whether or not the men they are going with are psychopaths suffering from antisocial personality disorders. They may see some of the traits on their own and if those traits persist, they should walk away from the relationship.

Sometimes these kinds of people can be discovered by searching the Internet. If a man has a criminal record involving physical violence, it is likely that there was something published in a newspaper about his arrest or trial or both  and if it was published in a newspaper, you will find it by simply punching in his name on Google. The same would apply if he has been convicted of fraud.

Many years ago when I was a private investigator with a large firm in Toronto, a particular case I worked on involved a marriage that was to take place in the then near future in Vancouver. Our office got a call from the father of the soon-to-be bride. He said that his daughter had been going out with a man who didn’t appear to be legit. He said that he wanted us to do a background check on the man. The reason why he called our firm was that the man claimed he spent much of his life living in Ontario and Quebec but was vague as to what he did for a living.

In the course of my investigation, I learned that he had been married before and was divorced because of adultery. He was also not paying child support and he had spent two years in prison in Quebec (which explains why the man was vague about his previous employment) and there was a warrant for his arrest because he didn’t report to his parole officer when he got out of prison. Our firm sent the father our report.

Later we got a letter from the father and aside from him thanking us; he told us what happened after he got our report.  He discussed our report with his daughter and together they decided to punish the man for his deceit. They were now convinced that because the family had lots of money—the father was the head of a large firm; the suitor was really a gold-digger. They informed their friends at the last minute of what they were going to do to the man and why. They went ahead with the marriage ceremony and just as the minister asked if there was anyone who believed that the couple shouldn’t be married, the police who sat close to the couple, jumped up on cue and arrested the man. As he was being led away, everyone including the daughter clapped their hands. There he was at the doorway to heaven on earth and seconds later, he was on the edge of hell. That is revenge in the nth degree.

But not every woman or her parents can afford to hire a private investigator to do a background check on a suitor. However there can be steps that can be taken that may assist a woman as to whether or not the man she is in love with should also be the man she can safely marry—aside from checking the Internet. They are;

1.     See if he really has a job where he claims he works.

2.    Go to his home and see how he lives or learn if he lives at the home he claims he does.

3.    Talk to his friends.

4.    Consider how he dresses. For example, does he wear the same kind of clothes all the time? Is he always in need of a bath?

5.    How does he treat your friends?

6.    How does he treat you when you won’t concede to a certain request?

7.    Is he pushy and demanding?

8.    Does he associate with the kinds of people who are one step ahead of the police?

9.   Does he use illicit drugs or distribute them?                                             

 

10. Does he drive his motor vehicle recklessly and disobey the Rules of the Road?                                                                                  

The above ten questions can be easily answered and if any one of them is answered in a manner that badly reflects on the character of the suitor, then that is the time to move on to better prospects. Men are like streetcars. If you don’t want the one you first see, don’t worry; there is always another one following. Remember this. There are plenty of streetcars to choose from.

If a woman chooses to ignore these signs and marries the man nevertheless, she may also end up dying at the hands of a monster just as Donna Jones did.