Domestic violence
... In order to achieve this we will primarily look at the history of domestic violence against women and compare that to the policies in which exist today, clearly illustrating the changes in society attitudes and the law. ... Domestic violence can happen to any woman of any age, class or minority ethnic group. ... 1) The Guardian newspaper (2000) reports that one in every four women have suffered from domestic violence at some point in their life. Acts of domestic violence are committed every six seconds and 999 call reporting attacks are made every minute according to nation-wide report. (October 26th 2000) In most cases the violence that occurs is physical or sexual violence but in a lot of cases emotional and mental violence may also take place. Most cases of domestic violence are often caused by financial troubles, children, alcohol/drug abuse or sheer anger. Unfortunately it becomes extremely difficult to help women who are victims of domestic violence, as events usually happen behind closed doors within the home and family. Dobash and Dobash argue that the nuclear family is not a happy and peaceful place like people imagine it to be, there are many issues within the family that are not seen, one major issue being the problem of domestic violence. There is a major difficulty in identifying these forms of violence, as women are regularly unwilling to seek help from someone for many different reasons including economic necessity and emotional stress or lack of confidence. ... Hague and Malos (1993) examine this key issue of whether domestic violence should be treated as a crime or not as it takes place in private places. ... They (Hague and Malos 1993) further illustrate the attitudes the police and the law have on domestic violence. ... “Women’s Aid activists have for many years, therefore, been involved in attempts to develop a more sympathetic and helpful attitude among police when called to incidents of domestic violence. One aspect of this has been the attempt to have domestic violence, as well as other forms of violence against women, taken seriously as ‘real crime’, ‘real violence”. ... 61) From the description later described in this essay by Dobash and Dobash of the severe damage domestic violence may cause physically and emotionally it is extremely unsettling that such violence was not considered to been seen as a ‘real crime’ or ‘real violence’. ... The women’s role would be to look after the husband’s demands and desires whether they were domestic or sexual.