The problem of wife battering crosses every educational, social, and economic boundary. Every race, ethnic group, and non-Christian as well as “Christian” religion has its wife beaters. They are doctors, lawyers, businessmen, judges, policemen, and the common man on the street. They include those with six-figure incomes and men on welfare.

Battered Wives​—A Look Behind Closed Doors

WIFE beating is a startlingly common occurrence. The magazine Psychology Today reports that “one in 10 women will be seriously assaulted (hit, kicked, bitten or worse) by her husband sometime during the course of her marriage.” A year later the magazine Family Relations indicated that the magnitude of the problem was even greater, stating that “one in two women in the United States will experience domestic violence.” In Canada, according to a 1987 report, one in every ten women will be battered. In other countries the estimates are about the same.

One New York district attorney adds further testimony to the growing problem of battered wives. “Violence against women exists in epidemic proportions in American society. The FBI has estimated that one spouse is beaten every 18 seconds, and that as many as 6 million women are battered every year.” It has been determined that “wife-beating causes more injuries to women requiring hospitalization than all rapes, muggings and automobile accidents combined.” Some 4,000 women are killed yearly.

If wife abuse is a well-guarded family secret, those who are closest to the battering husband, such as his best friends, workmates, or family members outside the home, may never suspect that he is a wife beater. He may function well on his job and in society, often being looked up to by his peers as a role model. Many batterers would walk away from a fight in a bar, on the street, or in the workplace. Many would give the shirt off their back to someone in need.

With their marriage mate, however, the slightest thing can send them off into a violent rage​—a meal not prepared on time, the wrong kind of meal, the style of her dress not to his liking, she wants to watch one thing on television and he something else. A British study on battered wives revealed that for 77 percent of those assaulted, the beatings were not preceded by arguments. Reports show that in many cases the batterings are set off by something as “trivial as the wife breaking an egg yolk or wearing a pony tail.”

One husband who beat his wife admitted that he was “ticked off because his wife was tangled up in the bedclothes.” His being “ticked off” translated into his kicking her out of bed and then beating her head against the floor hard enough to cause a concussion. Said one abused wife who had suffered years of beatings: “An incident could be triggered by [my] forgetting to put a particular item on the dinner table.”

One bride of three and a half years estimated that she had been beaten about 60 times during her marriage. “He didn’t like my friends,” she said. “Gradually I stopped seeing them.” Eventually she stopped seeing her family because he did not like them. “If I tried to call, it was enough of a reason for another beating,” she explained. Said another abused wife: “In the end I asked him what my every move should be​—what to have for dinner, which way to put the furniture.”

Studies indicate that wife beatings are more likely to occur in the evenings, during the night, or on weekends. Consequently, hospital emergency staffs are more likely to encounter a woman after a severe beating than is her personal physician. Injuries that battered women may exhibit for treatment often include bleeding injuries, especially of the head and face. Internal injuries are prevalent​—concussions, perforated eardrums, and especially if the wife is pregnant, abdominal injuries. Often, strangulation marks are visible on the neck. In many cases, broken bones must be set​—jaws, arms, legs, ribs, and clavicles. Other victims may be sent to burn centers for treatment of burns from scalding liquids or acid.

Said one writer on battering husbands: “These guys are true horrors. They lock women in their rooms, they break their bones, they cripple them. They cut them with knives, test drugs on them, punch them in the face, the stomach, the breasts. They hold guns to their heads​—and they kill them.” There are reports of wives chained to their beds, wires pulled from the car to render it useless, threats of killing the woman and her children if she tries to run away. The tragedies are endless.

Added to the physical abuse, which may occur often, are the threats and accusations, the name-calling, the depression, the nightmares, and the insomnia.

What kind of man is it who would inflict this tragic abuse on his marriage mate​—a woman whom he may often say he loves and cannot do without? Consider his profile in the next article.

Battering Husbands​—A Close-Up Look

IT IS the unanimous voice of experts that wife beaters have basically the same profile. Doctors, lawyers, police officers, court officials, and social workers​—whose jobs bring them into daily contact with family violence—​are in agreement on this. Said one court official: “Narcissism​—that’s the master trait. The analogy between the batterer and the young child is astounding. Stories of tantrums are told to me by every woman I deal with. The batterer can relate to the world only in terms of how it can take care of his needs.” This official labels the batterer “sociopathic,” meaning he is incapable of considering the consequences of his actions.

“Interestingly enough,” one writer said, “male abusers are generally suffering from a low self-image, the same trait they strive to induce in their victims.” “Possessiveness and jealousy, as well as sexual inadequacy and low self-esteem, are usual characteristics of men who batter women,” said one press report. Agreeing with this profile of the wife abuser, a noted psychiatrist added his voice: “Battering is one way the inadequate man tries to prove his masculinity.”

It becomes apparent that the male abuser uses violence as a tool to maintain control and demonstrate his power over his marriage mate. A wife abuser declared: “If we stop beating, we lose control. And that’s unthinkable, intolerable.”

Often, without reason, the battering husband is irrationally possessive and jealous. He may fantasize a romantic link between his wife and the mailman, the milkman, a close family friend, or anyone with whom she may communicate. Even though he may treat his wife badly, inflicting bodily pain, he is intensely afraid of separation or of losing her. If the abused wife threatens to leave him, he may in turn threaten to kill her and himself.

Jealousy may often raise its ugly head when the wife is pregnant. The husband may feel threatened by the possibility that the affection of his wife will now be diverted away from him, that the baby will now become the center of attention. Many battered women report that the first sign of husbandly abuse was when their husband punched them violently in the stomach during their first pregnancy. “The narcissism he’s suffering from may put him in a position where he may actually try to kill the fetus,” said one court official.

A Cycle of Violence

Another feature of the profile of the wife beater is the cycle of violence experienced, as confirmed by numerous battered wives. In stage one, the husband may only resort to name-calling, using abusive language. He may threaten to take the children away from her, telling her she will never see them again. Feeling threatened, she may admit that everything is her fault, accepting responsibility for his abusive behavior. She is now playing into his hands. He is gaining control. But he must have greater dominance. This first stage may come at any time after the marriage​—sometimes within weeks.

Stage two may come with an explosive burst of violence​—kicking, punching, biting, pulling her hair, throwing her to the floor, committing sexual acts in a violent way. For the first time, the wife may realize that she is not to blame. She reasons that the cause is possibly an outside source​—stress in the workplace or incompatibility with workmates.

Immediately following the outburst of violence, the wife is comforted by her husband’s remorsefulness. He is now in the third stage of the cycle. He showers her with gifts. He begs her forgiveness. He promises her it will never happen again.

But it does happen again, and again. There is no more remorse. It is now a way of life. The threat to kill her is always present if she threatens to leave. She is now under his complete domination. Remember the words quoted earlier by one wife beater: “If we stop beating, we lose control. And that’s unthinkable.”

Another Similarity

Invariably, wife abusers will blame their mates for provoking the beatings. Reports the program director of a service for battered women: “The abuser says to his female partner, ‘You don’t do this right, that’s why I’m hitting you.’ Or, ‘Dinner was late, that’s why I’m hitting you.’ It’s always her fault. And when that kind of emotional abuse goes on for years, the woman is brainwashed into believing it.”

One wife was told by her husband that she was provoking the attacks by things she had done wrong. “As the violence escalated, so did the excuses. And it was always, ‘Look what you made me do. Why do you want to make me do these things?’”

Said one reformed wife abuser, whose father was also a wife batterer: “My father could never admit that he was wrong. He never apologized or accepted any responsibility for his actions. He always blamed his victim.” The son too admits, “I blamed my wife for bringing on her own abuse.” “For 15 years,” said another, “I abused my wife because she was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. I blamed my wife for everything. I didn’t realize that what I was doing was so bad until I began studying the Bible. Now it’s a bad memory in my life. I try to forget it, but it’s always there.”

The account of the father and son, both wife beaters, is not unique. It is, rather, the general profile of battering husbands. The son admitted that wife beating went back 150 years in his family, passed from father to son, as it were. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, “of the children who witness domestic violence, 60 percent of the boys eventually become batterers and 50 percent of the girls become victims.”

Said one newspaper writer: “Even if they’ve been spared the battering and show no outward damage, these children have learned something they’ll probably never forget: that it’s acceptable to handle problems and stress in violent ways.”

Those who run shelters for battered women say that boys who have seen their mothers beaten by their fathers often turn on their mothers in a violent way or threaten to kill their sisters. “This isn’t just toddler playfulness,” said one. “It’s real intentional.” Having seen their parents use violence to deal with anger, children see it as their only option.

A nursery rhyme says that little girls are made of “sugar and spice, and everything nice.” These little girls grow up to be our mothers and wives, whom the husbands say they cannot live without. Surely, then, justice is against wife abuse, but whose justice​—man’s or God’s?

When the Battering Will Stop

HOW far back in history has wife abuse existed? One source cites what is thought to be the earliest written law, dated 2500 B.C.E., that permitted husbands to beat their wives.

In 1700 B.C.E., Hammurabi, the pagan king of Babylon, developed the famous Code of Hammurabi, which contained nearly 300 legal provisions whereby man was governed. The code officially decreed that a wife was to be in complete subjection to her husband, who had the legal right to inflict punishment on her for any transgression.

Coming forward to the time of the Roman Empire, the Roman Code of Paterfamilias held: “If you should take your wife in adultery, you may with impunity put her to death without a trial, but if you should commit adultery or indecency, she must not presume to lay a finger on you, nor does the law allow it.”

A marriage handbook written in the 15th century of our Common Era advised husbands who had seen their wives commit an offense “to first bully and terrify her,” then “take up a stick and beat her soundly.”

In England, 19th-century legislators tried to reduce the suffering of women by determining legally how large the stick could be. They devised what was known as the rule of thumb law, which allowed a man to beat his wife with a stick “no larger around than his thumb.”

Although in many countries today husbands are no longer protected by laws for wife beating, these historical traditions still persist in many parts of the earth. According to a CBS-TV news report, Brazil is a country where women are idolized by men. Paradoxically, however, they are also degraded, abused, beaten, and murdered without compunction. Such conduct is seen, the report continued, in all levels of society, including courts of law, where in “defending his honor,” a man can get away with murder, particularly if the victim is his wife. Said a reporter: “Many of the murderers are not backwoods primitives but professional, educated men.”

‘Defending one’s honor’ can be triggered by simply some minor infraction of the husband’s rule​—not having the dinner prepared on time, going out alone, getting a job or a university degree, or failing to “agree with every kind of sexual intercourse that he is looking for.”

God’s Law and the Christian View

God’s law makes clear that husbands should “continue loving [their] wives, just as the Christ also loved the congregation. . . . Husbands ought to be loving their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no man ever hated his own flesh; but he feeds and cherishes it.” (Ephesians 5:25, 28, 29) This law supersedes all man’s laws, past and present.

Surely no Christian husband would argue that he still loves the wife he abuses. Would the wife abuser beat his own body​—pull his hair and punch himself in the face and about his body because he truly loves himself? Does the wife beater freely tell others​—outside family members, friends, other Christians—​that from time to time he will beat his wife, inflict bodily harm on her, because he loves her so much? Or, rather, does he threaten his wife so that she will not tell anyone? Are the children sworn to secrecy by their father not to tell others about his abuse? Or are they ashamed to do so? Do not his actions belie his claim that he truly loves his wife? Love for each other is normal. Wife abuse is not.

Finally, if a Christian man batters his wife, does it not render all his other Christian works useless in God’s sight? Remember, “a smiter” does not qualify for privileges in the Christian congregation. (1 Timothy 3:3; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3; Ephesians 5:28) Reports indicate that husband beating by their wives is also prevalent in this system of things. Would not the same questions apply to such wives?

How vital it is for husbands and wives to manifest the fruitage of the spirit in their lives together now: “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness, self-control”! (Galatians 5:22, 23) If we can produce these fruits now, the outlook is promising for our living in that Paradise earth where all will live together in peace and love without end.

[Picture on page 8]

Christian husbands ‘love their wives as their own bodies,’ which means “No Battering Allowed!”