Chris Brown was denied entry to the UK yesterday and I could not be happier. Not because I think he is an awful person and because I think he is beyond redemption. Rather, I could not help being happy because I think this decision sends a strong message that domestic violence is a serious offence, and that the perpetrators should (rightfully) be called to full account. And by full account I do not mean a bullshit scripted apology, two months out of the public eye and then back with an album, singing, dancing and grinning away on a jet ski like you are the next Michael Jackson. It sends a strong signal that hitting, punching and kicking a woman is not acceptable, by any means whatsoever and that it does not matter who or what you are and what you have achieved.
The trivialisation of Brown's treatment and the pseudo apologetics saying that "maybe Rihanna looked for it and that she instigated it" really bothers me. I also hate the stupid trotted out "you don't know what happened". Maybe I don't, but maybe I don't need to know because when during an argument one sexy-ass looking girl comes away looking like The Elephant Man, with visible bite marks on her arms and a bloody nose and lips- while the other party looks intact, I can form my own views, thank you very much. The circumstantial evidence is enough to convince me beyond reasonable doubt.
I am very (you might want to say ultra but I don't mind) sensitive towards domestic violence cases and victims. First of all, I hate the term "domestic violence" as I think it diminishes the idea that the matter at hand is violence- adding the word domestic in front does not make the matter any less acute. I prefer the term violence in the home or violence towards partners because this trivialisation is perhaps the root cause of the issue. Clinton Brown reports his son's criminal assault as a "situation, a stumble". No, it isn’t. Many people trot out tired ass clichés telling us that we shouldn't judge. Yes, I do not apologise: I will unreservedly judge a man who beats a woman in a gown on one of the most important days of her professional life and walks away while she is nearly unconscious.
The number of seemingly intelligent women who has come to Chris Brown's defence astounds me. It goes to show that a degree and higher learning does not always confer common sense. Sources on the ground in Barbados admit that this was not the first time there was abuse in that relationship. Rihanna admits that the relationship was a "continually abusive" one. Her statement reveals that he went ballistic not over the fact that he was accused of sourcing a "booty call" but that she faked a call to a friend hinting that the police would be present. In short, she was attacked for intimating that she would seek help- like prolific women beaters, he muffled her attempt for aid by beating her with his fists. What a coward! Rumours are that her scratched cornea at the 2008 American Music Awards were on account of a previous incident and her friends have reported that she has sometimes appeared with mysterious marks and bruises. After the incident he changed his facebook status to "She will show her true colours, believe it". What colours? Black and blue? Fact is that irrespective of the circumstances, there is never a good enough reason for assaulting a woman, and the fact that this idiot could not face up to the gravity of the offence, suggests he is a knuckle head who needs to learn what true contrition is.
Maybe I get angry because we run a Domestic Violence Unit at my firm and the number of cases that I have worked on where women in what we call the First World with careers and high flying jobs are afraid to speak out lest they are ridiculed are too many to mention. Women are being choked and scratched and beaten in secret. They are being flung around like towels, slapped and punched and hospitalised for their injuries. Some die. This is no Bossip/MediaTakeout/PerezHilton/DListed issue. This is some serious shit.
Maybe I am even more sensitive because I was brought up in a Caribbean community where domestic violence was commonplace, especially when men were drunk. Rihanna herself remembers her mother suffering violence at the hands of her alcoholic father. Alongside cheating, it was usually the feature of local gossip that filtered downwards as I sat between the legs of the woman who was tasked with plaiting my hair. Sports personalities featured heavily, assaulting their women often in public places such as local community parties and fetes.Violence often moved on from relationship to relationship but I still know one woman who remains stuck in the cycle for over 20 years. Instead of kisses, she welcomes blows every evening and almost every contrary word is met with sharp, angry fists. She was rid of him for about a year, during which he lived with another woman I knew, but she, too, got tired of the violence, and threw him out of her house. It was extremely commonplace and almost normal for a man to show who had the upper hand by throwing punches.
Sadly, it was often interpreted as love :"If my man doh beat me, he ehn love me" was often used as a feeble explanation. The ferocity of the argument and the vigour of the blows were wrongly interpreted as fits of uncontrollable obsession, okayed because they were born of passion. It was not only the working classes- there were hushed whispers of doctors, teachers and civil servants silencing their women, and police officers were particularly notorious for dealing their women serious blows. One woman I knew, in an abusive relationship with a policeman, was called stupid by her peers, for leaving his house to move back in with her parents.
Nothing has changed significantly in my town. A mother pleaded with me to talk to her daughter who left her parents' house to live with the father of her young baby. Her mother told me that her daughter's boyfriend would beat her to distraction. I confronted her and pleaded with her to go home. She told me "I am not saying he doesn't put his hand on me, but he doesn't beat me bad as in how they saying". When a teenager appears to being okay with being hit "from time to time" by her boyfriend -this is to me, a serious cause for concern. It shows tacit societal acceptance and early indoctrination that women can be put in their place with "licks".
Amnesty International, in a study on the Caribbean in 2004, reported that it was a serious cancer that ate away at the core of Caribbean society. Professional organisations in Barbados, Antigua and Trinidad, in particular, notes that the problem is particularly acute as there are very few women's shelters and support networks offering refuge. Economic dependency and the presence of children in the home often militate in favour of sticking the abuse and staying put.
This is why I applaud Rihanna's decision to walk away from an abusive relationship. Her attack has removed some of the unfair stigma from being a victim and maybe more women will feel confident in speaking out that they too, are suffering. She has broken the cycle. Most women return to their abusers at least three times before they make a final decision to leave. There is an almost sick desire to protect and to heal the perpetrator.
By making the decision to move on, Rihanna has set a powerful precedent, a precedent that is in danger of being eroded if Chris Brown is allowed to go on with his life in the same direction as he did before, as if nothing happened. Even his statement after her interview with Diane Sawyer had me reeling "I only hope that others in similar situations can learn from our experience as well. Abuse of any kind is always wrong. The rest I leave it to God". Since when his attack has become a shared experience? Why not own your abuse instead of talking about generic abuse of any kind? What is there to leave to God? Please do not take the man’s name in vain. There was no accountability, no sincerity, no absolution. These open statements suggests some detachment towards the issue and hints at blame towards the victim. I was very angry with his people for allowing him to distance himself from the assault in this way.
I am no psychoanalyst but part of me really believes that the women who defend him have either been hit, or have seen parents or relatives hit and they do not wish to indict him because it would somehow be indicting that parent/man/boyfriend on a subconscious level. I can only wish they would get some help for their scars.
As Rihanna herself said in her interview with Dianne Sawyer:
The thing that men don't realize, when they hit a woman ... the face, the broken arm, the black eye, it's going to heal. That's not.... the problem. It's the scar inside."
