Girl Talk

More girl talk today – actually women’s rights, but more precisely, civil rights.

We were talking today about a case where a man asked his wife to go get a key from his other wife. The second wife didn’t want to give up the key to the room, because the room was where she and her son sleep, and the guest using the key had been there before smoking hashish so that she and her son could not sleep. The man got mad at both his wives for fighting about the key, and he slapped them. One of them complained to the police, and the husband was arrested. The defense lawyer has at his disposal a law that gives a victim of spousal abuse the right to withdraw her (I use “her” because usually the victim is a “her”) complaint at any time during the proceedings.

I told Esman and Hasat that the decision to stop the pursuit of a complaint was, in the United States, the prerogative of the prosecutor only, and that a woman who is a victim of spousal abuse cannot walk into a courtroom and tell a judge to stop prosecuting her husband. If a woman wants to withdraw her complaint, she must talk to the prosecutor, and then the prosecutor decides whether to continue with the case. The prosecutor makes that decision based on many factors, including whether the case can proceed to “beyond a reasonable doubt” if the woman doesn’t testify. I also know about some cities where the prosecutors instruct police officers to get as much good evidence as possible regarding the abuse so that if the woman does not testify, the evidence is there to convict the abuser regardless.

I explained that women in the United States often are abused, leave their husbands or boyfriends, and then they go back, even though the man has beaten them, sometimes viciously, many times before. They asked why women would do that, and I explained that sometimes, women have no place to go, or no job, or a job that will not support her and her children. I also told them that I have represented many women who will finally have the courage to leave and ask for a divorce, but that the women have little money. When the amount of required child support is disclosed, the men are horrified by the amount they are going to have to pay, and so they exert their power in another way: they threaten to ask for custody of the children unless the mother takes less in child support than she and the children are owed. The woman rarely has enough money to fight a child support battle, and so she gives in, taking much less in child support so that she doesn’t have to fight the court system for her children.

Before anyone jumps down my throat, I recognize that I am speaking in generalities here, and that many men pay a very reasonable amount of child support, pay it willingly, and are good fathers to their children regardless of the fact that they are separated from them. I know there are women out there who take the child support and spend it on themselves, and fight often and hard about the father’s seeing his children. These things all happen. But my experience, especially when spousal abuse is involved, concerns those women who cannot leave for whatever reason. Some of those women continue to say, “But I LOVE him.” That is something even I don’t understand.

Esman and Hasat were somewhat surprised, because that is what happens here in Afghanistan, only more pointedly. They told me that most women here do not have jobs that pay them well enough to take care of themselves or their children. The law says that children can stay with the mother only until they are seven years old. After that, the children will go with their father if the family is divorced. Women whose husbands go to jail for spousal abuse find themselves unable to provide for their own or their children’s needs, and so if they go to the court and withdraw their original complaint, the husband can be released and begin work again, and begin supporting the family again. Additionally, a woman who divorces her husband because of abuse will not be married again. She is doomed in this society to be alone and to have to provide for herself, even if she has no education or job.

What a bleak outlook! However, much is the same in both countries. We both live in societies where some men believe it is their privilege or even their right to control or strike the women in their lives. Although I can’t remember it right now, the number of women in the United States who are injured or killed by their “significant others” is staggering. And often, though the court system may attempt to protect the women who are in impossible situations, the men who use their power to hurt women suffer few consequences. Additionally, though the court offers some support, women often have little other support to make a break for their safety. In this country, men also may strike their wives subject to the law, but the same situation holds. Esman and Hasat say that the women have little power to maintain their lives and their children’s lives in society, and so they find themselves dependent on the men who treat them badly and who suffer few, if any consequences for their hurtful actions.

In the United States, we have come a long way, providing shelters for women so they can take their children and escape brutality in their homes, helping them get an education and a job, and giving them support while they put their lives back to rights. Even then, it generally takes a woman more than one time to leave an abusive situation. In Afghanistan, shelters are a new idea, and only a few exist in the entire country. I imagine it will take a while for them to catch on, especially if the law remains static regarding placement of children and the culture remains static regarding a woman’s place in life. But it is a start. And soon, women will realize that they are able to find the strength to break away and stay safe.

When I read these cases and think about my experiences over the years as I practiced law and handled divorces, I just wish that we all recognized that in any country, hitting is not the answer to anything, and that no one, and I mean no one, has a right to brutalize another. If we can assimilate that and teach it to our children, we are on the way to having societies that will encourage humane treatment for all.

And I remember this story along those lines: I had not been practicing long, when a woman came to me for a divorce. Her husband was abusive, but he had finally crossed the line. He had come after her with a baseball bat and had yanked the phone from the wall when she called 911. She was saved, and they were divorced. About four years later, I had an appointment with a woman whose name sounded familiar, but somehow, it was the wrong name. I wasn’t sure why I was remembering it, but I knew I had heard the name before. This woman was married to an abusive husband, but he had finally crossed the line. She began telling me about how he came after her with a baseball bat and yanked the phone out of the wall. Then I remembered. I asked her if she was married to the ex-husband of the other woman. She was not. She was married to his brother.

My mouth dropped open. She said that I hadn’t heard anything yet. Where did they learn this behavior? When they were little, their father took a baseball bat to their mother. I still was speechless. Eventually I could speak and asked what had happened to the parents. She shrugged. Mom had told Dad that she would leave if he didn’t straighten up, and so he started going to church and found Jesus. He was now a born-again Christian and a delight to be around. Though the boys learned one lesson well, the other one had not translated at all.

We all, it seems, have a long way to go.