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MANY MALE VICTIMS of domestic abuse who are separated from their partners and wives face a lonely holiday season without their children, a charity has said.
AMEN, a charity supporting men who have been victims of abuse in the home, said women often use their custodial status to punish fathers by refusing access to children over the Christmas period.
One father of four shared his story with TheJournal.ie, describing three years of violence against him by his wife.
“We were married for a good number of years and she gradually just changed and started to get violent,” he said. “I thought she was just going through a phase but it only got worse and eventually I had to leave the family home with the children”.
The man said most of the abuse happened when he was standing up for his children.
‘I had a knife lunged at me’
“I got knocked out once when I was hit on the back of the head and I also had a knife lunged at me – I have scars on my hands from that,” he said.
He eventually reached out to Amen for help but before that he said he “felt ashamed about it”.
“It was making that phonecall, to get the initial help – that’s the big thing.”
A lot of people don’t understand when a woman is hitting a man, not many think that would happen. I didn’t think they would believe me.
His youngest daughter lives with his wife in the house on his family’s farm, which he still runs.
He rarely gets to see her as he is not allowed inside the house and though he has his three other children for Christmas, he said he doubts he will even get to give the youngest her present in person.
‘Lonely’
“It can be a very lonely time for men and to think that you’re not at fault and you still can’t see your children – it’s crazy,” he said.
Amen said this is just an example of the many fathers who will be spending Christmas away from their children.
From January to October this year, the charity helped 1,997 individuals contacting the service using a range of methods including the helpline, one to one meetings, court accompaniments, emails and text messages.
Manager Niamh Farrell commented:
Many fathers are now dreading spending Christmas without their children. They feel lonely, frightened, isolated and helpless. Mothers who use their custodial status to punish their former partners in this way should stop and think about the damage they are also doing to their children.
Farrell said demand on services is ever increasing and this can be attributed to a number of factors.
“Many men are now retiring and their wives or partners feel no longer able to live with them everyday, financial situations are becoming more difficult with unemployment and a rise in everyday living costs,” she explained. “Many of the men who contact the helpline can no longer deal with the abuse by themselves. The abuse that these men have and are suffering could be ongoing for years.”
Farrell said women should be “judged by the same standards as men, and women who are violent should be held legally responsible”.
“Domestic violence is an issue that hurts every member of a family,” she added.
If you are affected by the topic of this article, you can contact Amen on 0469023718 or email info@amen.ie.
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Meanwhile life goes on at Fukushima.
Only a matter of time when we will rue the day of nuclear power
I think the people of Pripyat already do.
Someday they will learn to handle it properly and safely…
“Someday they will learn to handle it properly and safely” — but what will the consequences be,
when they learn that?
It’s no trick being safer than coal. But what if it becomes safer than natural gas to provide the same power? Safer than natural-gas-plus-wind-turbines? It’s already less radioactively polluting than those systems.
When that superior safety shall be fact, a government that wants to take a billion dollars in natural gas severance taxes and/or royalties and/or import duties will have to accept the loss of some citizens to gas disasters in the bargain. If it allows nuclear energy to be used instead, those lives will be saved, but the billion will, from a civil service point of view, be lost: it will remain in private hands.
No-one will forthrightly deplore that result. Everyone’s official position will be that however good a few million dollars in tax revenue may be, it doesn’t justify an innocent citizen’s death.
But perhaps there will come to be a huge industry of denying that nuclear energy is a lifesaver, and of calling nuclear wrecks that harm no-one “nuclear disasters”.
Perhaps, eh?
Perhaps when the media makes accuracy the priority over profits.. but the scary word “nuclear” sells very well. The headline “Radiation from Fukushima has not caused any health effect” may be true, but it won’t catch peoples attention or sell advertising. They definitely don’t want people to know that fear of Fukushima radiation caused much more harm than the radiation itself, then they might be held accountable…….
Not a single person was killed when the water hit the Fukushima nuclear plant, in fact I have not heard of anyone even cutting their finger there. In comparison around 18,000 people from the surrounding area were swept away never to be seen again. But here on the Journal Fukushima is remembered as a a nuclear disaster. In the press hysteria trumps fact every time.
The tsunami left the enormous death toll,19000, not the incident at the nuclear power plant. The wording of this item is rubbish.
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