October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

October is Domestic Abuse Awareness Month -- And I’m Aware Nurses Can Be Abusers, Too

I’ve been a nurse since 1978.  I have also been married to two RNs, both men I dated for some time before marrying them.  And both were abusive.  I’ve worked with men who were abusive as well -- there was the charge nurse who threatened his wife with a loaded hand gun in front of their two children . . . and then went to jail for it.  He insisted at work that, “I said I was guilty so they’d just take one of us and leave her home with the kids.”  Later, the kids are the ones who spilled the beans (at a barbecue in my back yard orchestrated by the RN I was dating at the time) that “Daddy told us he was going to kill Mommy with his gun,” prompting the question “is it OK for me to lie when I get big like Daddy?”  There was the co-worker who went to jail for raping his wife, excused by many of my colleagues by the fact that he had found her in bed with someone else when he came home from work.  (OK, infidelity is awful, and walking in on it is worse.  But you address it with difficult conversations, marriage counseling or lawyers, not with assault, sexual or otherwise.)  Neither nurse lost his license or his job despite admissions of guilt.  Mike didn’t even lose his guns.

Then there was the Respiratory Therapist who, after leaving work, perched high on a bridge near the hospital, armed and firing at people leaving the hospital.  By sheer good luck and bad aim, he managed not to actually hit anyone.

There was the RN who was stalking the employee parking lot at my hospital, armed with a gun and looking for his soon to be ex-wife so he could “put her in her place.”  (That was my soon-to-be ex-husband, the one who strangled me nearly to death.)

The point of this post is that anyone can be a victim of intimate partner violence.  And anyone can be an abuser.  They don’t necessarily come sporting “wife beater” shirts, a huge belly, excess body and a blue collar or non-existent job, or whatever your personal stereotype of an abuser looks like.  That handsome, charming pharmacist, physician or phlebotomist you exchange pleasantries with every working day could be an abuser.  The RN you’ve known for five years and who is the first one to volunteer his pick-up truck to help you move, to bring the turkey to the Thanksgiving potluck or to show up to help your dad patch your roof may be abusing his wife or girlfriend in private.  The guy who is the life of the party may be an abuser.  In fact, if he comes to the party like a ray of sunshine accompanied by a partner who looks decidedly teary, odds are good that he’s been abusing or berating her as a build-up to the party.  (That way everyone is more likely to believe him when he tells them she’s crazy and he just doesn’t know how much longer he can put up with her.  If you believe him, and it later comes out that she said he was abusive, you’re much less inclined to believe her.  Ask me how I know this.)

 

Most of us know at least one woman who has suffered from intimate partner abuse -- and we’ve been told over and over than any woman can become a victim.  But how many of us look at a man we know and like and think that he could possibly be a victimizer?  Maybe we should all think about that.

[Kitiger, RN]

Ruby, you describing your first-hand experiences has helped me understand what the mindset of an abused woman can be. While I have not been abused in this way, close friends and relatives of mine have. 

Thank you.