Domestic abuse or just traditional family values?
Shay Carlson, Staff Writer
Photo Courtesy of Roberto Tumini & Shay Carlson
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““If you need violence to enforce your ideas, your ideas are worthless. -Unknown”
For many in the Western World, domestic violence is a buzzword most often associated with
Lifetime channel movies and episodes of “Law & Order”. While domestic violence still permeates the underbelly of domestic life, many of us in the western world have come to trust that our justice system enforces the laws put in place to protect abuse victims with the same bravado and swift condemnation as it’s thespian counterpart.
While the United States has been implementing laws against domestic abuse since the 1820’s (according to icadvinc.org), there are still many countries around the world that have very few, if any, laws in place protecting victims of domestic abuse. Just last year Russia passed its first law specifically targeting domestic violence as a criminal offense, after years of rallying by women’s and international rights groups. Unfortunately, the victory for those advocating strict laws against domestic abuse was short lived.
January 25, 2017 marked the second hearing in Russian Parliament to amendments of the domestic abuse law that would decriminalize all forms of first-attempt domestic violence, except for serious injury and rape. Despite two years of the law against domestic violence being set aside and ignored, these new amendments have been ushered through parliament in a matter of weeks.
The question remains as to why the amendments were taken so lightly by Russian parliament and how these amendments will impact the victims of this type of violence. Though the effects of domestic abuse are felt by all genders and orientations around the world, the majority of domestic violence cases are against women by a male partner or children by a parent.
Official statistics released by the Russian government indicate that 12-14,000 women die each year as a result of domestic abuse, 36,000 women are beaten daily and 26,000 children are assaulted by their parents every year. When paired with the statistic published in January of this year by bloomberg.com—that 40 percent of all serious violent crime in Russia takes place in the home— it is not hard to guess why domestic violence needs to be taken seriously.
Despite the staggering numbers associated with domestic abuse in Russia, Russian Senator Yelena Mizulina aggressively fought to repeal the law passed in July 2016 that made domestic abuse a criminal act. In an article published by Human Rights Watch, Senator Mizulina was quoted defending the amendments that would decriminalize domestic violence by saying “Women don’t take offense when they see a man beat his wife…a man beating his wife is less offensive than when a woman humiliates a man.”
Perhaps the rest of the world is overreacting to this law change in Russia —a case of misunderstood differences lost in cultural translation. After all, the Russian Orthodox Church is also supporting the law change, citing the instruction laid down in the “Domostroy”, a book published in the late 16 century which outlines rules and instructions for Russian households and society.
According to The Moscow Times the book contains the phrase “ If he beats you, it means he loves you” and outlined that “women’s obedience [was] the key to a strong, lasting family”. The “Domostroy” has been used as a justification for corporal punishment toward women and children under the guise that by enforcing such punishment they were helping them to avoid the death of their souls.
Yet groups like The All-Russian Parents’ Resistance claim that the law against domestic abuse does more harm than good because it leads to parents’ being prosecuted for simply disciplining their children. Other groups fighting against the law claim that the women who are abused don’t get any help from the law regardless, since for many Russian women the embarrassment of admitting a family member was beating them keeps them from legal action.
The Moscow Times reported that for many Russian women and their families it is a matter of pride, that many women won’t leave their abusive spouse, or even report the conduct, because her relatives would disown her for breaking up the family and refusing to stand behind the father of her children. As a result of this legislative reversal, Russia’s rules on this type of violence will now be the most lax in Europe; the first reported offense against a family member will be fined (usually an amount less than $500) and considered an administrative transgression.
“International Experience proves that aggressive legislation against domestic violence tends to reduce its incidence,” reports bloomberg.com. The results of this theory can be seen in the change of domestic violence cases around the world between 2003 and 2006. Overcomingviolence.org reported that in 2003, there were just 45 countries with specific domestic violence laws in place and that by 2006, 89 countries had adopted some form of legislative prohibition of domestic violence.
While cultural values cause varying acceptable behaviors across the world, the impact of violent actions in the home on psychological and physical health has become universally unquestionable. “Ordinary criminal law does outlaw violence, and therefore domestic abuse should be treated as a crime” stated Liesl Gerntholtz in an article for The Huffington Post.
It may seem like a small change in law to a large country, but what Russia must remember is that placing more strength in the hands of those who already have more power can have serious ramifications. In the words of Edmund Burke: “The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.”
