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Los Angeles Times Valley Edition | Glendale News-Press | 2005 October 22
Houston, we may have a problem
BY PATRICK AZADIAN
"Beat your wife if she gets out of line," was the advice a husband received from a 'friend.'
"If he didn't love me, he wouldn't hit me," was the explanation a woman gave to her co-workers when she was spotted with red marks on her face.
"Yes, she beats me in front of my husband and children every morning to keep me in check. But where am I gonna go? I will be shunned if I return to my father's house," was the response given to a neighbor when a victim was questioned about her mother-in-law's brutality.
"I know he loves me, because he's so jealous. I am not allowed to drive, talk to strangers, or show my face in public," a young bride gloated to her friends about her husband.
And finally the most underrated threat of all times: "You know I love you more than anything. And if I can't have you, no one else will."
I hear things. I am not deaf. Friends, relatives and business associates talk, and as much as people like to keep things in the family, news travels.
October marks the month of awareness for domestic violence. Every expert I spoke to after the recent killings of three Glendale Armenian women (Odet Tsaturyan, Lusik Aslanyan and Gohar Saakian), was careful in impressing upon me that such acts know no ethnic, racial or economic boundaries.
Maybe so... It certainly sounds politically correct. Yet, I think the Armenian community faces more primitive challenges in dealing with domestic violence than the rest of the American society.
For starters, as my above-mentioned anecdotal evidence may suggest, there are still individuals in our community who consider violence as a legitimate mean to resolve relationship problems.
This should not come as a surprise, since not all the values we share as a society have been with us indefinitely. In many cases, the availability of information and the presence of social movements are basic conditions for a society to universally accept certain acts as "wrong."
Take child abuse for example. It was not until the last half of the 20th century when child abuse became an unaccepted way to discipline children.
X-ray technology gave physicians the tools to discover that many of the skeletal injuries suffered by children could not have been caused on the playground.
It was only after concrete evidence was available when a group of social workers, doctors and lawyers, took it upon themselves to define child abuse, coin it as an unacceptable act, raise awareness, and finally pass legislation to make it illegal to mistreat children. Howard Becker, a Chicago-based American sociologist, called these individuals "moral entrepreneurs" and "crusading reformers."
In time, American society has come to internalize child abuse and domestic violence as wrong. Which is the first step in dealing with the problem.
Referring to domestic violence, Glendale Police Sgt. Timothy Fealey said, "It is one of the hardest crimes to solve." It is also one of those unique crimes, where the victims may be hesitant to cooperate with the officials. In addition, family, friends and neighbors often consider a domestic dispute purely a family affair.
In the Armenian community, information on the internal affairs of the family is scarce. Combine that with a victim's possible economic dependence, selfless motherhood, traditional values, as well as the belief in the inviolability of the family unit, and we can see why there are a few nasty knots on the road to addressing domestic violence.
Houston, we (may) have a problem.
Moreover, in the absence of organized groups of "crusading reformers" in the Armenian community, domestic violence has still not been coined as unacceptable by all its segments. Individuals still dare to say: "Beat your if she gets out of hand."
Domestic abuse often goes through many stages before it can culminate in a death or a serious physical injury of the victim. It can start from tension building, and can lead to imposed isolation of the victim from family and friends, and can include verbal abuse, slapping, hitting, kicking and choking. If the abuse does not end in the death of the victim, it can subside into a "honeymoon period" where the couple may make up, before the cycle makes a fresh start. This can also mean, friends, family and neighbors get their fair shot at breaking the cycle of violence.
Since the recent killings, there has been an increased number of reported cases of domestic violence, according to Glendale Police Det. Lola Abrahamian.
Is the Armenian community taking the problem seriously? Time will tell.
But without the community's own version of "crusading reformers," and in the absence of admission to the problem of domestic violence, no significant progress can be expected.
The YWCA, the police and the fire departments cannot do it all.
Copyright 2005 Glendale News Press
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