The Cycle of Abuse
(Photo by Robin Holland)
In this week's JOURNAL, Bill Moyers spoke with Marta B. Pelaez, who runs an agency for women and children who have been victimized by domestic abuse. Moyers asked Pelaez why so many women go back repeatedly to partners that have injured them physically and emotionally.
Pelaez said:
“At the beginning, they don't see very well the level of trauma that they have sustained, and that has been progressive, over a lifetime, in many instances... We are, as human beings, beings of custom. We are accustomed to something. We have made some adjustments to adjust to a certain situation, as awful and as ugly as that may be. So it is difficult for them... If you stay in an abusive situation one year, the likelihood of your staying a second year grows exponentially... Why? Because the progressive nature of domestic violence is one that begins in a very subtle way... It's about isolating the person from the relatives, from friends, so that he can exercise more and more abuse. And then, eventually, it becomes the physical thing. It becomes the dramatic thing that we see on the newspapers. But in order to get to that point, the abuse has been going on for a long time."
What do you think?
For more information, please visit our resources page on domestic violence.
This week on THE JOURNAL, historian 
