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RIGHTS-BRAZIL:
Pushing the
Limits of Human Suffering - and
Surviving
Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, (IPS) - One of
the women survived two shots to
her head, another finally fled
her husband after friends told
her his death threats were for
real, while the third was
hospitalised for the injuries
inflicted not only by her
husband, but by her
brother-in-law and mother-in-law
as well.
All three have been given a new
lease on life by the Maria
Haydée Pizarro Rojas shelter,
which is run by the Rio de
Janeiro city government, and
geared to battered women at
”high imminent risk” of being
killed.
One of the women who talked to
IPS at the shelter is Ana (not
her real name), who suffered
physical and mental abuse at the
hands of her husband for 10
years. ”But the violence in my
life began long before that,
because I was beaten as a girl
by my father, who was addicted
to drugs and alcohol. What
happened in my marriage was just
a continuation of that,” she
said.
Ana got married at 17, two
months after meeting the man who
would become her husband. ”I
wanted to escape from my
father's brutality,” she
explained.
But shortly after the wedding
she realised that she had chosen
a man who was ”mentally
unhinged.” The ”first sign,” she
said, was his attempt to
sexually abuse her 10-year-old
sister, ”offering her money.”
Then came the beatings, which
gradually increased in
frequency, even when Ana was
pregnant or nursing.
Her husband's violence is not
triggered by drinking, said Ana.
”He doesn't drink or use drugs,
he doesn't even smoke. His
unbalanced mental condition runs
in his family,” who are
”nervous, rude, insult each
other and fight all the time,”
she added.
The abuse took many forms. For
example, there was frequently a
shortage of food in the house,
and Ana's husband also rejected
the children.
In addition, he insulted Ana (a
devout evangelical Christian)
using the foulest language,
subjected her to ”psychological
torture,” accused her of
cheating on him, infected her
with sexually transmitted
diseases that he got from his
lovers, and beat both her and
their five children.
”I thought that's just what life
was like, that I had to get used
to suffering. I hoped he might
change someday,” said Ana, who
explained that she was ”ignorant
and didn't know where to turn
for help.”
She said that ”three or four
times” she was unable to bear
the violence and left home, but
she always went back for her
children, who range in age from
three to eight.
Once she sought help from the
state council in defence of the
rights of children, but her
husband was able to convince the
experts that Ana was ”crazy. He
turned the whole thing around.”
”It's true that I was mentally
unbalanced,” she added. ”I felt
like I was losing my mind.”
That incident was followed by ”a
month of especially severe
violence,” which peaked in ”a
long session of blows, kicks,
and hair-pulling,” in which her
husband's brother and mother
also took part.
It was after that fierce beating
that Ana reported her husband to
the special police station for
women (known by the acronym DEAM),
and asked for help.
She was sent to the hospital for
her injuries, and two days later
recovered her children on a
judge's order.
Ana and her children have been
in the Maria Haydée Pizarro
Rojas shelter for two weeks now.
Lea (also a fictional name) told
a similar story. The 28-year-old
came to the shelter five months
ago, certain that her husband of
five years was planning to kill
her.
A month ago Lea gave birth in
the shelter to her fourth
daughter, despite the fact that
her husband had tried to make
her abort with kicks and blows
to her abdomen.
”He didn't let me use birth
control, didn't let me go to the
doctor, always tried to increase
my dependence on him,
intimidated my women friends to
scare them away, and made me
feel totally dominated and
controlled, to the point that I
was afraid of leaving the
house,” she told IPS.
In Lea's case, alcohol was an
aggravating factor, because when
her husband drank he became even
more violent.
Earlier attempts to put an end
to the physical and
psychological abuse, including a
report to the police three years
ago and an attempt at fleeing
one year ago, merely fuelled her
husband's rage. He held a knife
to her throat and threatened to
kill her. But ”a neighbour woman
showed up, and saved my life,”
said Lea.
To avoid such interruptions by
the neighbours, Lea's husband
began to limit his beatings and
sexual assaults to the early
hours of the morning, when he
returned from his job in a
restaurant. One day he showed up
with the razor-sharp knife used
to make sushi - the Japanese raw
fish specialty - and threatened
to cut her into pieces.
”My four-year-old daughter, who
was even afraid to go to the
bathroom, asked if we could
leave home,” she said.
When another daughter was
hospitalised with pneumonia, Lea
found out about DEAM and the
Maria Haydée Pizarro Rojas
shelter, while her husband tried
to get into the hospital to
attack her.
Nonetheless, she continued to
live at home for another month
and a half, until the death
threats got worse and friends
insistently warned Lea that her
husband was planning to kill
her, and was already making
preparations for burying her
body.
A third victim, Eva, also had a
baby in the shelter, which she
recently moved out of after
recovering from two bullet
wounds, one in the chin and the
other on the top of her head,
fired at point-blank range by
her husband. ”It was the hand of
God that saved my life,” said
Eva.
She also attributed the birth of
her healthy baby boy to a
miracle, after her husband beat
her in the abdomen and tried to
drown her, before shooting her,
because he didn't want the baby.
Eva said she is now happy and
ready to start a new life, after
her stay in the shelter.
The women stay for four months
on average in the shelter, where
they receive social, medical,
psychological and legal
assistance, as well as job
training, said Vania Ricci
Winzap, the director of the
shelter.
But the rules are flexible in
the case of women who need more
time, like Lea. The aim is to
protect the women and their
children, while helping to
prepare them to survive on their
own.
After their stay at the shelter,
the domestic violence victims
receive assistance for a year,
including help finding housing,
registering in a new school,
signing up for social benefits
and searching for a job, said
Ricci Winzap.
”Now I feel safe, in peace, well
taken care of,” said Lea. She
receives psychological
counselling, as do her
daughters, ”who used to live in
fear.”
She explained that she and her
daughters are now calmer because
her husband ”has no way of
finding us,” since the shelter's
address is a well-guarded
secret.
Ana said she was surprised at
finding this kind of help. ”I
only would have accepted a
solution like this, that
included help for my children,”
which is why she took so long to
leave her husband.
”But now I know how to smile
again,” she added, although she
said she is still afraid that
her husband will take vengeance
on her through her mother.
Her hope for the future is to be
able to completely erase all of
the bad memories.
The shelter, which opened in
1997, has room for 14 mothers
with an average of three
children each. Their stay is
usually kept short in order to
make room for new women at risk.
The shelter is one of the
services provided by Rio Mulher,
the Rio de Janeiro city
government programme aimed at
implementing gender policies in
this city of more than 11
million people.
There are some 80 shelters for
battered women throughout
Brazil, according to Maria Edite
Dantas, director of Rio Mulher,
who says it is necessary to
combat Brazil's ”machista” and
sexist culture and ”re-educate
society” in order to effectively
reduce violence against women.
A study by the Perseu Abramo
Foundation, based on statistics
gathered up to 2001, estimated
that 2.1 million women are the
victims of domestic violence
every year in this country of
180 million.
The Haydée Pizarro shelter, the
only one of its kind in Rio de
Janeiro, takes in women at
”imminent risk” of being killed.
But Rio Mulher is also involved
in prevention work, to keep the
number of women in need of
turning to the shelter from
growing, said Silvana Villaça
Russo, who works on that front.
Victims have to reach the point
at which they are ready to
”break the cycle of violence,”
file charges, and leave their
husbands, which takes
preparation, she said, because
the women are ”leaving behind
their whole life, everything
that they have built, their
entire past, which is very
painful.”
That is one of the reasons that
many victims of domestic abuse
return to their homes and drop
the charges against their
husbands.
From May to December 2004, Rio
Mulher worked with 884 victims
of domestic violence, ”from all
social classes,” said Villaça
Russo.
The women were provided with
individual and group counselling,
as well as education on the
origins of the violence, and the
culture that makes many men feel
that they are the ”masters” of
their wives and children, she
said.
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