HELP! SHE STILL LOVES HER ABUSER

Domestic abuse and violence can happen to anyone yet most of the time the problem is overlooked, excused or denied. For violence to be assumed in such a manner, it is mostly psychological, rather than physical. Can you imagine living in fear of the person you love? Quite tormenting.

Moi University has experienced a lot of spousal abuse and very few have been reported to the authority. It starts when students engage in intimate relationships and one of the party tries to dominate and control the other. It may start as verbal abuse then later develops to physical violence and Moi University administration is entirely to be blame for not taking matters seriously.

In one session, more than 15,000 students report to school. Making the school look like one big market place where everyone meets. These creates mental  insecurity among campus couples that leads to their partners looking for other means to tame their spouses  and that is by gaining and maintaining total control over them.

Yesterday’s sleep was disrupted at 12 am by screams of pain and resentment from room L 108. I rushed out my bed, put on a sweater and went knocking at their door. Apparently the door was opened so I pushed it. There stood Catherine, a second year student from the school of Art and social sciences.

She was standing next to the window, her hands wrapped around a guy who from the looks of it was not tolerating her persuasion. She was crying telling the guy not to leave her. She looked confused and petrified, blood oozing from her ears and nose and clearly you could tell that the beating lasted a while because her hair was all roughed up and her eyes were a bit puffy.

I looked closely and recognized the guy, a third year in the school of Information Sciences. I then recalled how Catherine used to complain to me of how he used to mistreat her and that she had grown fond of it. He clearly had made Catherine his project and succeeded.

He used to stalk her, put watchdogs over her so that no guy approached her and she didn’t approach anyone either. Making it clear she was only meant for him. Something she confused for love. He inflicted fear in her saying she would never survive without him and she believed it.

He used guilt and shame to tame her that if she thought for a second that another prince charming was to come for her rescue, he would reveal her dirty linen to the world. He never forgot to intimate her in front of his and her peers, a way to wear her down and keep her under his thumb. That vivid night proved to me all that Catherine had been complaining about was actually true. It left me to wonder, if she knew she was in an abusive relationship why didn’t she leave, why did she choose to stick around?

It led me to understand that abuse escalates from threats and verbal abuse to violence. While the physical injury may have post obvious danger to her, the emotional and psychological abuse was more severe.

He destroyed her self-worth, made her anxious and depressed, making her feel helpless and alone. She came to know herself as broken and only the boyfriend could see her as whole.

 She choose to stick around because she was afraid of what would have happened if she left, because of the threats he unleashed to her earlier.
She had low self-esteem as she knew most of her partner’s friends have seen her being scolded and put down in public and thought she was to be blamed for the abuse. She also hoped that her boyfriend would change. She wanted to believe the guy she loved would change and the violence would stop because she never wanted the relationship to end.

The Moi University administration should introduce a forum where abused people like Catherine could come out and seek help without the fear of their partners and even help other people who face the same kind of domestic violence.