Shrouded in Silence: Domestic Violence in Uruguay

By María Teresa Traverso (05/01, En, Es)

The purpose of this book is to address the problem of domestic violence in Latin America and the Caribbean and increase public awareness about it. The book analyzes the results of a study on domestic violence in Uruguay. A public safety program carried out in that country included interventions to prevent family violence and care for its victims. It is hoped that the results published in this book, as well as the methodological tools used in developing them, will encourage further study of the extent and nature of domestic violence in other countries in the region.

Editor: María Teresa Traverso
ISBN:1886938954



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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One
Studies of Domestic Violence in Latin America


Chapter Two
Domestic Violence in Uruguay


Chapter Three
Conclusions

References

Statistical Appendix
Table 1. Institutions that Treat Family Violence
Table 2. Information Gathered by Institutions that Treat Family Violence
Table 3. Distribution of Responses to Questions to Measure Domestic Violence
Table 4. Violence According to Household Socioeconomic Level
Table 5. Visits to Public Health Units, by Type of Violence and Socioeconomic Level
Table 6. Visits to Private Health Units, by Type of Violence and Socioeconomic Level
Table 7. Family Characteristics in Homes With and Without Violence

Universe ans Sample Size

Family Relationship Questionnaire

INTRODUCTION

"Violence against women is the most frequently concealed crime in the world. United Nations, 1980" Violence against women has been legitimized for centuries, especially violence in the home. Despite the extent and seriousness of this problem, society does not perceive it as a social phenomenon. And so it remains shrouded in silence, reduced to the hushed gossip of daily life except for the occasional case sufficiently sensational to be trumpeted by the news media.

Complicity between the victim and the perpetrator often prevents society from knowing the true impact and magnitude of acts of violence that occur in the family. This situation is exacerbated when the institutions responsible for helping and protecting victims have the same attitude of complicity. To ignore violence is to encourage its recurrence.

Several public opinion surveys (Fournier, 1988; Latinobarómetro, 1995) in Latin America and the Caribbean report widespread fear of increased violence and concern for personal safety. In general, people attribute these concerns to increases in delinquency and a societal climate of hostility. Consequently, they think they can protect their homes by buying guns, installing alarms, hiring armed guards or studying techniques for personal self-defense. Paradoxically, most violence against women and children occurs precisely in the household they are trying so hard to protect. Statistics show a higher probability that a woman will be assaulted at home by her partner than in the street by a stranger; similarly, a child is more likely to be sexually assaulted at home by someone he or she knows. Incidents of family violence, as well as other cases where the victim is a woman, go unreported precisely because they have become routine events, as if they were a natural and expected part of life. The first violent experience takes place at home when people come to believe that a certain dose of it can be an efficient tool to educate children. The message is that violence is a legitimate mechanism to settle conflicts. From this perspective comes an implicit understanding that unseen violence is an integral part of domestic relationships.

Domestic violence has a devastating impact on its victims precisely because it occurs within the framework of what is supposed to be the sanctity of the family. This creates a sort of invisible veil around not the family but the violence, making the study of domestic violence all the more difficult. In a violent family, the affection, protection and care of the family group is distorted by harm, threat and terror.

The long-term impact of domestic violence that a child sees or suffers can be even more serious than the immediate fear or pain it causes. The Uruguayan study presented in this book shows a clear association between the violence suffered during childhood and the violence that the same person inflicts on his family as an adult. A recent report by the U.S. Department of Justice goes further, demonstrating that people who suffered violence during childhood are more likely as adults to be violent not only with their own families, but with other members of society as well./1 The data raise serious concerns. A survey of almost one million prisoners found that 61 percent of those who said they had been abused as children were imprisoned for having committed a violent crime. When previous convictions are also taken into account, 75 percent of male prisoners and about half of female prisoners who reported having been abused as children were imprisoned for violent crimes.

Several factors contribute to ongoing and unreported domestic violence, including the family wanting to preserve its privacy, lack of confidence that the police will provide the protection needed, fear of destroying the nucleus of the family if the husband is arrested, or simply the pain involved in talking about what is happening. Historically, women were discouraged from seeking help because services to assist and protect them were insufficient. And little was done in terms of public information campaigns to show that domestic violence is a social problem, not a family one. In more recent years, certain events have helped bring the issue of family violence into the open and have made it easier for people to start talking about it. These include the feminist movement during the 1960s, the opening of the first shelters for abused women in the 1970s, increased concern in the international community for human rights, and progress in psycho-social research on domestic violence.

Initial studies of women abused by their partners focused on the individual, searching for pathological features in the woman or the man that would explain violent behavior. Later, it became increasingly clear that family violence is an enormous social problem facilitated by a complex network of cultural, social, legal and interpersonal structures that make it difficult to understand and address.

Despite growing interest in studying domestic violence and the remarkable progress in research on the subject over the past 25 years, there is still not enough knowledge of the problem to design effective policies for prevention and early diagnosis that target high-risk groups. Finding ways to prevent violence against women and make this issue a priority on the political agenda will require more empirical research, as well as stepped-up efforts to overcome difficulties in comparing data and studies.

A public safety program to prevent violence and crime in Uruguay, financed by the Inter-American Development Bank, includes resources to help prevent and address domestic violence. Implementation of the program began in late 1998. As indicated earlier, evidence suggests that violence learned at home is frequently transmitted from the domestic to the social environment. Increased violence in the home raises the probability that children will act violently outside the home. These arguments have convinced both the IDB and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean that policies and programs designed to reduce social violence must include measures to address domestic violence.

Establishing the extent of the problem was the first difficulty in designing the domestic violence component of the Uruguayan study, since no research was available based on a representative sample of the population. Studies that analyzed domestic violence were based on data from reports made by victims, and there was little awareness in the country about the magnitude or nature of the problem. The origin of these limitations lies in the fact that very few victims report their cases, and very few cases are detected if they are not reported. The low reporting rate found during preparation of Uruguayan program was attributed to women?s reluctance to report the situation, and to insufficient training of the police. There was only one specialized police unit to help women abused by their partners. At the same time, entities where abused women usually seek medical attention or legal advice did not separate out cases of domestic violence as such. And care and recovery facilities for victims did not have the capacity to expand services, a potential problem if demand for these services were to increase as a result of public awareness campaigns.

These constraints made it necessary to conduct a household survey based on a representative sampling in order to obtain the information needed to design the domestic violence component of the public safety program. The survey covered Uruguay?s two main urban centers, Montevideo and Canelones, which account for nearly 60 percent of the population. The survey made it possible to estimate the extent of domestic violence, define its characteristics and the risk factors associated with it, and examine the attitudes toward it of both victims as well as society at large. The results were new and striking: over a period of one year, 46 percent of women married or living with a partner suffered some type of violence by their partners. Of these, 36 percent were either physically or sexually abused. This book presents the results of the study and survey in terms of documenting violence inflicted on women by their partners in Uruguay. The aim is that these findings be used as a basis for formulating and designing public programs to prevent domestic violence and provide care for victims of it. It is hoped that publication of these results will increase public awareness of this serious problem and convince authorities to continue working on policies to deal with it.

The study also shows the utility of the methodological tool used in developing it, and points to the importance of conducting similar research in other countries. With this knowledge, societies and their governments will be in a position to adopt a more proactive approach to implementing policies that can help put an end to domestic violence. Chapter One of this book reviews the evolution of research on domestic violence in Latin America and examines the most common difficulties in comparing results between countries.

Chapter Two presents the results of the research in Uruguay. It describes the context of that research, the methodology used, and the characteristics of the study. Analysis of the research findings begins by identifying the main factors that influence violence by men in Uruguayan homes. Types of violence are then differentiated according to frequency and seriousness. The research results are then compared with those of other countries, where possible. Finally, the chapter describes how research findings were used to design the measures to prevent and reduce domestic violence that were incorporated into the public safety program.

The hope is that the findings of this research will help overcome the myths that surround domestic violence?that it is a ?minor? problem, that it occurs only among the poor and uneducated, that alcohol is its only cause, and that women?s economic dependence prevents overcoming it. The list of myths goes on, and in fact they all serve as accomplices to the silence surrounding domestic violence because they hinder taking the steps so desperately needed to address the problem as it truly exists. As it is, much is left to be explored and understood through complementary research that uses qualitative methods and case studies to examine a culture that has done little to discourage violence in the family.

Note 1. Office of Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, as reported in The Washington Post, April 12, 1999.

Last updated: 05/23/07