“But it’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber that do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is ex­treme­ly com­plex. Leav­ing an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship is nev­er easy —and it isn’t al­ways the safest op­tion. In fact, sur­vivors of abuse re­turn to their abu­sive part­ners an av­er­age of sev­en times be­fore they leave for good.”

— Na­tion­al Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Hot­line

Two women have been mur­dered by their spous­es with­in the last three weeks. In both cas­es, rel­a­tives said they were aware that the women were in abu­sive re­la­tion­ships, and they spoke to them about it. They begged them to leave the re­la­tion­ships. The women stayed, or in some cas­es, they left and re­turned.

As a so­ci­ety, we ask the same ques­tion every time a woman is killed: “Why didn’t she leave him?” The thing is, it is un­fair to ask this ques­tion be­cause it places full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and blame on the vic­tim. The re­al ques­tions we should be ask­ing are:

“Why did he abuse her?”

“Why was he al­lowed to con­tin­ue abus­ing her?”

“Why didn’t the sys­tem pro­tect her?”

When we ask “Why didn’t she leave,” we are over­sim­pli­fy­ing a very com­pli­cat­ed is­sue. Some of us be­lieve that a woman leav­ing an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship means wak­ing up in the morn­ing, pack­ing a bag and walk­ing out the door. While it is very easy to judge abused women, we will nev­er know how much ef­fort and en­er­gy it takes to walk out of an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship un­til one is ac­tu­al­ly in the sit­u­a­tion.

Karen Lan­den­burg­er, a pro­fes­sor of nurs­ing, stat­ed, “The process of leav­ing an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship in­volves re­peat­ed at­tempts at leav­ing and re­turn­ing and is in­flu­enced by a num­ber of in­di­vid­ual char­ac­ter­is­tics and con­tex­tu­al fac­tors.

Leav­ing is an ini­tial step in re­cov­er­ing from an abu­sive re­la­tion­ship, a process that al­so in­cludes strug­gling for sur­vival, griev­ing, and search­ing for the mean­ing of the ex­pe­ri­ence.”

Re­search has shown that abused women of­ten at­tempt to leave mul­ti­ple times. In fact, it is av­er­aged to about sev­en times be­fore they ac­tu­al­ly and fi­nal­ly leave.

Many keep try­ing al­though it is dan­ger­ous. This shows how strong they are, not how weak they are. In both re­cent cas­es, rel­a­tives tried to in­ter­vene; they spoke to both abuser and vic­tim and of­fered sup­port. It is unimag­in­able what these rel­a­tives are go­ing through now, be­liev­ing that they failed to save their loved ones. Sad­ly, no mat­ter how much the fam­i­ly tries, they can­not make an abused woman leave the re­la­tion­ship. They can­not mon­i­tor the abuser 24/7.

While rel­a­tives might ask what more they could have done, they al­so need to un­der­stand that they did what they could; they spoke to them and they tried to help. It is dif­fi­cult to live with this deep sense of loss and of­ten guilt and anger, but fam­i­lies need to un­der­stand that the blame lies with the abuser and the sys­tems which failed the vic­tims.

In­stead of blam­ing women for stay­ing in abu­sive re­la­tion­ships, we need to blame our in­sti­tu­tions for fail­ing them.

Every sin­gle time we see a breach of a re­strain­ing or­der and the sub­se­quent death of a woman, we must ad­mit that our sys­tems and struc­tures are not work­ing prop­er­ly.

In this coun­try, a re­strain­ing or­der is just a piece of pa­per. It means noth­ing. There have been too many cas­es where abusers breach re­strain­ing or­ders and the re­sponse is too slow, or there is no re­sponse at all.

Too many abusers find sneaky ways to get to the women, and they con­tin­ue to threat­en, in­tim­i­date and stalk their vic­tims. We fail to re­alise that a re­strain­ing or­der is on­ly good when it is en­forced and un­less we re­struc­ture and re­in­force the sys­tems we have in place to deal with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, noth­ing will change.

Sad­ly, we will con­tin­ue to see sto­ries of women be­ing killed by their hus­bands, boyfriends and part­ners un­less we take firm ac­tion to deal with abuse. Right now, our shel­ters are few and al­most al­ways full. We need to build on what we have so that more spaces are avail­able. Al­so, we can con­sid­er de­vel­op­ing a na­tion­al emer­gency hous­ing pro­gramme which will sup­port women in des­per­ate sit­u­a­tions. How can we ex­pect a woman to leave her home when we do not of­fer her a safe space to stay?

Too of­ten, we see where fam­i­lies blame the TTPS for slow in­ter­ven­tion and no re­sponse at all. Maybe it is time to stop treat­ing do­mes­tic vi­o­lence as a reg­u­lar po­lice mat­ter and have a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence rapid re­sponse unit with of­fi­cers who are ful­ly trained to deal with this type of vi­o­lence, of­fi­cers who un­der­stand the ur­gency of in­ter­ven­tion.

We must al­so look at our so­ci­ety’s at­ti­tudes. We nor­malise in­fi­deli­ty and joke about “get­ting horn.” In some cul­tures, women are told to “stay for the chil­dren” and di­vorce is seen as em­bar­rass­ing. Jeal­ousy, pos­ses­sive­ness and con­trol are mis­in­ter­pret­ed for “love.”

When we think like this, it is easy to cast blame on the woman – “she was killed be­cause she didn’t leave.” No, in re­al­i­ty she was killed be­cause the men chose vi­o­lence and our so­ci­ety, our cul­ture and our sys­tems con­tin­ue to al­low them to choose vi­o­lence.