A Short Course on the Psychology of Domestic Violence

Sandy Condello, who counsels battered women, was in front of a psychology class of juniors and seniors at Dana Hills High School this week.

“When I tell you to act like a man, what characteristic comes to mind?” she asks.

“Take charge,” says one boy in the front row.

“Be strong,” says another behind him.

“That you have to put on this macho facade,” says a third.

Then a girl in the back says that she knows all this from experience.

“We call it an ‘A,’ ” she says. “It means that the guy has an attitude. They’re kind of rude and obnoxious. But, talking to girls, they seem to like it.”

This is pretty innocuous stuff, it seems. This is about boys being boys, and girls relishing the sight. This is everywhere.

But earlier, Sandy had asked for a show of hands. “How many of you have been involved in a violent dating relationship or known someone who has?”

Half of the kids put their hands in the air.

And one 16-year-old girl, answering one of Sandy’s anonymous questionnaires, wrote that she felt unsafe “when my boyfriend and I were wrestling (clowning around) and he pulled a knife on me.”

Others have said that their boyfriends raped them when they were both drunk. They didn’t tell anybody, the girls said, because they felt they deserved it. They shouldn’t have been drinking in the first place.

One boy wrote that his father has been beating his mother for as long as he can remember. “I think the only way to stop it is for me to kill him,” the boy said.

Dana Hills High School is in Dana Point, just up the hill from the Pacific. These, for the most part, are children of the affluent, most of them white.

When Sandy Condello, of South County’s Human Options, first approached teacher Art Jenkins about talking to his psychology class, he said sure, but he warned her that she might not get much response.

“These kids lead pretty sheltered lives,” he said at the time.

This week, Art Jenkins told me that nothing surprises him any more. Dana Point is no different from anyplace else. The averages, it seems, are about the same.

Studies show that, nationwide, a woman is battered every 18 seconds, one-fourth of them while they are pregnant. The FBI says that in 1988, the most recent statistic available, 31% of female murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends. That’s up two points from the year before.

In Orange County last year, authorities reported more than 11,000 domestic violence calls to police, 70% of them involving weapons. The latest available statewide statistics, for 1988, show 182,540 calls, 70.2% of them with weapons involved. I have been thinking about this lately because I read the local newspapers. So far this year, three Orange County women have been murdered by men they once loved.

Patricia Kastle’s ex-husband killed her when she went to pick up her things in Newport Beach. Narges Bolouri died in Laguna Hills when a former boyfriend rammed her car and set it ablaze. And Tammy Davis, after telling her friends that she feared the worst, was cut down by a shotgun blast from the man who had fathered her child.

There are others, of course, many, many more--here and everywhere else. The Boston murder of Carol Stuart, pregnant with her first child, is one that many will not soon forget.

Superior Court Judge Donald Smallwood, the head of Orange County’s family law division, is among those who doesn’t think domestic violence is being taken seriously enough, by enough people.

“We have to educate the judiciary,” he says. “Then we have to continue the education of law enforcement personnel. . . . But the difficulty is, frankly, from a law enforcement perspective, where do you put these people? . . . There are no real good answers.”

Even though state law requires police to make an arrest when there is probable cause of domestic violence, the truth is the statute is irregularly enforced.

While attitudes, the experts say, are gradually changing, many cops still don’t like to become involved. And police are often frustrated when they do file a report. Too often victims will decline to press charges against someone they may still love.

Of last year’s 11,000-plus calls for police assistance, only 288 of them translated into complaints filed by the district attorney’s office.

“Nobody takes it seriously,” says sociologist Mildred Pagelow, an adjunct research professor at Cal State Fullerton who has written extensively on domestic violence.

“The D.A. does not prosecute. They say they are tough on crime, but they still don’t consider it a crime. It is minor as far as they are concerned. A lot of them, their attitudes haven’t changed.”

“We have to raise the level of awareness,” says Judge Smallwood. “We have to treat domestic violence for the serious business that it is. We have to attempt to cut it off as early as we can.”

Today, at least, jokes about child abuse aren’t funny. Drunks don’t get as much slack. Domestic violence, emphasis on violence , should fall into the same camp.

In the psychology classroom at Dana Hills High, the stories keep coming. As I listen to more, I find that I, too, am losing my capacity for surprise.

“My mom, her first husband used to beat her,” says one girl. “He was real persuasive and cool. . . . Then, when she finally left him, he said he was going to throw acid in her face. . . . He still threatens her to this day.”

“In my mom’s second marriage,” begins another girl. “My stepdad, he’s an alcoholic, he would beat her. One time he pushed her against a wall. She had bruises all over her stomach. And she was pregnant with my sister.”

The students talk more, about cousins, sisters, friends and themselves. People hit each other, threaten each other, and seem to enjoy making others live in fear.

The sordid tales of domestic violence are beginning to sound the same. They all come from having an ‘A,’ about someone being “tough” at another’s expense. They sound like serious crime.