2.4.3.2 Abuser's emotions
To Guerrero and La Valley (2006:70), emotions are a response
to a stimulus or events; they can disrupt, avert or boost an individual's
desired objective. The abuser's violent emotions hinder the victim from
enjoying her freedom and rights as a family member (Olson and DeFrain,
2000:122). In this line, Bahige (1994:87), the UNICEF (2007) and the HRW (2002)
abuser's negative emotions distress the family members because they generate
anger and this often leads to verbal and aggressive behaviours.
Furthermore, Koenig et al (n.d:56) and Isenhart and Spangle
(2000:4) believe that the abuser's destructive emotions may result in
blameworthiness. Reciprocal blaming makes the abuser deny accountability for
his actions, which ultimately invigorates violence in the home (Matundu, 2007).
In this way, `by ascribing positive effects to their own behaviour and negative
ones to the victim, abusers' emotions contribute to aggressive communication,
which contribute to domestic abuse (UNIFEM, 2001).
2.4.3.3 Abuser's past history
The environment in which an individual grew up may cause him
become abuser in the future. The Watch Tower Bible Tract Society says that
children who witness or suffer domestic assault in their early age develop the
belief that family abuse is practical and logical in handling contentions
(WTBTS, 1996:115). For example, the boys who are exposed to their fathers'
abuse in the home will do the same once married and the girls will endure their
husbands' violence as do their mothers (Koenig et al., n.d:33). Accordingly,
Edelson (1999:5) indicates that children, almost 90%, who are present in the
home when domestic violence occurs, perpetrate it in their adulthood. For sure,
a violent a background will impact on the individual as power was successfully
exercised over family members through aggression and there was no intervention
to impede it in the past (Er Turk, 2007:72).
2.4.3.4 Media and parents negligence
The media is a strong tool that may foster violence if no
rigid regulations are elaborated
regarding its use. In this vein, Seifert
(1996:36) and Holmes (2003:65) underscore that
movies, television, music,
some newspapers and the internet depict family and social abuse as
tolerable. To the UNIFEM (2001) and Pence et al. (1989:75),
social and parental tolerance of media violence may produce unexpected anxiety,
particularly for children, if no follow up is made to hinder media's
propagation of violence. Olson and DeFrain (2000:92) confirm that for every
hour of assaultive violent television programme watched on daily basis; one
child out of three may present aggressive attitudes and behaviours in the
following five years.
2.4.3.5 Substance abuse
Alcohol is one of the many substances that cause men involve
in domestic violence. Alcohol induces violence as it helps the abuser's
reticence of violence to break down (Goodwin, 2004:112). Men consume more
alcohol compared to women and this causes them to hardly manage their brutal
impulses, making them more aggressive toward family members (Walker, 1999:21
and MSF, 2005). In this way, Amato and Booth (1996:35) aver that alcohol
drinking pushes some men to decimate their family's little income, which
creates conflict and violence with family members.
To West and Prinz (1987:102), the abuser may take alcohol to
abuse and violence may drug him into taking alcohol to forget about the abuse
or sometimes, even a totally different perpetrator may trigger both of them.
But alcohol and other substances consumption cause heavy consequences to the
family. Nasir and Hyder (2003:3) and Wong et al. (2008:11) found that, in
Syria, almost 30% of women and 27% of children are wounded, battered or
expelled from the home because the abuser was drunk. In South Kivu, some
father's excessive drinking of alcohol has caused their children become street
children because they have been deprived for going to school, which ultimately
pushed some of them to enrol with local militia (COFAPRI, 2010). All in all,
too much drinking is financially draining and causes bodily harm and moral
destruction, shame to the drunkard and disturbs the family and the
neighbourhood peace (Anne and Williamson, 1988:89).
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