Rihanna, Chris Brown, and Domestic Violence

Rihanna spoke candidly on 20/20 last night about the beating she endured by then boyfriend, Chris Brown.  It started with a verbal disagreement.  Chris was getting text messages from an ex girlfriend.  When confronted he lied to Rihanna about it and became violent.  Chris hit her in the face, bite her, and had her in a choke hold.  Rihanna spent some time away from Chris after the assualt, but went back to him.  She loved him, she felt like maybe she was exaggrating the situation, she felt bad for the effect the incident was having on him and his career.  These are all very common reactions for victims of domestic abuse.  After going back to Chris, Rihanna realized her feelings for him had changed.  Not that she stopped loving him, but she couldn’t continue to be with a man who had abused her, in part because of the message it sends to other young women who are abused.

Domestic abuse wasn’t a foreign concept to Rihanna.  She witnessed her dad beat her mom as a child and told herself she’d never put up with that.  Chris Brown grew up with domestic abuse too.  On Larry King, he talked about his father physically abusing his mother.  For anyone who believes Rihanna must have done something to provoke the attack, I encourage you to gain a better understanding of domestic abuse.  Abusers will often rationalize the abuse as provoked in their own minds, but it’s very difficult for me to imagine any situation where a man has justifiable cause to beat a women.  It is extremely rare that domestic abuse is limited to a one time incident.

Domestic violence is generally ongoing and becomes more severe over time.  It is often coupled with other forms of abuse, emotional, sometimes sexual.  Victims feel shameful, the abuser is apologetic, he’ll make her believe it was her fault, or that it didn’t happen the way she says it did, leading the victim to doubt her own interpretation of what took place.  He tells the victim it won’t happen again.  The victim just wants to forget about it and hope it’s really over.  There’s a lot of emotion involved, damaged self esteems.  Abuse generally doesn’t happen at the begining of a relationship, it happens when the abuser feels secure in the relationship, feels like the victim’s too invested to leave.  The lives of the victim and abuser have become intertwined with shared friends, sometimes they live together,  they may have children together, sometimes there’s financial dependance.  A victim is embarrassed to tell anyone she has allowed her man to treat her that way.  Until a victim is ready to leave the relationship for good, she often minimizes the the abuse in confronted, denies she’s abused, or keeps quiet and doesn’t report it.  When the relationship ends, it’s only a matter of time before the abuser finds a new victim and the cycle of violence continues.

Domestic abuse is learned behavior that the abuser feels he has little control over when emotions run high.  It takes a real effort for an abuser to learn to respond to anger and hurt in a nonviolent way.  At least 25% of women in the U.S. will be victims of domestic violence.  Celebrity victims of domestic abuse include Rihanna, Tyra Banks, Halle Berry, Tina Turner, and Madonna, and many more.