Domestic Violence and Murder in Florida - Was it Anger?

This just in: Fla. mother slain with five children had been warned of danger by friend
This story was Submitted by SHNS on Mon, 09/21/2009 - 13:09
By LESLIE WILLIAMS, Scripps Howard News Service
national

Marie Aimee lay awake, replaying old conversations with her best friend in her head. "We always said, 'Guerline, if he tries to kill you, just leave him,'" Aimee said. "Don't let him kill you."
Police told a family member Guerline Damas' husband, Mesac Damas, did just that, slitting her throat and that of their five children.
Saturday night at 8:30, Aimee got a phone call she had dreaded receiving for the nine years she knew Guerline Damas.
Damas was dead, and worse, her five children were found dead with her. Mesac Damas, 33, the father and "person of interest" in the case is believed to be in Haiti following a Friday morning flight out of Miami.
... She said she had been telling Guerline Damas for years to leave her husband, whom she married two years ago after the birth of their fourth child together, Megan, 3. The other four children were Michzach, 9; Marven, 6; Maven, 5; and Morgan, 11 months.
They had married two years ago.
... They went to an anger management class together on Wednesday... On Friday, Guerline Damas failed to show up for work.
The employee said that when reached, Mesac Damas said his wife was sick and was on her way to the hospital.
Collier County Clerk of Court records show a history of domestic violence charges against Damas' husband involving Guerline Damas and some of her children. Records show there also was a charge filed against Guerline Damas, with her husband listed as the victim, but it was dropped.
In a Sunday press conference, Sheriff's Office officials said they had received calls about disturbances in the Dieu-Damas home as far back as 2000. January 2009 was the only time deputies had enough evidence to arrest Mesac Damas, however. Officials said the couple had been together for 10 years.
Marie Aimee said Mesac Damas was physically violent, as well as controlling.
"Sometimes he was breaking down everything in the house," Aimee said. "He was always getting her money and spending it on nothing."
Up to 10 million children experience domestic violence every year and more than three women are murdered by their partners every day in the United States, according to Family Violence Prevention Fund statistics.
Oberhaus said the majority of domestic violence relationship murders occur when the woman has decided to leave or shortly thereafter, and that it is important to establish a safety plan to prevent such tragedies from occurring.

Naples Daily News staff writer Matt Clark contributed to this story.
(Leslie Williams is a reporter for the Naples Daily News in Florida.)
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I have said it before and I'll say it again: it is time to STOP assuming that when a man exerts his physical power over a woman or her children that it is an anger issue. Anger management will NOT save these women from their abusive partners.

Domestic violence is not an anger issue. This is about power and control - poor self-mastery skills on the part of the abuser. You ask an abuser what it is about - if he were completely self-aware and honest with himself, he would say, "It is about making you feel small so I can feel strong. It is about me forcing you to love me, to stay with me, to take care of me, to please me, because I do not feel that I could deserve that love any other way. I'm not angry, I'm scared. Scared that you'll leave me. Scared of what that will say about me. I'm scared that I can't change and I can't stop. I'm scared of the monster that I have become. But I can't blame me, so I'll blame you. If only you would do what I want, have sex when I want, shut those kids up, put dinner on the table when I want it, quit your job because your independence makes me feel insecure... if you would do all of that I wouldn't have to beat you. But then even if you do all of that, the fact that you have self control and I don't - that says negative things about me too. I hate myself but I'm too much of a coward to hurt myself, so I'll hurt you instead. At least then, I feel powerful, and I feel in control."

Please, please, please, crown attorneys, district attorneys, family lawyers, and judges - please stop sending these men with mile-long rap sheets for domestic violence to anger management classes. Send them to programs for men who batter, and get their families away from them before it is too late.

Now it's Serena's Turn: Anger on the Court

I must say I was shocked and disappointed to see Serena Williams' unwarranted, grossly unsportsmanlike outburst this weekend. Whether there was a line fault is not the issue. Whether or not the linesperson was incompetent is not the issue. Whether or not Serena was losing anyway is not the issue. The issue here is that this young lady clearly does not know how to treat other people with respect and dignity when she is feeling angry. Secondly, Serena clearly has difficulty owning up to her mistakes and making apologies; rather, she hides behind bravado, choosing to minimize her behaviour, likely in an attempt to cover up her embarrassment for acting so aggressively.

In Anger Solutions, we use a little questionnaire to help people identify their anger responses and how those responses serve them. It looks like this: "When I feel angry, I _______ (behaviour) and immediately I feel _______ (feeling); and later I feel _____________ (feeling).

Based on what I saw yesterday, Serena's completed form might look like this: "When I feel angry, I yell, swear, intimidate, and threaten the person that made me angry, and immediately I feel powerful and superior; and later I feel embarrassed."

I read a comment online that said that Serena needs to grow up, eat crow, apologize, and take anger management classes. I kinda-sorta agree with that comment. Yes, she needs to grow up. Yes, she needs to apologize. Yes, she needs to learn how to effectively express her anger - but she needs more than a class. She needs to learn how to make the process of anger resolution a part of her lifestyle. Like it or not, she is a public figure with a huge following. She has a responsibility to do better and to set an example - the weight of that responsibility may even be heavier because she is black and a woman. Whatever the case, her behaviour was unacceptable and she knows it. She just doesn't know how to admit it. Therein lies her problem.

Solving the Susan Boyle Phenomenon

We all know of Susan Boyle, the “frumpy” Scottish spinster who skyrocketed to fame with her jaw-dropping rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” on Simon Cowell’s Britain’s Got Talent. Countless articles and stories have been written about Su-Bo (Soo-Bow) as she is now affectionately called; several of them focusing on our obsession with looks. (Case in point - read this blog entry, which is also the source of the photo you see here... http://harrisimage.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/will-susan-boyle-change-the-concept-of-beauty-in-the-music-business/)

Much of this speculation of course stems from the initial response of the judges and the audience prior to Susan’s audition – judging her by her looks, and her small town accent rather than giving her talent the benefit of the doubt. Why did so many people get it wrong? Why could they not “see” her talent before she showed it to them?

I believe we can turn to Anger Solutions philosophy to find the answer to this question – and no, this is in no way a “stretch”. One of the key principles of Anger Solutions is that we approach every experience with a certain level of expectations. We also refer to Dr. William Glasser’s concepts of our real world experience being filtered through our senses, our values, and our past experiences; this leads to the world as we see it, or our perceived world. We constantly compare our perceived world against our ideal world – pictures we have in our minds of how things really should be.

Put this all together then. Is it possible that we have certain unconscious expectations or “ideal world” pictures of what opera singers look like? Do we expect all talented people to also be beautiful? When we looked at Su-Bo and heard her sad story, is it possible that we turned to our senses (what we saw, heard, and felt), our values (she’s not pretty – is not educated – has never been kissed; how could she have a good singing voice?), and our past experience (every other opera singer looks different, speaks differently, has had formal training, etc.), and then made a decision about Su-Bo before she ever opened her mouth to sing?

In Anger Solutions we describe the point of “frustration” or anger as the point at which our experiences do not match up to our expectations. In the case of Susan Boyle, the same process of experience colliding with expectations generated quite the opposite effect. The majority of people prejudged her based on their filters. They created a pre-conceived notion of what their experience of her singing would be before she ever actually began to sing. They experienced their “frustration” signal completely in their minds.

BUT when Su-Bo let loose the latent talent within her, that frustration immediately melted away and was replaced by surprise, shock, and indeed absolute appreciation. Suddenly, her frumpy looks were unimportant – nothing a quick makeover can’t fix. Her accent was rendered irrelevant, and the fact that she had never been kissed simply became the romantic exclamation point to an incredible Cinderella-like story.

What can we learn from this? Two things:
1) Although they sometimes last forever, first impressions are often inaccurate. If we open our minds up to the possibility that there could be more than one “ideal world” scenario, we will be both disappointed and surprised less often.
2) When we lower our expectations, we sometimes end up getting much less than what we bargained for – but every now and then, we get so much more.

Thank you, Susan Boyle for reminding us that if a middle-aged frumpy spinster can “change her stars”, then so can we. Thank you too, for treating us to one of those rare moments when our experience completely exceeded our expectations.