A Lethal Combination: Firearms and Intimate Partner Violence
It was a storybook love affair: the blonde, blue-eyed cheerleader and the handsome football star from a small town America. Emma Walker, a 16-year-old cheerleading standout at Central High in Knoxville, Tenn. had been dating the team’s wide-receiver Riley Gaul for two years.
Snapshots posted on Emma’s social media accounts painted the picture of a fairytale high school fantasy — birthdays together, a day at the lake, July 4th festivities, prom, etc. Just like teens everywhere, they fought, broke up and made up a dozen times. However, as the relationship grew increasingly toxic, Emma broke up with Riley, this time for good.
To win back Emma’s love, Riley went as far as staging his own kidnapping, but Emma resisted. As strange incidents escalated, Emma became afraid, tense, and asked her parents to turn on their home security system. One night, a desperate and crazed Gaul fired several shots through her bedroom wall, striking Emma while she was sleeping. She died and her dream of becoming a nurse died along with her [1].
The scenario painted above is not the plot of a sick, dark movie airing on the Lifetime Network, it was pulled from regular newscasts after the 2018 murder of a beautiful and well-loved high school cheerleader followed by the dramatic murder trial of the local football star.
Emma’s story is just one of hundreds of incidents taking place around the U.S. that point to an alarming trend — Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). International organizations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization and government agencies such as the U.S. National Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have taken notice.
In 2006, a U.N. — commissioned study reported that 22 percent of high school students and 32 percent of college women have experienced IPV [2]. A global study by the U.N. in 2018 confirms that IPV is a global problem. Of the 87,000 women and girls killed around the world in 2017, intimate partners killed more than half of those women [3].
A 2017 fact sheet published by the CDC paints IPV as an important public health issue with wide-ranging impacts; from missed workdays to post traumatic stress disorder, depression, injury and death [4].
The “World Report on Violence and Health” published in 2002 by the World Health Organization asserts; “Although women can be violent in relationships with men, and violence is also sometimes found in same-sex partnerships, the overwhelming burden of partner violence is borne by women at the hands of men… In the United States, more murders of women are committed by guns than by all other types of weapons combined” [5].
The Power and Control Wheel
In 1984, the Domestic Violence Abuse Intervention Project, an NGO in Duluth, Minn., developed a tool called the Power and Control Wheel. The wheel has since been used by psychologists, NGOs and state agencies internationally to demonstrate, to law enforcement and the judicial system, the strategies employed by an abuser. Most importantly, it is used to show victims how warning signs can be recognized [6].
The Power and Control wheel has eight spokes:
1. Intimidation
2. Emotional Abuse
3. Isolation
4. Coercion and threats
5. Minimizing, denying the abuse
6. Blaming the victim for the abuse
7. Employing male privilege
The abuse endured by Emma Walker can be related to several of the spokes in the Power and Control Wheel. Emma’s family and friends had, in fact, picked up on some of these warning signs:
“He became kind of controlling over her, what she did, her activities,” says Keegan Lyle one of Emma’s closest friends. (ABC News)
“He got more possessive and more clingy towards her, and wouldn’t let her do certain things,” fellow cheerleader Lauren Hutton said. (ABC News)
He threatened: “You’re dead to me… I’ll check the obituary… F&%# you,” (ABC News)
He belittled “I hate you I hate everything about you… you’re the biggest bitch I’ve ever come in contact with.” (ABC News)
It is not clear whether or not Gaul had physically abused Walker, but it is clear that he had hit several of the markers that psychologists look for in identifying emotional abuse and intimidation by a partner.
The Cycle of Violence
Recently, Cosmopolitan magazine published a chilling account from a victim whose spouse used his firearm to not only threaten, but terrorize his partner.
According to the account, shortly after Sophie* moved in with her boyfriend, Sam*, bought a firearm. Sophie could not understand why Sam wanted a gun, but reports that he acted responsibly; getting a legal firearm permit, keeping the gun locked in a safe and storing the bullets separately.
Soon, the gun started appearing in the middle of heated arguments. “Without a word, he’d head into the bedroom, open the safe, and reappear with the gun… Sometimes, he’d place it on the kitchen table; other times, he’d slowly load and unload it,” Sophie said. The gun also made appearances during the nights Sam was drunk. As the situation between Sam and Sophie became more volatile, he started pointing the gun at her, and also dry-fired at the ceiling [7].
In the case of Gaul, for every nasty text he sent to Walker, there was an apology. “Emma, I’m sorry for however I act,” one message from Gaul said. “I love you more than words can describe,” said another. (ABC News)
Like Gaul, the next day, Sam would be full of apologies and promises to never take the gun out again, but had never kept his word. Both Sam and Riley were perpetrators of the theory behind the “cycle of abuse.” This theory describes the phases an abusive relationship moves through, in the lead up to a violent event as well as the repetitive nature of the batterer’s tactics. Renowned psychologist Dr. Lenore Walker, Professor Emerita of the Nova Southeastern University, developed this theory in 1979.
According to Walker, the cycle of violence has three phases;
1. A buildup of tension
2. A violent episode
3. Remorse/Honeymoon
Coercive Control
Without firing one shot, Sam slowly eroded Sophie’s self-esteem, self-confidence and self-respect. She feared for her life. The tactic that Sam’s behaviour exhibits is called coercive control, which is a theory popularized by psychologist Evan Stark, professor emeritus at Rutgers University.
In his book “Coercive Control: The Entrapment of Women in Personal Life”; Stark explains that domestic abuse involves black eyes, lacerations and broken bones. Drawing on court records, interviews, and FBI statistics, Stark asserts that coercive control, is neither domestic nor necessarily violent, but a pattern of controlling behaviors with similarities to “terrorism and hostage-taking.”
In 2015, the government of the United Kingdom created a new offense, making coercive control a crime. The statute is covered under Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015.
The mind of an abuser
Domestic Violence is learned behavior. Most men who abuse their partners were exposed to violence as children. A study “Characteristics of Domestic Violence Offenders: Associations with Childhood Exposure to Violence,” stated that“the differences in generality, frequency, and severity of violent offenses, nonviolent criminal behavior, and psychopathology within a battering population of 1,099 adult males with varying levels of exposure to violence as children. Generality, frequency, and severity of violence and psychopathology all increased as level of childhood exposure to violence increased [8].
In 2018, CNN’s Chris Cuomo visited a court ordered program for convicted abusers. Cuomo underscored the varied backgrounds. There were construction workers, restaurant workers, blue collar workers, white collar workers and even a medical doctor [9].
CNN also interviewed a reformed batterer in 2015 who, even though socially and economically privileged, saw his father verbally and physically abuse his mother. In high school he saw a student hit his girlfriend so hard, she bled. He confessed to abusive behavior such as threats, pouring water over her, throwing objects at her, ripping up her favorite photos, and punching her [10].
In 2009, talk show host Oprah Winfrey interviewed other admitted abusers, one of whom told the talk show host, that the first time he hit is wife was in a jealous rage. He admits to choking her, sitting on her belly while she was pregnant in an attempt to kill her and the baby. He admits that everything seems to be falling apart in his life, his wife was the one thing he could control. “I felt like I had power and control over something in my life,” he said. “I grew up in an abusive household, so I didn’t know how to verbally communicate with my wife without putting her down. I didn’t know how to verbally disagree with her and say, ‘We don’t see eye to eye,’ and be okay with that” [11].
In the U.S. gun violence disproportionately affect women, as 80 percent of the victims of Domestic Violence Homicides are women. Between 2001 and 2012 more than 6000 women were murdered by their partners. To put this in perspective, the number is higher than the number of troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.The loopholes in Federal Law that allow convicted batterers to hold on to their guns, need to be fixed. About 30 states have taken action to keep guns out of the hands of batterers, other state need to enact similar legislation in order to save lives.
References
[1] ABC News. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://abcnews.go.com/beta-story-container/US/picture-perfect-high-school-sweethearts-toxic-relationship-ended/story?id=57781208.
[2] “United Nations Official Document.” United Nations. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/61/122/Add.1.
[3] UNODC, Global Study on Homicide 2018 (Vienna, 2018). Accessed February 06, 2019.
[4] “Intimate Partner Violence |Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/intimatepartnerviolence/index.html.
[5] “Violence Prevention.” World Health Organization. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/en/.
[6] “FAQs About the Wheels.” Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://www.theduluthmodel.org/wheels/faqs-about-the-wheels/.
[7] Mascia, Jennifer. “The Untold Story of Gun Violence.” Cosmopolitan. December 11, 2018. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/a23088401/domestic-violence-coercive-control/.
[8] Murrell, Amy R., Karen A. Christoff, and Kris R. Henning. “Characteristics of Domestic Violence Offenders: Associations with Childhood Exposure to Violence.” SpringerLink. July 17, 2007. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10896-007-9100-4.
[9] Ravitz, Jessica. “After Ray Rice: Inside a Batterer’s Mind.” CNN. January 02, 2015. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/2014/11/08/living/inside-batterers-mind/index.html.
[10] “Men Tell Oprah Why They Beat the Women They Love.” CNN. Accessed February 06, 2019. http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/02/o.why.men.abuse.women/index.html.
[11] “Why Men Abuse Women.” Oprah.com. Accessed February 06, 2019. https://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/domestic-violence-abusive-men/all.
