Domestic Abuse: What would you do?

Domestic abuse is something that is very easy for those who have no direct experience of it to get wound up and angry about. And why wouldn’t you? Consider what it involves: Forcing a partner into a situation where he or she has no choice but to do EXACTLY as the abuser says, threatening them with appalling and potentially life-threatening consequences should they refuse, and following it up with violence that causes distress, fear, injury and even death. How could any reasonable person not get angry at the thought of that? How could they not feel desperately sorry for the person being abused? How could you not wish there was something you could do to stop it?

If you think these things, then fair enough. You’ve obviously got your moral standards in the correct general area. But what if you were actually confronted with such a situation? What if you had to decide what to do? Could you do it? Obviously, the correct answer is yes – but as with so many situations, it is rarely so simple.

I’ll tell you about a situation I happened across last Tuesday, and I would be interested to hear what you think about it.

I was at the Blue Brick pub in Brierley Hill for a Jam Night with my friends Rich and Dave. Some other people I knew were also coming down, but they arrived after all this happened. I was marginally aware of the other people in the pub; that is to say I knew they were there, but I didn’t know any of them in person and had no reason to talk to them. So while the guys in the band were setting up, I sat at a stool on a table quite close to the stage area to watch them.

From behind me I heard the soft and quite unmistakable sound of somebody being hit. This gave rise to some concern on my part. As I said, I was aware of the people behind me but I didn’t know who any of them were. But as I became aware of the sound of somebody being hit, I started to listen. There was someone behind me, almost certainly male, talking in a low voice, and when the voice rose, it was punctuated with the hitting sound again.

*whap*

*whap*

*whap*

That wasn’t right. It shouldn’t have been happening. But I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by looking around to see what was going on. There was always the possibility that it was just some friends playing around… but it sounded just a little bit too serious for that. So I got up, and walked to the top of the room where the front door was. From there I could see the whole room, and this is what I saw:

From where the noise had come from sat a couple; I reckoned early-to-mid 20s. The girl had a fearful and resigned look on her face and appeared to be staring in the direction of the ground by the bar directly in front of her. She was obviously upset. The man sat next to her looked quite big and was talking to her, but his posture was all wrong as well. He had is arm around her shoulders, had leaned in close and was talking to her very quietly, as though he didn’t want anybody other than his girlfriend to hear what he was saying. And every so often, as I watched, he would hit her in the back of the head, just a little bit too hard.

*whap*

*whap*

*whap*

It could not have been more obvious that the man was giving his girlfriend a hard time.

I wish I could say that I’d walked up to him and broken a chair off the back of his head. I wish I could say that I’d called the police, and that they’d dragged him off to spend the rest of the night in a cell and the following morning explaining himself to two very angry coppers and a tape recorder. Hell, I’d even have settled for walking up to the guy and telling him to stop.

Of course, I didn’t do any of those things. Why? Well, it was largely because I was scared of getting the shit kicked out of me. After all, he was a pretty heavy-set guy, and if he had such a poisonous mind that he felt justified in treating his girlfriend in such a way, what would he do to someone who’d actually done something to him? I didn’t call the police either, because I learned when I’ve come across this situation before that acting unilaterally – i.e. calling the police – does not often result in thanks.

So what did I do?

Well, my mate Rich, who was running the night, was at the bar so I went up to talk to him across from where the couple were sitting. We chatted for a moment about who else he expected to come that night, then I leaned in close and said “Do you know the guy behind us?”

Just to clarify this question: A lot of the people in that side of the pub were there for the jam night, and Dave and Rich knew them personally. Therefore it wasn’t outside the realms of possibility that Rich would know the couple behind us as well, in which case he could go and have a quiet word with the guy. I didn’t necessarily think it likely that Rich would be on close terms with someone who would beat up his girlfriend, but you can never tell.

“No,” he replied, after he’d looked around.

“He’s been proper laying into his girlfriend for the last 20 minutes,” I told him. I doubt it had actually been 20 minutes since I’d noticed, probably closer to 10, but that was the number I’d thought of so that was what I’d said. Rich took another look, and we’d both noticed that the girl was in tears at this point. He looked around at me with a troubled expression on his face. He then did what, in retrospect, I should have done all along – told the bar staff.

The lady behind the bar looked over to where Rich had indicated, and saw that the girl was in trouble. “Babb, are you alright?” she called out to her.

They both looked up, and the girl said “Yeah,” quite clearly.

That wasn’t the end of the matter and the lady behind the bar knew it. She crossed the bar to find another member of staff; a stocky lad called Dan, and told him what was going on. Dan kept an eye on them, and as soon as he saw the man hit his girlfriend again he shouted “Oi! Out.”

At this point, my fear of getting the shit kicked out of me wasn’t without merit, as the guy stood up and gave Dan both barrels. It’s not easy to remember word for word what he was saying, but broadly he didn’t like being told what he could and couldn’t do, and was willing to prove that point by fighting anybody in the bar. He did call me out at some point, and some others, but it was mostly aimed at Dan. Dan rather admirably held his ground, doing nothing but telling the man to leave. The girl had already slipped out quietly behind them.

Once the guy had left, he was banging on the windows trying to get people’s attention – most of them were having none of it – and I understand also smashed a glass on the outside seating in the bar. I asked the lady at the bar if we should call the police, and she said yes, but I don’t know if she ever did. I rang Hannah and Chloe, who were coming to see the jam night, to tell them that there was some trouble kicking off and to give me a ring when they get there, but it was all over by the time they arrived with Leeanne. Relieved, and slightly shaken, we all got on with the night.

Where the lad and his girlfriend ended up, I don’t know. But I did feel desperately sorry for the girl, if she was going home to that kind of behaviour.

So what do I think about all this? Obviously we’re all aware it happens – how many stories in the paper, magazines and documentaries on TV do we see on a yearly basis – but seeing it for yourself is an unsettling experience. The approach of the bar staff, thankfully or perhaps not, suggests to me that they’re not unfamiliar with situations by this, and much respect to them for not allowing it to continue.

But all the time since then, I’ve been thinking: Could I have done more? Should I have? Should I have called the guy out myself? Should I have intervened as soon as I realised something was wrong? Because it was a good 10 minutes at least before I did. Should I have told someone other than Rich? Who knows. Should I have followed the girl to make sure she was OK? Possibly, I doubt she’d have thanked me for it. Should I have called the police myself? Well, no one seemed to be in any danger once the bar staff had taken action…

Excuse after excuse after excuse, and I don’t like the way it makes me sound. I knew I should do something and all I could think of were reasons not to. This resulted in a lot of passing the buck on my part, and I think that situation gave rise to far more decisive action than that. That having been said, I’m glad I told Rich in the end, as that started the chain of events that ended with the guy getting thrown out.

But here’s the thing: I didn’t know the guy. Or his girlfriend. Now if I had – if that had been one of my friends laying into his girlfriend, or if it had been Hannah, Chloe, Leeanne, or my sister or my girlfriend being attacked by a man – what would I have done?

I’d like to say he’d have been unconscious before he’d hit the floor.

But I actually don’t know.

I just don’t know.

Should Kaitlyn Hunt be punished as a sex offender?

Normally, posts on Facebook asking me to sign petitions are easier to ignore than to bother myself with, despite the fact that it's usually something quite important. I wonder, on the grand scheme of things, what effect e-petitions have, when their recipient knows very well that people probably took a couple of minutes out of their day to sign it without truly understanding the issue.

However, this one caught my eye: https://www.allout.org/en/actions/kate?utm_source=platform&utm_medium=rapidfire&utm_content=english&utm_campaign=kate

Some of you may be aware of this already as the situation where Kaitlyn Hunt, 18 year old girl, faces 15 years in prison for having sex with her younger girlfriend. The parents of the younger girl, who obviously can't be named for child protection reasons, apparently called the police two days after Kate's 18th birthday in February, and Kate was charged with two counts of lewd and lascivious battery on a child. Naturally this has caused outcry with a great many people who feel that the law punishing Kate is wrong, including many who feel that the situation is about homosexuality rather than the law.

The information on the petition site is, for editorial purposes I suspect, limited to generate the most sympathy for Kate, and I did sign it. However it is a little too easy to get angry about this sort of thing without giving it due consideration.

So let's look at the facts:

• Kate and her girlfriend know each other from being on their High School Basketball team.
• There is conflicting information about the ages of the two girls, however it is most commonly reported that Kate was 18 and the younger girl was 14 at the time, now 15.
• The relationship began in November 2012.
• The couple did have sex, Kate admitted to it.
• The younger girl went missing in January, it was discovered that Kate had picked her up and taken her to her bedroom where there was another sexual encounter.
• There was a controlled phone conversation between Kate and the younger girls mother where she was advised to stop.
• The following day, the police officer monitoring the call arrested Kate.
• She was charged with the offence of Sex Battery on a child over 12.
• She was offered a conditional plea offer, which meant she would have been under house arrest for two years followed by one year's probation, amongst other things. She has now refused this offer and the case will go to trial.

For a start, lets get one piece of mis-information out of the way: A lot of people have been saying that the younger girl's parents called the police two days after Kate's 18th birthday. This is incorrect. The case report gives Kate's date of birth, which doing the maths means she turned 18 in August 2012. The relationship did not begin until the following November and there was no action from the police until February 2013.

So, should the younger girl's parents have got the police involved on what appeared to be a consenting sexual relationship between two girls of a relatively wide age gap?

As it happens, they are well inside their rights to do exactly that. Under Florida law, you can't legally consent to sex until you are 18 years old. I don't know how Florida law relates to Parental Responsibility, but if it is the same position as the UK then it is up to her parents who she can and can't be in a relationship/have sex with.

The parents of the younger girl have been accused, all-too-easily, of 'gay-bashing' and blaming Kate for their daughter's homosexuality. They have denied this. Do we believe it? Well, given how outspoken some Americans can be about homosexuality and gay rights, my view is that if they really did have a problem with their daughter being a lesbian and sought to blame Kate for it, they would have been a lot more vocal about it. On the other hand you're hardly going to admit to being a gay basher while being accused of bigotry and homophobia.

But if we do what the state of Florida are currently refusing to do, which is set aside the law and make it a question of morality, that can create a lot more problems.

Is homosexuality really such a bad thing? My view is, absolutely not. I do have several gay friends of both genders, and they are friends first, gay people second. I've never had any problems with it. I'm not about to start now.

The problem for the parents of the younger girl appears to have been the age gap between the two girls. Was that such a bad thing? It's not very easy to give an answer to this, to be honest.

But let's start by looking at the age gap itself. We know Kate was 18 when the relationship began. The case report does not give the younger girl's date of birth, but it is commonly reported that she was 14 when the relationship began and is 15 now. This would put the age difference between the two girls at approximately 3 years. I hope that will be recognised by the several sites I've seen claiming that there were only 2.

Is there a problem with a 3-year age gap? For me, in and of itself, no there is not. Apart from anything else, there's over 4 years between my girlfriend and I, we've been together for nearly 3 years knowing that and we've done alright. Limit yourself to people by age and you really are narrowing your horizons quite a bit.

However, the age of the two girls should be considered here. While I do not wish to call Kate a sex offender, the girls were always going to encounter problems with one being 18 and the other being 14-15. Most saliently for me, I remember being all of those ages, and how much my opinions on sex and relationships changed between them, despite at both points being yet to have either. Kate may well say she loves her girlfriend, but simply by being 4 years younger and with her mind, body and emotions still under development, it will not mean the same thing to the younger girl. She may say the same, and mean well, but she won't mean it in the same way Kate does.

Was the younger girl too young to be having sex? Well, technically yes, but that rarely stops people. Were her parents right to get the police involved in order to put a stop to it? To be honest, I don't think so. That law exists to protect young people who are unable to consent to a sexual relationship from being taken advantage of by older people, and calling the police to break up a consensual relationship between two teenagers appears to me to be a disgusting application of that law. The old expression about hammers and nuts comes to mind, especially when they start talking about a maximum penalty of 15 years. I would imagine anyone who read that they had called the police but weren't sure of the other facts would consider the move either a knee-jerk reaction, or the foolish bigotry they are being accused of.

I know I said that the difference in age would have caused some problems for the girls anyway, and there is little doubt that Kate behaved extremely irresponsibly. But if she's found guilty, or even if she'd taken the plea bargain, it would pretty much destroy her life. She would be unable to go to college, she would lose all her friends, and if she does manage to get a job after parole she'll be looking at a life of hard labour as she has been expelled from her school and will not have any qualifications. Is that a proportionate punishment for having a sexual relationship with a girl four years younger than you? I don't think so.

Of course, I am not a parent, so what do I know? Not much, but if I was presented with the same situation, I would not have dealt with it this way. I certainly would not have gone so far as to call the police.

What would I have done? Well, first I would recognise that taking an arbitrary, heavy-handed approach would do more harm than good. Now my girlfriend Amy and I might not necessarily agree on what age people should start having sex. This is because it was never actually an issue for us. I was well into my 20s when we got together, Amy was coming up on 21, and we'd never had to prepare ourselves for the fact that it might become an issue before that time. I'm not saying we disagree about it, it simply doesn't come up often enough in conversation (why would it?) to know one way or the other. And we probably won't, until such time as we become parents ourselves and underage sex becomes a matter that gives rise to some concern.

But, hypothetically speaking, if I discovered that my 14-year old daughter was in a relationship with an older girl of 18, and that they had sex at some point... First, I'd sit down with my daughter and talk to her about it. Accuse her of nothing, I would just want to know what's going on. It would be important to me that she understands that legally, she is too young to be having sex, and while her feelings and emotions are still developing it is inadvisable to get closely involved with somebody who was older, simply because it's biologically impossible for them to be feeling the same thing. However, I wouldn't put a stop to it straight away. I'd like to meet her girlfriend; I'd be looking for a maturity in her that would make me feel that she also understands what she's getting herself into. No threats. And I would make it clear to my daughter, and her girlfriend if appropriate, that if there ever becomes a problem, she gets upset and she needs someone to talk to, then she is always welcome to talk to me, and I would help in whatever way I could with whatever the problem was. The message would be: Don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it.

And if it was an older boy... same thing, except that if we hadn't had a talk about the birds and the bees by that point, that might be a good time. Again, I wouldn't necessarily be happy about the idea of my daughter having sex with anyone really, but if there was one thing I could do to make sure she does, it would be to ban her from doing it. So if she's going to do it, I'd be happier if she didn't feel she had to keep it a secret. And I would have to make one very clear rule - absolutely never without protection. At least, not while I'm responsible for her.

But back to the matter in hand... Sadly, if the same situation came up in the UK, the position wouldn't be much different. The legal age of consent for sex for lesbians in this country is 16, but your parents are responsible for you until you're 18. That means that until you are 18, your parents are well within their rights to tell you where you can go, what you can do and who you can spend your time with. So, it's up to your parents, really.

One last point, which I'm sure some of you will be wondering by now: What do I care about all of this? I've never met Kaitlyn Hunt, her girlfriend or her parents. Hell, I've never even been to America, let alone Indian River County in Florida where all this is going on. What's it got to do with me?

Well it's this: I mentioned before that I have some gay friends. Some of them are quite young, and although I've never really known gay people who are under the age of consent, I have known some gay people who were - but no longer - beneath the age of parental responsibility. And if it had been my friend, or anybody else I know and love, up in front of a judge because of a situation similar to this, I would be absolutely livid. And I would fight tooth and nail to try to get them off. I would make no secret of my intense dislike for the completely out-of-proportion reprisal, and of the people who instigated it. And I would make sure everybody -EVERYBODY - I know knew what was happening.

Because as far as I'm concerned, Kaitlyn Hunt has done nothing wrong.

If you want to sign the petition by the way, here's the link:

https://www.allout.org/en/actions/kate?utm_source=platform&utm_medium=rapidfire&utm_content=english&utm_campaign=kate

And I would be very interested to hear what you guys think of all this.