Fachmann: Forschung zur häuslichen Gewalt weniger ideologisch

Auf der Website des amerikanischen Springer-Verlages (der nichts mit der Boulevardpresse zu tun hat, sondern mit Fachbüchern zu Medizin und Gesundheit) erscheint derzeit ein Interview mit John Hamel, Autor und Herausgeber von Fachliteratur zur häuslichen Gewalt. Daraus wird sehr deutlich, in welche Richtung sich die Forschung momentan bewegt. Hamel berichtet über seine Erfahrungen:

In 1991, I took over a domestic violence caseload and was trained in a variation of the well-known “Duluth” model. In the Duluth theoretical framework, domestic violence is caused by a patriarchal society that sanctions violence by men against their female partners. Women are assumed to be either victims or, when they are found to aggress against their male partners, to be doing so in self-defense. In group, many of the men I was working with claimed that their female partners were equally or more abusive than they were, and wondered why I wasn’t treating them as well. I had been trained to automatically disbelieve such claims as victim-blaming. However, while many of my clients did in fact seek to displace responsibility for their actions onto others, I found other claims to be quite credible, so I changed my assessment procedures and began to insist on interviewing victims separately. According to the victims themselves, the majority of these cases did indeed involve mutual abuse and, and some featured a dominant female perpetrator whose partner was arrested after fighting back. This clinical data contradicted much of what I had been taught, and led me to conduct an extensive review of the research literature. What I found more than corroborated my clinical findings. (…)

These notions are not new; they had found support as far back as the 1970’s, in the work of Murray Straus, Peter Neidig and other researchers. For years, studies conducted by these mavericks were dismissed, and in some cases suppressed, because of the long-dominant patriarchal paradigm advanced by victim advocates. Recently, however, there has been an explosion of new research that may very well change the way we look at domestic violence. I am thinking of the work that Linda Mills has done questioning mandatory arrest laws, and her ideas around restorative justice; the meta-analytic reviews by John Archer, and the emerging research on power and control and female intimate terrorism by his colleague, Nicola Graham-Kevan; the prodigious and far-reaching research from Don Dutton; and the dating violence and etiological studies by the seemingly tireless and age-defying Murray Straus at the University of New Hampshire. As a result of these efforts, the majority of mainstream researchers are now acknowledging the gender-inclusive nature of intimate partner abuse. (…)

We now know that some batterers are not amenable to any treatment; but we also know that most domestic violence is mutual, typically occurs within the context of escalated conflict, and involves lower-level violence. This is the type of abuse for which couples and family therapy would be most suitable. (…)

The criminal justice system has traditionally favored rigid perpetrator-victim dichotomies, probably because these simplify the legal process. It has treated domestic violence as primarily a gender problem by arresting mostly men and mandating them to batterer intervention and or/jail and by referring their female victims to shelter-based services. A number of studies have found that men are disproportionately arrested regardless of the nature of the offense, and men who call the police on their partners are far more at risk of being arrested themselves. (…)

The other problem is the dearth of services for male victims. Currently, only one shelter in the United States, out of more than 1,800, provides beds for abused men and their children. In many states, including California, state funding for victim services is made available only to programs that help women.

Hamel berichtet zutreffend darüber, dass die Erkenntnisse über die Gleichverteilung häuslicher Gewalt seit den siebziger Jahren vorliegen. Aber wer darüber sprach, wurde von Feministinnen häufig so brutal gemobbt, wie das nur irgend möglich war, und so hat auch in Deutschland selbst heute noch, drei Jahrzehnte später, die feministische Ideologie die Öffentlichkeit stark im Griff. Beispielsweise verkündet das niedersächsische Ministerium für Soziales, Familie, Frauen und Gesundheit auf seiner Website zum Thema häuslicher Gewalt unverdrossen: „Wissenschaftliche Studien zeigen, dass von Gewalt in der Familie ganz überwiegend Frauen betroffen sind. Nur 5% bis 10% der Opfer sind männlich.“ Jeder Beleg für diese Behauptung fehlt. Auf der Website des Berliner Senats tönt es kaum anders: „Häusliche Gewalt wird in über 80% der Fälle von Männern ausgeübt.“ Auch hier fehlt bezeichnenderweise jeglicher Beleg. Im folgenden Text heißt es: „Alle Berliner Maßnahmen, die zur Bekämpfung und zum Abbau von Gewalt gegen Frauen beitragen, sind im Berliner Aktionsplan (2002 –2006) zur Bekämpfung von häuslicher Gewalt zusammengefasst.“ Wochenzeitungen wie der „Freitag“ verkünden ”Das Böse schleicht auf Hauspantoffeln”, und mit „das Böse“ ist selbstverständlich der Mann gemeint.

So stehen sich feministische Ideologie und seriöse Wissenschaft seit langem diametral gegenüber, aber es ist die Ideologie, die bis heute den Sieg davonträgt.