Opinion ID: 1225076
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Anger

Text: What judges and indeed many therapists usually fail to understand is the behavior manifestations battered women frequently demonstrate. For example, a battered woman may appear in court as unstable, nervous, inarticulate, or angrya result of her ordeal. The batterer, on the other hand, may appear in command of himself, calm, well spoken and so forthand may appear in court as the more fit parent. This may operate to the disadvantage of the victim not only in the eyes of the judge, but also with counselors meeting with one or both of the parents and with psychologists hired to do a psychological evaluation. Crites & Coker, supra, at 40. It has further been recognized that: many women do not present a tearful passive personality to the psychologist.... Anger and a new assertiveness are positive characteristics of the recovering abuse victim. She is angry at being abused, and angry at having been blamed by him and by unaware therapists for having caused it. And she is especially angry at his attempts to take the children away. Crites & Coker, supra, at 41. Psychologists unfamiliar with all the circumstances and with the unique dynamics of family abuse may make these mistakes: 1. They fail to see that the victim's anger is appropriate and normal.... 2. They look to the victim's behavior and personality problems to explain the abuse.... Such blaming of the victim tends to reinforce the abuser's position that ... the victim is crazy. 3. They seem to identify with the seemingly sociable, `appropriate' male as a man who has been pushed beyond his limits by an `angry woman.' 4. They fail to see beneath the sincere, positive image of the abuser, but look instead for the `typical' abuser personality.... 7. Finally, they criticize [the woman] for focusing her anger on her husband.... Crites & Coker, supra, at 42. It does not appear that any of the psychologists had any information on the domestic abuse and none dealt with the physical abuse; only Dr. Yeargan seems to have had any information on the psychological abuse and domination. If family law masters and judges are to make decisions on the lives of troubled families, they must become sufficiently knowledgeable about physical and emotional domination to enable them to recognize that these factors are just as invidious, and probably more pervasive, than physical abuse alone. And we must begin to see anger on the part of the victim as healthy.