Rihanna takes a stand for battered women

AND so after enraging women all over the world by getting back with her assaulter, Rihanna has taken a stand for battered women across the world by testifying against her on-off boyfriend, fellow singer Chris Brown.

Newspapers, celebrity magazines and bloggers have all been gossiping about this case ever since “butter-wouldn’t-supposedly-melt-in-his-mouth” Chris Brown attacked his gorgeous girlfriend, Rihanna, sparking the indignation of many of his fans.

Myth no 1: A certain type of man is an abuser. Men don’t advertise that they are abusers. Clean-shaven men who wear well-cut suits and well-polished shoes beat the living hell out of women too. Abusive men don’t have to be tattooed or wear the obligatory string vest. Abuse exists in homes where there is plenty of money, spanking new cars, where the wife is on the school’s board of management.

The Rihanna/Chris Brown case was being describing as a “talking point” by Oprah and all the other opinion formers in the States who all wanted to use the opportunity to educate young women about the dangers of abusive relationships. Such was the anger of Oprah that she made a direct appeal to the 21-year-old Rihanna to leave Brown and to dispel yet another myth.

Myth no 2: It’s a once-off; it won’t happen again. Over two-thirds of wife beaters re-offend and it was this statistic that propelled Oprah to warn Rihanna to get out when she was still alive. Women’s Aid statistics in this country and worldwide show that domestic abuse is rare at the beginning of a relationship, but if not challenged by a person leaving the relationship, tends to get more frequent and severe. Tyra Banks, in this particular Oprah episode, pointed to Nicole Simpson. Police records show OJ had repeatedly beaten her in the months before her death.

What personally I found most disturbing about this case was that Chris Brown’s fans sent him a tidal wave of support in the days after the beating went public. Rihanna was told in online forums by girls, aged 13 and 14 to forgive him and “let their love shine on” and that she was “so lucky to have him and that she should forgive him” and also “that she must have made him really mad”.

Myth no 3. It was my fault. I made him mad. A woman is never to blame. Therapists, A&E staff and gardaí will tell you that domestic violence cases can be amongst the most difficult to deal with as the women is so often sent into a spiral of guilt where they often end up feeling sorry for the abuser. These men always have endless reasons to justify their totally unjustifiable behaviour. Abusers seek out women who they can fill with self-doubt.

Fact 1: Women who are abused are often dogged by poor self esteem.

Just like the bully in the classroom or the bully in the playroom, the domestic abuser seeks out the “easy touch”: the woman who doesn’t rate herself as much as she should or who has never got the emotional support that she needed as a child – Rihanna herself has spoken about her teenage years in an abusive home.

Just maybe this case might get one or two of the celebrity obsessed teenagers out there thinking that a personal sense of self-worth is perhaps far more important in life than a drawer full of Swarovski bling. My fear however is that Rihanna was forced to take the stand by record label management and agents who wouldn’t want to see her brand disempowered by reneging on the “sistas”. Did she really decide to do it herself? What will be interesting to watch is if she goes back to him and whether she learns from this and avoids a certain type of man.