Is Rihanna Special or Just a Statistic?

Rihanna is young, beautiful, talented and financially secure, so why in the world did she go back to a man who is beating her? Will Rihanna be among that special 25% of women who end up successfully leaving her abuser or become just another statistic in the tragic stories of women who have been abused by the people they love?

According to the Peace Over Violence website, every year 3 to 4 million US women are battered; one-third of these are repeatedly beaten by their spouse or significant other and 10 women a day are murdered by their abuser.

Most of these women have contacted at least five different sources to get help to leave the abuser, attempting unsuccessfully to leave at least five or six times before either giving up or making it out alive.

Most often the ones who leave are the women whose abusers also assault their children. The question is often asked "Why do women go back to their abusers if they don't want to be beaten again?"

In an article by Elizabeth Landau of CNN, she spoke to Joanna Snawder, a counselor at the Metropolitan State College of Denver Colorado, who cites financial dependence as a primary limiting factor in whether the woman can successfully leave her abuser. Snawder says some women are afraid to be independent, because they don't know how to take care of themselves, additionally they are ashamed and don't want to tell their family and friends that they're being beaten.

Quite often a woman has come from an abusive family where her father or another male member of the family was allowed to beat her, and so learned this was a normal family structure, often repeating the cycle in her own relationships with men.

Oftentimes the abuser is a master of manipulation, working on the woman's fear of having her children taken away from her because he is making the money and can prove that he can support the children better than she can on her own. Or he may take the tactic that he will kill himself if she leaves him, according to Mark Crawford, a clinical psychologist based in Roswell, Georgia.

Pamela Cross wrote an article for the Ontario Women's Justice Network which cited other reasons why women stay in an abusive relationship, including: the fear of increased violence; the fear of losing her children; family, religious or social pressure to stay in the relationship no matter how bad, and a desire to help the abuser recover from his violence. A man may tell her that he will commit suicide if she leaves him, and since she got together with him in the first place because she loved him, she believes it is only a temporary problem that her love can overcome.

According to a hotline worker at the Walter Hoving House, a shelter for battered women in Pasadena, California, approximately 50% of the women who do not get into a program or shelter will go back to their abusers for lack of financial support or the tools needed to successfully stay away. She did say that the success rate of women who are in a program/shelter for battered women is 87% if the woman completes the entire program which includes personal and group counseling, as well as help for the traumatized children of the relationship.

A Haven House hotline worker said that 75% of the women who are murdered by their abuser are in the process of leaving; that sometimes it takes up to seven tries before the woman can successfully leave, and sometimes she just doesn't make it out in time before the cycle of violence turns deadly.

As for Rihanna, she is young, financially independent and in love. She has much to learn about the "cycle of violence" she has been caught up in, and only time will tell if she will be one of the lucky ones to get out before the next beating.

Sources Cited:
www.wisegeek.com
www.owjn.org
www.peaceoverviolence.org
havenhousela.com
edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/03/04/rihanna.domestic.violence