Domestic violence on the rise, this time against German men

Domestic violence is a major problem, and women are usually the victims. But we should not think that men are immune to this violence. In Germany, some men are victims of violence by their wives. A report from Der Spiegel magazine on this subject.

In a report in the latest issue of Der Spiegel, several men recount their stories of being victims of violence by their wives. One of them, Mike, said that his wife had physically and emotionally destroyed him over the course of seven years of marriage, to the point that he lost his job.

Statistics from the German Criminal Investigation Office show that 81.8 percent of those who are subjected to domestic violence or rape are women. However, there is a dark side to the issue of domestic violence that is rarely mentioned in this report, namely that for years there has been a trend in Germany in which men are pressured and abused by their partners.

In the eastern German state of Saxony, the number of men seeking advice on this issue has doubled in the past eight years. A home has been set up in the town of Gera in Thuringia to provide care and support for these men. There are currently three men living there and ten on the waiting list.

In other states, such as Schleswig-Holstein, a project has been launched to help men who are victims of anger and violence from their wives. Counseling centers for these men have also been set up in other places, including Kiel, Felsenburg, and Elmshorn.

An old taboo: violence against men

Ante Langner, an employee at the Kiel Department of Social Affairs, says the big problem is that talking about domestic violence against men is still a taboo in society and the problem is not taken seriously.

The Saxony State Criminal Investigation Department has provided a picture of domestic violence in which 4,000 women and 1,700 men were affected. 35 of these men ended up in hospital. Two were permanently injured and three died from their injuries.

"Money had become a defining issue in our relationship," Mike was quoted as saying by Der Spiegel magazine. "My wife wanted to renovate our house at great expense and buy expensive furniture. I was against it. She didn't object at all." The man describes how his wife would scream, curse, and beat him with anything she could reach: a telephone, a pot, or a frying pan.

Mike used to sometimes respond to his wife's outbursts, but he gradually became a quiet person. At work, no one knows where the bruises on his body came from. He has always been afraid of being ridiculed. Once he decided to run away from home in a car. But his wife stopped him on the way and hit the car with a large rock.

He and his wife earned a combined monthly income of around 11,000 euros, but this was not enough to meet his wife's expectations. He had considered suicide several times. Mike did not know that many men sympathized with him. The German criminal authority points out that domestic violence against men has not been investigated for years.

In his book about men who “suffer in silence,” social scientist Hans-Joachim Lenz writes: “In traditional thinking, men are expected to take the dominant role. To deal with problems alone and naturally to defend themselves without the help of others. Men are expected not to be upset or to show their upset.”

Spiegel wrote that surveys show that men are almost as likely as women to be the target of this problem and to be attacked by their spouse or partner at least once.

The results of an international health survey in six European countries in 2014 showed that 3.5 percent of women said they had been victims of violence in the previous year. This figure was 4.1 percent for men. But the police do not intend to act on this statistic. Because all over the world, women are still the first victims of violence. Violence that is much more severe and sometimes even fatal.

Source: DW