Thread Drift

[OakLeaf]

Yeah, but even wealthy women can lose so much self-esteem that they can't see the way out. F'rinstance, a news item in Norway lately is an investment banker appealing his conviction for repeated rapes and beatings of wife and lover. Neither of them reported it until the police, while investigating the guy on a corruption charge, came across his letters to the women apologizing to them for these rapes and beatings, took these letters to the ladies and asked about the back stories. Now he says the women're just being vengeful and made it all up, and that somebody planted the letters (including the drafts of the letters found on his hard disc). He's the one with the money and lawyers. Who knows? He may still get away with it.

On the up side, sometimes even poor women can be resilient and resourceful, thank goodness.

Not that I'm saying economic unfairness doesn't matter. It does.

Anyone remember Charlotte Fedders? It hasn't been all that long ago.

A woman whose husband is wealthy isn't necessarily wealthy herself... even if some or all of the money was hers originally. Economic abuse is a key factor of domestic violence.

And, a woman from a wealthy family may feel she has an image to protect, may never have heard her peers talking about being abused themselves, may feel even more isolated than poor women who have always shared such stories with their peers, and who have no class-status barriers to going to the shelter.

The story the OP linked to originally had to do with the attitudes of children, not the actual incidence of DV. Their opinions have as much to do with verbal abuse in the home, women's status in their schools and places of worship, and the general portrayal of women in the media, as with any specific occurrences in their homes.

Certainly economic stress is one of the stressors that can make a physical slap out of what might otherwise have been an insult. But it didn't create the power inequality in the relationship, and that's the root of the problem.