Battered Husbands

Silent pandemic of wife-on-husband domestic violence

- Samir Ranjan Majumdar

Every day, Mr X returns home very late in the night; not because he is overburdened by work at the office, or because he does not love his three-year-old daughter. "My wife is a badtempered woman and of rude behaviour; after marriage she started quarrelling and misbehaving with me and my parents for no reason.

She goes to bed by 11 pm, so, I return home after she falls asleep. This helps me avoid some embarrassing situations," he told his friend.

Mr Y, a 29-year-old computer engineer working in a multinational company, has another story to narrate. "My wife always finds fault with my lifestyle, daily routine, likes and dislikes, and picks up a quarrel with me on trivial issues. She also hurls abuses at me and my parents for no fault on our part," he laments.

"She spreads rumours among our relatives and friends pertaining to my fidelity, character and habits. Such accusations of my wife are all false and concocted," he further tells his friend.

Domestic violence against men by their wives or intimate partners is not uncommon. There are a plethora of instances of wives and women perpetrating domestic violence on their male spouses or partners or implicating them in false cases of rape or domestic violence.

Silent Pain

While writing this piece, I tried to cull statistics about this hidden and painful side of the domestic violence, prevailing worldwide. I found that the actual statistics of men abused by their wives is difficult to obtainnot because such crimes do not take place. The reasons may be that in-depth research studies seem to have not been conducted on the topic of domestic violence against men, or may be that this issue has been substantially kept out of the arena of serious sociological study worldwide, or that there is hardly any media coverage on such incidents, or such incidents are relatively underreported.