It's not November, but the issue of gender based violence isn't something that should only be limited to sixteen days out of 365. And this morning on Sunup on 7, attorney Audrey Matura delved deep into the psychology behind violence in the home. As a survivor herself, Matura has looked at the continuous cycle of abused children who end up abusing their wives and their kids. It's no secret that most cases of domestic violence are perpetrated by men. Matura explained that many of these men grew up in abusive households.
Audrey Matura, Attorney
"You're a child and this is a common situation in Belize. You're a child to a single mother. The father of this child has abandoned the mother, the mother takes out the anger and frustration out on that child in many ways, sometimes only verbal, but a lot of times, very physical and they beat the **obscenity** out of the child, as Kriol would say. And despite that, when that mother dies, that's the child that will be there crying the most because the trauma bonds, all you yearn for all your life was for your mother to hug you and say, I love you, I appreciate you, but no matter how much the person abuses you, it's like Stockholm syndrome, that's still the person you want to form attachment because human beings were not made to live by themselves, we were made to form attachments so we need to teach our children to have healthy attachment but our homes are messed up and we've never had any government that comes and says the only way this country will develop is if we develop our people. If we genuinely have programs that are in the schools, the churches, through whatever community groups, parenting classes that we talk about these things openly, have TV ads running and stuff like that, we don't have teach people boundaries, we don't teach them healthy relationships."
"So men, their first abuser are their mothers and we don't talk about the psychology of it and then these men grow up and have their girlfriends but what did they learn at home? You're a product of what you see and learn, humans learn by what they see and experience. They've never seen anything else so they really love the young lady, she's pretty and everything but they do not know to resolve their differences with words in a mature way so how do they resolve it? They resolve it the same way they were treated so your conduct, your behavior, you're just perpetrating what was done to you."
"What we ned to help resolve it are the institutions, more than a social worker, we genuinely need good counseling, we need good therapist, we need to develop that whole area in which we make people understand what made you develop the way you are."
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