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It is a well-known story--a violent husband abuses his wife and
others, the wife stays with him out of fear or shame, and in the
end the husband kills the wife, or the children, or both. We
shake our heads and say "If only we could have protected her."
Such is the scenario of the Socorro Caro triple murders, except
that this time the genders are reversed. The Southern California
case is an extreme example of the price children, fathers, and
our society as a whole sometimes pay for our refusal to
acknowledge female domestic violence.
Socorro Caro, according to testimony by several witnesses,
including her husband Dr. Xavier Caro, had violently attacked
her husband or others on eight occasions prior to the night of
November 22, 1999, when she shot and killed three of her four
sons. In these previous incidents Ms. Caro had used weapons and
the element of surprise to her advantage, and had caused several
injuries, including serious eye damage to her husband.
Why didn't Dr. Caro leave her? Why didn't he tell anybody what
was being done to him?
"I was ashamed. I was embarrassed," he testified recently during
the penalty phase of Socorro Caro's trial. According to other
reports, he was also skeptical that authorities would believe
him.
Thanks to the noble efforts of women's activists, had Ms. Caro
been the victim of abuse at the hands of Dr. Caro, help would
have been available. Ms. Caro could have moved with her children
to a shelter. Using the legal services of the shelter, she could
have filed a restraining order against her violent husband, and
filed for divorce. She would have received custody of her four
children, their home, half or more of the family's financial
assets, and substantial child support. In addition, she probably
would have been able to eliminate her abusive husband's
visitation rights.
Had Dr. Caro, a male victim of domestic violence, felt that the
legal system would give his claims the same credence that an
abused woman's claims receive, his three children would probably
still be alive today.
Are female child abuse and domestic violence rare? Unfortunately
not. According to the US Department of Justice, 70% of confirmed
cases of child abuse and 65% of parental murders of children are
committed by mothers.
Veteran domestic violence researchers Richard Gelles, Murray
Straus, and Susan Steinmetz, who were once hailed by the women's
movement for their pioneering work on violence against women,
have repeatedly found that women are as likely as men to
physically attack their spouses or partners.
California State Long Beach Psychology professor Martin Fiebert
has compiled and summarized 117 different studies with over
72,000 respondents that found that most domestic violence is
mutual and, in the cases where there was only one abusive
partner, that partner was as likely to be female as male.
Crime statistics do not bear out what researchers know because
women tend to be seriously injured more often than men, and
because men, for various reasons, are far less likely than women
to report the abuse against them.
As the Caro case shows, by allowing abusive women to go
unacknowledged and unpunished, female abusers are encouraged to
believe that they can get away with their abuse indefinitely,
which frequently results in escalating violence.
Why didn't Dr. Caro seek help? Besides shame and denial, many
men hesitate to report their wives' violence because they fear
that once the police are involved, the wife will accuse her
husband of being the perpetrator and it is she, not he, who will
be believed. This is, in fact, what Ms. Caro tried to do during
her murder trial, claiming that it was her husband, not her, who
committed the murders. Draconian mandatory arrest laws often
direct police to make an arrest, even when the abuse is mutual
(as research shows is generally the case), or when it is unclear
who the perpetrator is. While arrests of women account for a
third or more of domestic violence arrests in some states,
police generally are pressured to arrest the man, even when the
evidence is scant.
What could Dr. Caro have done? There are few domestic violence
shelters which accept men, though in this case he probably would
have had enough money to pay for other accommodations. He would
have had difficulty winning a custody battle, particularly with
the well-documented willingness of women in danger of losing
custody to make false accusations of abuse or child molestation.
Quite possibly these accusations or other legal machinations
could have led to Ms. Caro being granted custody of the
children, and even to Dr. Caro losing visitation rights. Thus
his children could have been in the care of and under the
control of an abuser without even the limited protection he
could provide by staying with her.
Thus Xavier Caro was trapped--not just by his violent wife, but
by a society that refuses to acknowledge what voluminous
research and simple common sense shows--domestic violence is not
a male affliction but a human one.
Glenn
Sacks' columns on men's and fathers' issues have appeared in dozens of America's
largest newspapers. Glenn can be reached via his website at
www.GlennSacks.com or
via email at Glenn@GlennSacks.com.
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