Before Shelter ***Trigger Warning***

[freshwest]

4. GOP-LP say leave it to family and church. They defund shelters, crisis hotlines, rape centers

and push to remove laws from the books that prosecute abusers for this reason, but more to not pay taxes.

Two families reaction to one man's abuse:

The man's first wife had a daughter, and he beat her. She was not certain what to do but her father had come to see her and the baby, and when he saw the bruises, he didn't ask any questions. He made her pack up and took her and the baby girl back home to safety. Then he refused to let the abuser visit and they soon got divorced. She never remarried and had her own skills to support her daughter.

He remarried, this time to a very young woman, and began beating her. Her family figured it was not their problem. She had a daughter as well. She came down with tb and ended up in one of the sanitariums of that era and was expected to recover. But she refused to eat, because getting better meant she would be sent home to him, and she died, leaving her girl. Fortunately, unwilling to raise the child himself, he gave her to his sister to bring her up.

The girls later got to know each other, but they were profoundly different people due to their life experiences.

That is why dumping the problem on family and church is inadequate. It is very ancient, this kind of treatment of women.