Breaking the cycle of pain: the Foundation For Women has set up a fund to provide legal aid for victims of wife-beating who have been jailed for accidentally killing their husbands.

Wife-beating is a crime. But what happens when you report it to the police? Or when you fight back in self defence? For the answers, ask Saeng, a mother of three, who is on trial for murder.

"He started beating me after I had my first child, who is now 16," said Saeng, 38, a plump woman with a stoic look. Her unkempt hair is loosely tied back, revealing the tired face of a woman who has neither time nor money to pay attention to herself. Saeng met her husband when she was a factory worker and he was a mini-bus driven

"I went to the police once to ask for help. They said they couldn't intervene in family affairs. They told me that if I couldn't fight him, I should run and hide, and wait until he cooled down. They didn't help me at all."

But Saeng did take the advice to heart. The fights took a routine pattern. He hit her. She tried to fight back. When the beatings got life-threatening, she ran to hide. Until that fateful night.

"He ran after me with a knife in his hand," she recalled. "He was very mad because he had another woman and I tried to stop him from going to see her."

Saeng said she ran in fright to her mother's house nearby. "I went up to the house to fetch a gun. When I came down, he was waiting for me, brandishing a knife. He charged at me. I fired. I didn't know if it had hit him or not. I saw the spark and I was shocked. I threw the gun away, into the bushes. I ran off, thinking that he would chase after me. But he never did."

After the funeral, Saeng decided to tell the police that it was she who had shot him. "I felt guilty and sinful for what happened," she explained. The police charged her for killing with intent. She could not afford the exorbitant bail money so she had to remain in jail as her trial proceeded. She was there for over a year, until the Foundation for Women came to her rescue.

"A teacher asked for our help about a child sexual abuse case. It turned out that the gift was Saeng's daughter," said Usa Lerdsrisunthad, co-ordinator of the non-profit organisation which helps victims of domestic violence and trafficking.

"Look at what can happen to the children when you put their mothers in jail and there is no one to take care of them," she added.

Yet Saeng considers herself relatively lucky. While in jail, she said, she met several women who, like her, accidentally killed their abusive husbands in self-defence.

"But they were convicted as murderers because they did not get any legal help," she said.

Although Saeng's trial is far from over, she feels more confident now that the foundation has found her a lawyer who is well-versed in domestic violence cases. More importantly, bail assistance from the foundation enables her to be back with her children once again.

"All this time, I was never worded for myself. Only for my children," said Saeng, her stoic voice suddenly faltering. She bit her trembling lips and looked away.

"It's all so unfair. When we women were beaten up, the police said it was normal and didn't help us," she said. "They didn't even record our complaints.

"But when we had to defend ourselves and a fatal accident happened, they punished us so severely with the law."

Helping abused wives fight a murder case is an uphill task. And an extremely expensive one too, said Usa.

To start with, bail money can cost up to 300,000 baht per person, not to mention the cost of legal assistance during the lengthy trial. At present, the foundation is helping four victims of wife-beating who are charged with killing their husbands. "It's a financial struggle for a small organisation like us," added Usa.

In order to be able to help more victims of wife-beating, the foundation has set up a fund for their legal aid. "Although it's a short-term measure, to deal with the social problem of domestic violence, we simply cannot turn the women away," said Usa.

Saeng's plight, she added, epitomises the silent suffering of many more Thai women who must endure wife-beating in order to keep the family together "for the sake of the children" or to avoid the shame involved.

A joint study by the Population and Social Research Institute, Mahidol University, and the Foundation for Women shows that as many as 44 percent of Thai women have been assaulted by their husbands or lovers. A total of 28 percent have been hurt physically, 29 percent have been subjected to forced sex, and 22 percent subjected to various forms of humiliation.

The study, involving nearly 4,000 women aged from 15-49, is the country's most comprehensive study on domestic violence.

The study also shows that 42 percent of the victims kept the suffering to themselves. They are probably fight in believing that no one can help them; of those who confided to family members, only 16 percent said they actually got help.

"Our culture encourages women to repress their feelings and their sufferings, thus creating many psychiatric problems," said psychiatrist Ronachai Kongsakon of Ramathibodi Hospital. He urged women's groups not to focus only on the legal side of the women's problems, but also to pay attention to their mental state.

While hiding the problem from others, the abused women often develop anxiety, insomnia and other psychiatric problems, he said. Seeing no way out, many have tried to end it all by committing suicide.

His observation is confirmed by a Mahidol University study on domestic violence. It shows that victims often suffer deep depression. One-third of those studied attempted to take their own lives. Another one-third said they had contemplated suicide.

Only seven percent of women who are beaten by their husbands or partners seek help from the police. Most of these kept the beatings secret until they became life-threatening.

Many also tried to help themselves by running away from home _ according to the study, 39 percent of them. More than four percent ran away more than 10 times.

Why do these women not break the chains of their oppression?

Senator Wallop Tangkananurak blames it on a culture that glorifies women's endurance and links women's self-esteem with their being seen as self-sacrificing wives and mothers.

The sexist social system that makes women economically weak also heightens women's fear and insecurity, he added. "They are afraid of having nowhere to go and no one to turn to," he said. "And many simply have to stay on because they are terrorised; their partners threaten to kill them if they leave."

Wife-beating, he added, is closely linked to child abuse. And boys who grow up in such a violent atmosphere often end up becoming abusers themselves.

"We must cut the vicious cycle and reshape our culture by focusing on gender-sensitive child-rearing that teaches our boys to respect the girls from an early age," he said.

While such attitudinal change is crucial in easing domestic violence, it is still a long way off, said Siriporn Skrobanek, chairperson of the Foundation for Women. Meantime, short-term measures such as helping abused women obtain justice from the legal system may also help to sensitise society to rethink the cultural values that condone violence against women.

The work also helps women's groups to formulate policy recommendations based on the abused women's real needs, she added.

Like Saeng, many women who seek help from the police do not want their husbands convicted. They only want the beating stopped, said Siriporn.

By turning a blind eye, the police are partially to blame for the tragedy that eventually follows. The police's failure to record wife-beating cases and injuries also robs the women of legal evidence to fight their cases in court.

"Also, free lawyers provided by the state for these poor women normally lack a good understanding of domestic violence," said Siriporn. "They tend to think the women overreacted. This robs them of a fair chance to fight their cases."

The legal system, she added, needs to rethink the harshness of taking mothers away from their small children just because they cannot afford bail money.

"Women in my situation need understanding and help," pleaded Saeng. "We need help before things became explosive. We need legal help that pays attention to our many years of suffering. We want to be with our children. But we are poor and we don't know what to do."

from: Outlook Bangkok Post by Sanitsuda Ekachai,

Info for donations

Name of organisation: Foundation for Women.
                      PO.Box 47 Bnagkoknoi,
                      Bangkok 10700, Thailand.

Telephone:            662-4335149, 662-4351246 Fax: [phone]

Email:                [e-mail]

Bank info:            Thai Farmers' Bank, Sathon Road branch;
                      savings account name: "Foundation for Women";
                      account no: 038-2-18085-2