Discussing domestic violence

Juan, director of the Maple Women’s Psychological Counseling Center, a Beijing-based NGO, which established a hotline in 2004 to provide help to women experiencing domestic violence.

“You cannot use your good deeds like being kind to your friends to negate abusing a girlfriend,” Ding says of the Jiang incident.

While physical wounds may heal as time passes by, recovering from the emotional trauma is tougher for victims, she adds.

“Also, children who witness family violence likely suffer psychological damage.”

Ding says a man could beat his wife without consequence in China’s feudal society. But now the situation is different with regard to gender equality. She says the most effective way to change the deeprooted thinking is to properly enforce the new law. It brings legal protection for victims of domestic violence and offers them personalprotection orders.

The law also offers NGOs legal support when they help those who are in need. She says it’s important to keep proof because family violence can be a legal reason for divorce.

“When victims call our hotline for help, we don’t ask why they have been abused — the unspoken implication is that they are ‘at fault’, so they suffer. We ask whether their personal safety is at risk,” Ding says.

According to another Beijingbased NGO, Equality, 533 cases related in some manner to domestic violence leading to the deaths of at least 635 adults and children have been reported by media between March 1, 2016 and Oct 31, 2017.

It means at least one person died per day due to domestic violence, and the majority were female.

“Victims are able to safeguard their rights and interests due to the law. But the key is that how the public security agency and people’s court give full play to their functions,” Li says.

Some public security officers and judicial members have not realized the nature of domestic violence and take a “negative attitude” toward implementation of the anti-domestic violence law, Li adds.

He says the law should be more detailed about what kind of situations require a personal-protection order to be issued. There should also be detailed rules and regulations to guide public security officers on how to intervene in domestic violence.

Ding suggests that include marital rape. the law