Domestic Violence Starts with Forced Relation

According to Hicran Karabulut from the Antalya Women's Center for Consulting and Solidarity who spoke to bianet, violence, which starts with "marital rape and forced sexual relationship," becomes more intense because of reasons like "telling of relations with other women."

Karabulut said that 63 percent of women, who have applied to the Center, are married. 37 percent of them have children.

The research was conducted by asking questions to the 395 women who applied to the Center.

59 percent of women faced with violence are married

According to the research by the Antalya Women's Center for Consulting and Solidarity, 59 percent of women are faced with domestic violence while they are married. 20 percent of women who are faced with domestic violence is divorced, 17 percent live with a partner, and 14 percent are single.

Education plays a role

40 percent of women of ages 18-60, whose education level is elementary school, are faced with domestic violence the most. 15 percent of women of the same age group, whose education level is secondary school, are faced with domestic violence. Women who are university graduates are the ones that are least faced with violence. Only seven percent of university graduates are faced with domestic violence, while 22 percent of high school graduates are faced with domestic violence.

High rate of marital rape

According to women, who have applied to the Antalya Women's Center, the most widespread form of domestic violence is marital rape. The rate of "forced sexual relationship," or "rape" in a marriage is 12 percent.

Another form of domestic violence emerges as husbands tell their wives of their relations with other women. The rate of this form of domestic violence is 8 percent.

Domestic violence in the form of "forced anal sex," "having a mistress," "kicking out of the house" constitutes 6 percent. Five percent of women are threatened with murder.

Middle-aged women are faced with violence

The research revealed that 85 percent of women faced with domestic violence are middle-aged. The Antalya Women's Center for Consultation and Solidarity, has categorized domestic violence under 53 topics. Among these topics are:

"Usurping the woman's income, threatening to have a mistress, breaking the nose, incest, asking for money for alcohol, threatening to kidnap the children or preventing the mother from seeing the children, accusing the woman despite being impotent, not engaging in sexual relations for years, forcing the woman to have sexual relations in front of the children, excessive sexual pressure, oral sex and forcing the woman to have sexual relations using different tools, telling of sexual relations with transvestites or other men, forcing the woman to watch as the man engages in sexual relations with another woman, injuring with knife, kicking the woman out of the house because she is pregnant, forcing the woman to live with her ex mother-in-law although she is divorced, threatening to rape the child, not getting formally married, being accused of engaging in sexual relations with a relative and getting married by hiding he is a schizophrenic."

The research shows that almost half of the domestic violence cases is a combination of physical, psychological, oral, economic and sexual methods.

62 percent of a total of 395 women who have applied to the Antalya Women's Center are faced with domestic violence by their husbands, 12 percent by their ex-husbands, 8 percent by their live-in partners, and some by their relatives or acquaintances.

21 percent of these women have applied to courts, and 16 percent to the police, friends or family members. Eleven percent haven't gone anywhere except the Center. (AD/EA/YE)