‘I love him… he promised marriage’: NPA on why women return to abusive relationships

In a country plagued by domestic violence, which in some cases leads to femicide, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) has highlighted the extent of the problem and how women in these situations can be assisted. On Wednesday, the NPA hosted a webinar on domestic violence in collaboration with the department of justice and constitutional development, the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) provincial government, the Medical Research Council of South Africa and Lifeline. Samantha Willan, GBV research manager at the Medical Research Council, shared some findings from the organisation’s study, painting a complex picture of domestic violence in South Africa.

The organisation spoke to about 10 000 women in eThekwini, Gauteng, Limpopo and the Western Cape. “We’ve heard from a lot of women about their experiences and these are women experiencing severe violence,” Willan said. “We’re talking from the coercion, the controlling behaviour, the stalking where she is all the time, through to extreme physical and sexual violence and, unfortunately, even some cases of femicide.

So these are women experiencing extreme violence. According to Willan, 20% of these women had never considered leaving their abusive partners, while 44% thought about leaving, but never got around to doing so. Only 35% of women were in a position to leave these relationships and they did.

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However, 80% returned to their relationships. “We found that of the women who left and returned, 37% of those women left and returned and left three or more times again. Those women who do leave: a large percentage of them return, leave, return, leave, return, and leave.

That’s the pattern we’re working with. So we need to be thinking about that when we’re doing our interventions,” said Willan. Some of the women who returned to their abusive partners did it for their children.

They felt their children needed their fathers in their lives. “They returned to the severely abusive partner, man, father, so that the children could have a relationship. And when we asked them to tell us more about it.

We heard women saying things like, ‘My children need their father. They need that relationship. I didn’t grow up with a father, and I don’t want my children experiencing that’. So this notion of the importance of having a father is overwhelming,” Willan said.

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