The men are the strong sex, the breadwinners of the family. So the common cliché. But they too can be victims of domestic violence. A victim tells how his partner tortured him for years.
Nuremberg (dpa) - It started with insults. Then she threatened to put him outside the door. The blows came later. For years, the 40-year-old endured the ill-treatment without defending himself, without confiding in anyone.
"It's an embarrassing thing for a man," he says when he tells his story that day in Nuremberg. "I have received as many slaps from the woman as I have never done in my whole life."
The victim is not believed
In April the situation escalated, the 40-year-old's partner called the police - and the police initially thought he was the perpetrator. He comes from Spain and is a tall man with broad shoulders. Many immediately think of a macho, he has experienced. "These prejudices are very much shaped in society." It was the same with the police. They would only have believed him when he showed the many bruises on his arms and the bite marks on his chest and played back sound recordings in which the woman had insulted him.
He is a victim, and yet he has to leave the apartment immediately because the woman has signed the lease on her own. At times he lives with friends and in a homeless shelter. Then he learns about an anonymous shelter that the Caritas Association set up in Nuremberg earlier this year. He is lucky and gets one of the three places. Because the demand for it is great, according to the carrier.
Refuge in a shelter
Nationwide there are 7 of these shelters, which offer a total of 18 places for men and their children. 5 places were created this year, in Nuremberg and Augsburg. Something that Matthias Becker, chairman of the regional working group for boys and men in Bavaria, has been demanding for years. "That caused a long shake of the head," he says. For a long time, little attention was paid to the fact that men could also become victims of domestic violence in their relationships. "This is a taboo subject - even among men."
Women are much more often victims of domestic violence. But it is not an isolated case when men are threatened, beaten, sexually abused or even killed by their partners. According to an evaluation by the Federal Criminal Police Office in 2018, almost 20 percent of victims of domestic violence are men. In recent years, the proportion of male victims of partnership violence has increased almost continuously, it says. And these are just the known cases: According to the Weißer Ring Victim Aid Association, the number of unreported cases of domestic violence is at least 80 percent, and it is particularly high among the men affected.
A man who needs help
"Masculinity always has something to do with strength," Becker explains this situation. "Men are the protectors, the breadwinners of the family, the interpreters of the world. A man who needs help - a difficult issue in our society." And when men reported their wives, they experienced that they weren't taken seriously. Again and again, Becker hears of men who are suggested to spend the night with a friend and to resolve the dispute the next day. The whole thing was certainly not that bad, was the tenor.
Andreas Schmiedel from the Munich Information Center for Men reports something similar. If police officers came into an apartment where there were traces of partner violence, the man was always suspected, as was the case with the 40-year-old in Nuremberg. This naturally increases the men's inhibitions to open up. In addition, the violence of women is less obvious. "The partner systematically terrorizes the man and kills him." Many years passed before men tried to break out of a violent relationship.
Dealing with a taboo
However, men's reservations about seeking help are gradually diminishing, as the White Ring has observed. "Just as the social view of these role models changes, so does the handling of the taboo," says spokesman Karsten Krogmann. For example, the proportion of male seekers of help on the White Ring victim's telephone has risen steadily in recent years: from 9 percent in 2017 to more than 16 percent in 2019.
According to the North Rhine-Westphalian Ministry for Gender Equality, the response to Germany's first help phone for men affected by violence is also high. North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria activated the free hotline at the end of April. Since then, four to nine callers who have suffered from domestic violence, sexual assault, but also conflicts in the neighborhood have answered daily, the ministry said.
From Becker's point of view, this is an important step - especially now that experts fear an increase in domestic violence due to the corona crisis. "Such times of stress are noticeable. A lot is exploding now," he says.
It was the same with the 40-year-old in Nuremberg. "I used to try to stay outside as much time as possible," he says. He worked long, visited friends. But then the Corona crisis came and he was constantly at risk of violence at home.
BKA on partnership violence
Men's protection apartments nationwide
Munich information center for men
Help with domestic violence in Bavaria