Cycle of violence
According to Ms C, her family life was rough, her father's business failed, with his patriarchal nature, he often verbally abused and beat her mother and even beat her brother and sister many times when they were young. Growing up in a violent environment, since when she was a child, her older brother was also violent to her, he often beat her. When she grew up, he forced her to do everything in the family. He did not cook but often criticized the food that she cooked. He even interfered with her personal relationships a few times (she had romantic relationships but was not ready to introduce them to her family, he knew and told the parents so that she would be scolded).
Recently, partly realizing the consequences of his violent behaviours, C's father held a family meeting to divide labour and set up rules in the family. But the brother and sister never followed those rules and assignments. The father did not talk them into it, and instead, did the work assigned to the son. He thought that his son’s problem was his fault. Because the older brother has a level 2 mental illness and is physically weak, he asked C to be understanding and sympathize with his behaviours.
Her mother had been a victim of domestic violence for a long time (mainly emotional abuse). Although she understood her daughter's reactions, she wanted C to endure it like her. C was very stressed as she had to face her brother and her parents’ tolerance towards his behaviours every day. She decided to temporarily stay at the Peace House Shelter to calm her mind and find a way to handle the problems.
During the temporary stay, the Shelter gave C safe accommodation, psychological counselling, provided her with knowledge about domestic violence, especially related behaviours and the skills to respond to perpetrators of violence (POV). C's mental state became better. C created a plan for herself in case she goes back to her family.
To thoroughly solve the problem, the Counseling Team had also given her parents five counselling sessions to help them to come to terms with the violence in their family and find a solution. However, the second son's violent tendency was still a difficult thing for them to solve. They hoped that the Counseling Team of the Center for the Development of Women in the Mekong Delta could introduce a psychologist to help their first son - the root of the emotional violence against C.
This was the first case of emotional abuse where the perpetrator and the survivors are siblings coming to the Peace House Shelter in Can Tho. It was a cycle of violence that kept going on in the family (The father was the one who caused violence against the mother and their two children. When the son grew up, he became the perpetrator of violence towards his father, mother and sister).
