Are we really dealing with the root cause of domestic violence?
It occurs to me that our society may itself also engage in ‘victim blaming’. The quote above refers to the tragic case of domestic violence that resulted in the death of an entire family.
When I first heard that a police spokesman raised the question as to whether the crime had involved a person ‘driven too far’, the thought of victim blaming did not even occur to me. Any suggestion that any act of domestic violence could in some way be blamed on the victim – just seemed too ludicrous to contemplate. What I did think was that given the horrific nature of the crime, and the suicide, some case could exist to argue the involvement of a person “driven too far”. Any suggestion of blaming the victim is abhorrent and beyond contemplation. With the victims removed from the equation, where do we look for what drives a person to the point they will commit such acts? Can our society wash its hands of all blame for turning a human being who assumedly started life as “an innocent child” into the monster that would commit such an act? Society accepting that something about the nature of a society where these events occur all too often requires serious reflection and action, in no way reduces the guilt of any individual offender. But nor does the guilt of the offender exonerate society.
