It’s been about one month since musician Chris Brown allegedly assaulted his girlfriend, singer Rihanna, inside a car in Los Angeles. And people are still talking about it.
Why? It’s simple:’ For the first time in what seems like ages, the tabloid fodder doubles as a real national issue.
By now you’ve certainly seen the photos that TMZ somehow obtained from authorities and then released onto the Internet. Rihanna is shown bloodied and bruised, a victim of domestic assault.
But she didn’t deserve to get hit. Nobody in a relationship does.
According to a 2005 survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 4 American women will be victims of domestic abuse in their lifetime. In poorer households, with an annual income of less than $15,000 a year, the rate is 10 percent higher. Instances of domestic violence against men occur far less frequently than those perpetrated against women.
For Bostonians, the issue is local. Earlier this week, the Boston Public Health Commission released results of a survey in which 200 teenagers in the city were questioned about the Chris Brown/Rihanna incident. Every teen surveyed had heard of the alleged case of domestic assault and, shockingly, almost half of those surveyed ‘- 46 percent ‘- said Rihanna was responsible for the confrontation.
Violence already plagues this city ‘- young men are the most common perpetrators and victims of homicide in Boston. Teenagers in this city shouldn’t be thinking that women should be considered responsible for domestic violence. Yet 1 in 10 of them wind up a victim of dating violence. Those two facts are certainly intertwined.
‘Ten percent of Massachusetts’ youth report having experienced dating violence during their lifetimes,’ said Emily F. Rothman, an assistant professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Boston University, in a statement that was released with the survey results. ‘The consequences of dating violence can be severe and long-lasting. Teen dating violence victimization can be a precursor to adult violence victimization, and can increase risky behaviors during adolescence, including substance use, unhealthy dieting and weight control practices and suicidal behavior.’
What’s worse, women who suffer domestic abuse rarely report it to authorities. I witnessed this firsthand last week. I was in San Francisco, sitting on my friend’s front yard on my last day of spring break. All of a sudden, we heard a commotion from across the street and saw a man hitting a woman. He pushed her against a wall and struck her repeatedly in the head and upper body. We called 911, and police were on the scene in a flash. After the man was taken into custody, two police officers crossed the street to talk to us.
They needed witness statements, the cop said, because despite being bloodied and bruised, the woman denied that anything happened at all. She even declined medical treatment, shooing away EMTs who arrived on the scene shortly after the first police officers did. The police wanted to take the guy off the streets, if only for a night. That might be just enough time for the woman to realize she was in a bad relationship.
I don’t know what happened with the case. I hope the woman got out of the abusive relationship. This kind of stuff, it never happens just once, said the cop who took my statement. These girls, he said, just think it’s part of the big picture. They accept it.
This past week, a consortium of Northeastern student groups held a series of events as part of No Violence Week. Our campus isn’t immune to domestic violence ‘- instances crop up in this newspaper’s Crime Log every few weeks, and countless more instances likely go unreported. No Violence Week reminds us that domestic assault isn’t exclusive to the front page of supermarket tabloids or gossip websites, or even young Boston teens; it’s an issue for everyone on campus.
Close to three-quarters of Americans know a victim of domestic abuse, according to the survey. That three-fourths cannot ‘- must not ‘- stand idly by while our friends, sisters and classmates are hurt, threatened or intimidated. We need to be there to treat their wounds, to mend their hearts and then ‘- most importantly ‘- to change their hearts. Because if it hurts, it isn’t love.

‘- Matt Collette can be reached at [email protected].