Be a Marites. Report to authorities when you know a person is a victim of intimate partner violence (IPV).
Communities are a factor that may support or prevent domestic violence. Also known as intimate partner violence, domestic violence involves acts of physical, financial, psychological, and other forms of abuse perpetrated by partners, usually male, against the women and children they live with.
As popularized in social media memes, “Marites” refers to a woman who avidly follows the lives of her neighbors and gossips about them within her network of fellow Mariteses: “’Mare, alam mo ba (friend, did you know that) ...”.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a combination of individual, relational, community, and societal factors contribute to risks in the perpetration of IPV.
In many cases, the victim may be physically weakened or psychologically dominated by the perpetrator, who not only uses superior strength but also capitalizes on the privacy of the home to subject the victim to repeated acts of IPV, which often follow a cycle of the perpetrator’s remorse, forgiveness from the victim, a period of reconciliation, and then recurrence of IPV when the perpetrator is triggered again.
Due to tabloid reports and prevailing biases, many persons think domestic violence occurs in communities with high rates of poverty, low or no educational attainment, and high unemployment rates.
With easy access to alcohol and drugs, these communities are linked with high rates of crime and violence, including IPV. Or so goes prevailing preconceptions.
As the CDC points out, risks of IPV also increase in communities where there is little or no community intervention due to people’s reluctance to get involved in a “domestic quarrel” or a fight involving couples.
When a domestic spat involves violence and abuse in all its forms, there is a need for neighbors to look out for each other, report incidents of IPV to the authorities, and prevent the recurrence of IPV and worsening of the risks to the victim’s health and life.
IPV does not only endanger the life of the person being battered or abused. Witnessing IPV happen to their parents traumatizes a child and other dependents, as well as predisposes them to become future perpetrators of violence as they may normalize the acts of abuse and culture of victimhood.
Community involvement is thus crucial for helping women and their children survive domestic violence. This is an important lesson in the Bantay Banay program initiated by the nongovernment organization Lihok Filipina in Cebu communities starting in the 1990s.
Involving families in watching out for other families, the program was borne from Lihok Filipina organizers and members investigating the cause of frequent absences and lapses in loan repayment among women participating in the NGO’s micro-enterprise project.
According to a paper by Mylene D. Hega, Veronica C. Alporha, and Meggan S. Evangelista, some women members had problematic relationships with husbands and partners. During that time, domestic violence was widely perceived as a “private matter” to be settled by the involved couple. Authorities were reluctant to intervene.
The Bantay Banay advocacy, with its emphasis on the community as first responder to help and save women, played a significant role in the passage of legislation against violence and abuse of women and children.
Yet, based on current cases of IPV, the campaign continues to involve communities in mobilizing resources to save victims and educate and dissuade potential perpetrators from using aggression and violence as an acceptable motivation to get their girlfriends, wives, and partners’ consent and cooperation.
Communities are needed to also nurture the consciousness and culture that respects women, promotes dialogue, and resists the use of power and aggression to gain ends and exploit advantages.