Home Is Where the Hurt Is

By Anastasia Toufexis

Mary never knew what would trigger her husband's rages. One evening he spotted rotting lettuce in the refrigerator. Furious, the Charlotte, N.C., bank executive threw her to the floor and jammed her head into the vegetable bin. Tami first found out about the dark side of her husband, a young California minister, when she placed a cassette into the tape player backward. Suddenly livid, he grabbed her by the hair and threw her against the wall. Recalls Sue Ellen, whose college-professor lover left her with broken bones in her face, hand and foot: "I was like a wounded animal. I crawled into a hole. It was so horrible I couldn't believe it."

Such stomach-churning domestic violence is a major cause of serious injury to American women each year. An estimated 2 million to 4 million women are beaten by husbands or boyfriends, more than are hurt in auto accidents, rapes or muggings. The FBI says that every four days a woman is beaten to death by a man she knows well. Despite comfortable stereotypes, the victims are hardly limited to uneducated or disadvantaged women. Many are from society's upper echelons. At least 10% of professional men beat their wives. One well-to-do victim: Charlotte Fedders, author of the recently published Shattered Dreams (Harper & Row; $17.95). Her book is a harrowing account of her 17-year marriage to John Fedders, a former Securities and Exchange Commission official.

Abusive behavior can range from intense psychological intimidation -- threats to limit physical freedom, withhold money or even kill family pets -- to bone-shattering physical violence. Worse, in about half to two-thirds of such cases, the mayhem spreads to children in the family. The death of seven- year-old Lisa Steinberg in New York City last month is widely believed to have been a result of beating by one or both of her adoptive parents. Experts think such violence is caused by stress, a history of abuse or an obsessive need for control. Says Author Fedders: "Rich men like to have the control at home that they get elsewhere. There's very little difference between the stress of a man climbing the corporate ladder and the stress on a guy who's out of work."

Middle-class battered women are likely to suffer their plight in dutiful silence. Says Psychologist Mary Donahue of Rockville, Md.: "Often this is the quintessential good girl, bright, with some education, overprotected and without a particular career path." Generally such women give themselves over to their spouse's needs, subsuming their identities to their husband's -- and often losing their self-esteem in the process. Invariably they blame themselves for their mate's abusive behavior. Once, when her physician-husband smacked her across the face, Amy, 30, of Brooklyn, N.Y., remembers saying, "Honey, let me give you a doughnut. Maybe you're hungry." Says she: "That was how far gone I was."

After the beating begins, affluent wives have a difficult time admitting the horror of their situation. "Wife abuse in the middle class is very hidden," says a 47-year-old woman who five years ago fled her violence-prone husband, the owner of an upstate New York automobile dealership. "I know of quite a few women who won't get out because they're afraid it will hurt their image or because they don't have the financial means." Some women manage to justify the beatings as a trade-off for status and security.

Even those who are not financially yoked to abusive mates are usually loath to leave. Although she had been sexually abused for months by her boyfriend, 29-year-old Nancy, now a California artists' representative, pretended that nothing was wrong. "Here I was supposed to be this strong, independent woman who subscribed to Ms. and carried around a briefcase. To admit it was to admit that I had failed as a businesswoman," she says.

Denial extends to affluent communities as well. Police are often easily intimidated by a husband's clout in the community. Doctors turn away well-off women in the mistaken belief that they are simply overwrought or exaggerating. When a Los Angeles woman who endured weekly beatings throughout a 31-year marriage finally confided in her physician, she says, "he just looked at me strangely and changed the subject. Professionals don't want to admit that they, as a group, are not perfect."

There are small signs that such attitudes are improving. The Charleston, S.C., police department, for example, now requires officers to arrest an abusive spouse even if the victim declines to press charges. To make the collar sting, the assailant is arrested at his place of work. "As long as he's assaulting her within their own little world, it can continue," says Police Chief Reuben Greenberg. "At work there's a social cost." Ultimately that public exposure may be the most effective deterrent to spouse abuse. "We have the right in the U.S. to peace and tranquillity," says a former battered white-collar wife. "Yet for these women, home is the most dangerous place of all."

With reporting by D. Blake Hallanan/New York and Nancy Seufert/Los Angeles