Domestic violence getting deadly

May 05, 2004

In a period of hardly one month, there has been a number of ghastly stories involving irate estranged husbands turning on their families. In Namungoona, a suburb of Kampala, an estranged husband is reported to have gone to the ‘wife’s’ home, sprinkled fuel around the house, broken a window, th

By Chibita wa Duallo

In a period of hardly one month, there has been a number of ghastly stories involving irate estranged husbands turning on their families. In Namungoona, a suburb of Kampala, an estranged husband is reported to have gone to the ‘wife’s’ home, sprinkled fuel around the house, broken a window, thrown a lit cloth inside and set the house on fire.

His estranged ‘wife’ and many other occupants of the house were seriously burnt and most of them died in hospital a few days later. The man was arrested after a neighbour reported to have seen him suspiciously hovering around the house with a jerrycan prior to the fire breakout.

This week, there was a story of a 70-year-old man who hacked his wife to death. There must be many more cases of domestic violence and murder that go unreported.

The latest horror story is of the late Kasoma who is reported to have brutally hacked his eight children, two of them pregnant, and a grandchild, to death. He later committed suicide, apparently by swallowing poison.

Latest reports indicate that he had a cassette recorder running during the murder session. This and other bits of information provide evidence of premeditation.

These kinds of crimes are difficult to prevent given the close relationship the murderers have with their victims.

Somebody’s parent or spouse is supposed to be the safest person one can be entrusted with. These are the people supposed to offer the ultimate security and safety. If they turn into killers then their task is that simple because the victims hardly expect it. This is especially true in the case of the father who murdered his children.

There is no way that the children could have imagined that their own loving father could turn into their murderer. Chances are that even if they had suspected that their parent was not fine mentally, murder must have been the last thing on their minds. It is kind of evil to imagine that your father could murder you.

You might be labelled paranoid yourself! If close family members cannot detect their kins murderous tendencies early enough to prevent a massacre, the chances for the rest of society or law enforcement doing it are even much slimmer. Such crimes are usually successfully executed because they are difficult to prevent.

That is why in cases where one spouse, usually the wife, notices signs of violence and hostility growing, the choice to move out of the matrimonial home has to be made.

In many jurisdictions, this choice is accompanied by a court order restraining the estranged spouse from coming within a certain distance of the threatened spouse.

Although a restraining order does not necessarily safeguard a person’s life, it is a way of the law acknowledging that a problem exists and trying to address it.

The question is whether there is anything more that the law can do for spouses that are threatened with violence. More foolproof solutions are still elusive.

Other people suggest that since people do not just wake up one day to commit the kind of crimes we are addressing, people closest to them should always ensure that they are referred to counsellors or psychiatrists for medical attention.

This proposal poses many problems, foremost of which is the willingness of the suspected person agreeing to go for counselling or psychiatric evaluation.

Unless somebody is throwing stones at passers-by or has stripped naked, it is difficult to convince them or society that they have a mental problem that requires medication. After all, all of us are said to suffer from several mild forms of mental sickness.

Opinions are also divided on whether somebody who commits such a heinous act does so because they are mentally unstable or not. Most people would seem to agree that such people are not necessarily mad, but because of the extent of the crime, the only logical explanation is that such a person did what he did because he was mad.

Before the person has committed the crime, most people will not be convinced of the individual’s madness. It is only after the crime has been committed that society can confirm that the man was mad.

The problem is further complicated by the fact that nobody, apart from the courts, on studying medical reports, can declare an individual mad.

Before courts in conjunction with the medical people have done so, the law deems everybody to be within the accepted degrees of sanity.

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