Shhh …. The problem nobody wants to talk about

Aging, Spring, 1996 by Ellen Hopkins

This article appeared in the October 1992 issue of New Choices For Retirement Living magazine (1-800-388-6111) and is reprinted with their permission. In 1994, Hopkins, a contributing editor of Rolling Stone, won the American Society on Aging's National Media Award for this piece of work.

Because of safety concerns, all the names and some identifying details of the battered women and their spouses have been changed. When Tillie told her husband she had to have surgery on her jaw, which gave her continual pain, Jim, a retired contractor known for his good humor and his charm, let out a hoot. He laughed even harder when he learned the doctor couldn't figure out how a middle-aged housewife who played no contact sports could have hurt herself so horribly.

Tillie wasn't surprised by her husband's reaction. Nor did she get angry with him. Instead, she anxiously apologized to Jim and assured him that the doctor would never learn their secret. For Tillie, a college-educated, middle-class 55-year-old mother of three, had spent a quarter of a century learning that being married to a batterer means always having to say you're sorry.

Five years ago, the commonness of domestic violence was branded into our collective consciousness in the unlovely form of Hedda Nussbaum, a New York City book editor battered by Joel Steinberg, a lawyer also convicted of beating to death the couple's 6-year-old adopted daughter. Feminists had first given a name to love that hurts way back in the '70s. But for years, many continued to dismiss stories of spousal abuse as something that happened to "other" people -- other, in this case, being a code word for not my race or class. It was the Nussbaum-Steinberg tragedy that forced us to confront that battering isn't just for the poor and uneducated; it cuts across every social group.

It also isn't just for the young. Despite the many age-related stereotypes that have been shattered in recent years, most people are still unaware that just as you're never too old to find someone to love, you're also never too old to be beaten by the one you love. Indeed, in the United States last year, more than 700,000 women over the age of 50 were hit by their husbands. In fact, approximately half of all physical attacks on women over 50 are committed by their spouse.

This settling reality goes against every stereotype culture has regarding abuse and the elderly: that when an olderperson is abused, a grown child or nonfamilial caregiver must be the culprit; that any couple entangled in an abusive relationship eventually outgrows the destructive pattern.

Some abusive relationships do end, and the levels of violence in the ones that endure drop off over the years. Abuse is still two to four times as likely to occur in a young couple. But battering, for many thousands of couples, can indeed last 'til death does them part.

According to Richard Gelles, director of the Family Violence Research Program at the University of Rhode Island, the numbers look like this: Approximately 5 percent of men between the ages of 54 and 70 hit their wives in the past 12 months, as did 2 1/2 percent of men over 70. And about 2 percent of women over age 54 have been subjected to serious acts of violence by their husbands.

While these percentages may seem small, consider them in cozier terms. Suppose your husband's college class had 200 graduates and all of them gathered for their 40th reunion. As many as 10 of your husband's former classmates may be hitting their wives, and 4 of those 10 could be abusing them to the point of significant injury.

"The vast majority of older abusive husbands are not Joel Steinberg psychopaths," says Gelles. "In most cases you won't find their wives in hospital emergency rooms. Women are not stupid. They aren't hostility sponges. If the violence is bad enough, most women get out of the marriage at a much earlier date. When we're talking about an older battered woman, we are talking about someone who is getting hit on average three or four times a year. It's become part of the marriage ritual."

The rituals in Tillie and Jim's marriage included slaps, pushes and punches. "He'd aim for my head most of the time," says Tillie. "Sometimes he'd hold knives up against my face and threaten to cut me. I can still see that look he'd get on his face before he'd hurt me. It made me freeze."

Tillie was in her early 20s when she started dating Jim. "He was the most charming, outgoing man you ever could meet," she says. "Everyone loved him. And I was very insecure. I wanted someone to take care of me."

It soon was clear to Tillie that her marriage exemplified the danger of answered prayers in the most cruel and twisted fashion. Jim, for example, insisted on taking care of the family finances. Tillie was a housewife and rather than trust her with any of his salary, Jim did all the shopping. "Sometimes," says Tillie, "he'd let us run out of something important so I'd have to keep begging him for it. Like we wouldn't have milk for a few days." Jim took care of Tillie's transportation needs: He was the only one allowed to drive the family car. Tillie never knew when he'd refuse to drive her where she needed to go. Jim took care of Tillie's social life: "He hated for me to talk on the phone. He hated all my friends." Jim also took care of Tillie's self-image. Soon after the honeymoon was over, he began calling his wife "an ugly fat bitch."