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Shame Pressures Affluent Women to Hide Domestic Violence, Say Experts

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Rocco Fazzari

Illustration: Rocco Fazzari

The shadow of domestic violence readily falls across the wealthy and famous, as Nigella Lawson has discovered, but few choose to report it to the police because of shame.

The focus was on lower socioeconomic households, Tracy Howe, chief executive at NSW Women’s Refuge Movement, said, but the statistics failed to recognise the unreported problems across the affluent suburbs of Australia.

”If you’re from a middle-class background and your children go to a private school, there are a bunch of financial privileges and often your family thinks you have a perfect marriage,” she said. ”There is so much to lose.

”There is so much more shame attached to someone like Nigella Lawson admitting that she lived in a domestic violence relationship because we tend to keep that hidden.”

On Tuesday, British art collector Charles Saatchi was cautioned over what appeared to be a dramatic assault on his TV presenter wife Lawson, captured by a tabloid photographer just outside a fancy London restaurant.

Mr Saatchi, 70, had accepted the caution after five hours of questioning over photographs published in the Sunday People, which showed him grasping Lawson’s throat, according to British media reports. When asked about Mr Saatchi, the Metropolitan Police said that a 70-year-old man had been cautioned for assault after voluntarily attending a police station following an investigation into the pictures published by the Sunday People.

Mr Saatchi, an Evening Standard columnist, said: ”The pictures are horrific but give a far more drastic and violent impression of what took place.

”About a week ago, we were sitting outside a restaurant having an intense debate about the children, and I held Nigella’s neck repeatedly while attempting to emphasise my point,” he was quoted as saying. ”There was no grip, it was a playful tiff.”

Mr Saatchi also told the paper the couple ”had made up by the time we were home”.

Lesley Laing, a senior lecturer in the faculty of education and social work at the University of Sydney, said that while all women were vulnerable, often people didn’t think domestic violence existed in affluent suburbs.

”Women who are rich can experience different forms of domestic violence, particularly emotional and financial abuse.”

Many women battle with the idea of whether they should report violence to police because of the ”big implications”.

Karen Willis, executive officer at the NSW Rape Crisis Centre, said that the shattering of a perfect public image can be devastating.

”We still look down on people who experience domestic violence,” Ms Willis said.

”This results in high levels of shame and embarrassment. It’s about their status in society being affected. My guess is that people of high socio-economic status don’t involve the police because they do have the capacity to pack up and leave.”


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