Dangerous silence

Public records portray the Asian community as virtually free from domestic abuse. But the statistics mask a problem that is growing rapidly.

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

Imagine taking everything you own and moving to a foreign country. Your family and friends are back in the US. You have very little education and no knowledge of the language spoken in your new homeland. Your only companionship is your husband. He is also your only link to the outside world. Now imagine that he beats you, constantly reminds you that you have nowhere to turn, and threatens to kill you if you leave.

To look at the available statistics, you might think that such scenarios arise rarely in the local Asian community. According to the police, the number of reported domestic assault cases among Asians is low. So low, says Sergeant Detective Gladys Gaines, head of the Boston Police Department's Domestic Violence Unit, that the department doesn't keep track. Mortality statistics are monitored, though, and over the past four years, an average of 11 percent of Massachusetts residents killed by domestic violence have been Asians. That's a very high percentage, Gaines says, considering that the Asian population of 182,481 makes up only 3 percent of the state's total. "Although [reported] abuse cases are low, the high rate of deaths is a sure sign that a problem does exist," says Gaines. The problem is that Asian victims don't tell the authorities they're being abused until it is too late.

"They [victims] will seek safety at shelters, but many return home and very few go to the police," explains Gaines.

Organizations working with Asian victims of domestic abuse have more accurate statistics than law-enforcement agencies do. For instance, the number of victims contacting the Boston-based Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence -- a grassroots movement geared toward addressing the hidden issue of domestic abuse in the Asian community -- continues to grow. The caseload has increased 70 percent since last year alone. In 1997, the number of cases jumped from 90 in January to 152 by December. By July of this year, the Task Force already had 182 new cases. "And the year isn't over yet," warns Reverend Cheng Imm Tan, cofounder of the Task Force.

And even those statistics probably underestimate the scope of the problem. "For every woman that calls the Task Force, it is estimated that there are three more women from whom we don't hear," says the Reverend Tan. "[Asian] women are not reporting violence because the current system is not terribly accessible."

Indeed, barriers of language and culture conspire to keep Asian women quiet. For instance, although some victims know that what is happening to them is wrong, many don't know it is against the law. Tan explains that in countries such as China, Burma, and India, it is acceptable for a man to hit his wife. "Many times people don't realize domestic violence is a crime," says Tan, who was the only full-time Asian advocate in the state 10 years ago. "It may not be illegal in their home countries."

"Barbara" is one victim who was unaware of her legal rights. The 34-year-old Chinese immigrant came to the US two years ago to join her new husband. She had married him in July of 1995, just two months after her sister set them up in China. At the time, he seemed very kind, she explains with the help of a translator.

"In November of last year he began abusing me. At first it was emotional, but this spring it became physical," says the young mother. "At that time I didn't realize it was abuse. In China what he was doing to me was acceptable."

When Barbara asked her sister back in China for advice, her husband's family, with whom the couple lived, was furious.

On May 3 of this year, her husband, with the help of two of his brothers, physically removed Barbara from the family home. When she refused to leave without her nine-month-old son, her husband threw her down the stairs. He twisted her arm, nearly breaking it, and punched her repeatedly in the face. Then he called the police and had her arrested for intruding. Barbara says she couldn't tell the police about his abuse for two reasons: they didn't speak her language and, in her country, police are not to be trusted. The charges against her were dropped, however, and Barbara went to stay with another sister, who referred her to the shelter where she currently lives.

Barbara's naiveté about the law remains a very common problem, according to Quynh Dang, program director for the five-year-old Asian Shelter and Advocacy Project (ASAP), New England's only shelter aimed at Asians. "There are refugee programs to educate incoming Asians about their rights, but they are rare and many have been cut," explains Dang, a Vietnamese immigrant who has held her position at the shelter for two and a half years. "Unfortunately, immigrants are in a different category. They are moving to the US by choice, so there are no structured programs people can turn to."

Even when victims want to seek help, language difficulties often prevent them from coming forward. More than 15 Asian languages are spoken in this state, according to Tan, but it's rare to find more than one or two of those languages spoken at police departments or shelters.

The police have made some efforts to solve this problem. A federal grant was used three years ago to translate an information card on abuse law into 12 Asian languages. The card is distributed to shelters and victims to inform battered women of their rights and provide them with a list of contacts they can turn to for help. And the Area C police station in Dorchester has a Vietnamese liaison, Tram Tran, on staff.

"Tram Tran has made it so much easier for the Vietnamese population in Dorchester to come forward and rely on the police," says Gaines. "Unfortunately, that is only one of many Asian cultures in desperate need of help, and we don't have the means to accommodate all of them right now."

Vietnamese is one of the most widely spoken Asian languages in Boston. Women who speak the less common languages have more trouble finding someone who can help them. Such is the case with "Susan," who speaks Burmese. The 25-year-old student came to the US this past April because violence had hit her country hard. "I was a student in Burma. But the students had a strike and the government killed many of them," explains Susan, with an interpreter's assistance. "I now have no country, because I can't go back there -- things are very bad. And I can't communicate with anyone here."

Married for seven years, Susan has endured brutal abuse at the hands of her husband, and so has their six-year-old son. Her husband even showed Susan how he would kill her, driving a knife into her pillow as she slept. Susan says she tried to flee from him three times in Thailand, where they once lived, but he hunted her down each time. It wasn't until she came here that she was able to persuade a doctor to find an interpreter she could tell her story to. Susan now lives in a shelter and has one goal: "I must learn English so I can start over and work to take care of my son."

As determined as Susan is to overcome her language barrier and seek help, she still refuses to press charges against her husband. In fact, Asian domestic-violence victims are often unwilling to leave their abusers. "Whether it be the dynamics within the household itself or more widely held beliefs among the different Asian cultures, there is a stigma attached to the idea of one partner speaking out against the other," explains Paul Watanabe, codirector of UMass Boston's Institute of Asian American Studies.

Within the Asian community, there is a definite shame attached to domestic violence, explains Tan: "You simply don't disgrace the family publicly, no matter what the issue is."

"Isabel," for example, told the Phoenix that she didn't want her name in print -- not for fear of personal harm, but instead because "I want to protect my children and my ex-husband from disgrace." The 54-year-old Indian immigrant, a nutritionist and public-health provider, had four children, one of whom was killed in a car accident. She says her abuse began when her husband, whom she met in college, lost his job and took up drinking, a habit that is taboo in Indian culture.

Isabel's experience bears out Tan's observation that among Asians, a woman's job in the family is to maintain the peace without treading on her husband's territory as the breadwinner.

"I come from a culture where women are supposed to be subordinate. But my ex-husband didn't support us, so I worked," Isabel says. "I had a better job than him and that made him feel bad, so he tried to keep me down, keep me subordinate, the only way he knew how -- with brute force."

In the wake of an exceptionally bad beating in 1984, Isabel finally called the police. Shortly after, she filed a restraining order and divorce papers. But efforts to help other women -- such as Barbara, the Chinese immigrant -- are often hindered by the Asian community's negative perception of the police. Immigrants are afraid of the police because of what they have seen in their own countries. "Some of these people have seen family members taken out of their homes in the middle of the night by uniformed officials," says Tan.

The police are well aware of the problem. "It is so frustrating to know that our uniforms are stopping people from asking us to do our jobs and help them," says Gaines. "There have been situations when we lost someone we could have helped if we could only have gotten close to them. At a minimum we help identify resources the victims can turn to, but much more needs to be done."

Community advocates, the police, university scholars -- everyone seems to agree that Asian victims of domestic violence are not getting the assistance they need. The problem is easily outlined. The question, says Tan, is who is going to do something about it.

"Acknowledgment is just the first step," she says. "Instead of dissecting the reasons, it is time for those with the money and the ability to enact some solutions before this community is in full-blown crisis."

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.