DISPATCHES By Hank Kalet Join South Brunswick’s Domestic Violence Task Force’s Enough is Enough Humanity March and take a stand against violence.
The story goes like this. It is a true story, one that should never have to be told.
It is about a young woman, college-age. She has a boyfriend she thinks she loves. But she starts to pull back from herself, starts to recede from the life she had been living. She sees her friends from home less frequently than had been her norm; at school, she starts to isolate herself.
He calls the relationship off, but she refuses to accept it. She goes to his house for an explanation and they fight. He chokes her and threatens her. She thinks she’s the one at fault.
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She stays away from him for a while, but slowly drifts back into his orbit. One day, when she’s hanging around with him, she gets a call on her cell phone. It’s from a male friend. He goes into a rage, chokes her and hits her and smashes her cell phone.
She gets out, but the damage is done.
Stories like this are the reason that South Brunswick’s Domestic Violence Task Force will hit the pavement on Sunday. The group part of the township Commission on Women is hosting its fourth annual Enough Is Enough Humanity March, beginning at 8 a.m. with breakfast at the Municipal Complex on Ridge Road, followed by speakers and a five-mile march designed to raise awareness of a problem that far too many women face.
According to the state Uniform Crime Report, there were 145 cases of domestic violence in South Brunswick in 2002 and 124 in 2003. There also were two rapes in 2002 and one in 2003.
Cranbury police reported nine cases of domestic violence in 2002 and five in 2003; one rape was reported in Cranbury in 2003. In Jamesburg, police reported 23 cases of domestic violence in 2002 and 52 in 2003 and two rapes in 2002 and none in 2003.
In Monroe, 23 cases of domestic violence were reported in 2002 and 39 in 2003; two rapes were reported in 2002 and none in 2003.
Statewide in 2003, there were 77,567 domestic violence offenses reported by the police, down 3 percent from the 79,844 reported in 2002. Of these, there were 57 murders, 35,193 assaults and 30,986 harassment complaints.
Numbers, though, rarely tell the story. They lack context and as advocates for abused women regularly point out domestic violence and rape often go unreported.
Women, they say, often believe they were at fault, that they somehow triggered the violence. Or, they are afraid that if they report the abuse, the abuser will make things worse, perhaps turn violent (if the abuse is verbal), or that the violence will escalate. They are afraid that, if they leave, they will have nowhere to turn. And there remains an absurd societal bias, a stigma that gets attached to victims.
That’s why it is important to raise awareness of the problem. It is imperative that victims report abuse and get local police involved. Reporting the abuse and filing charges gives victims a fighting chance and shines a brighter light on the problem.
There are no guarantees, of course. Consider the death of Saoule Moukhametova in 2002. Police say the 41-year-old Russian immigrant was stabbed to death by her husband, Boris Boretsky, in the living room of their home. He had been charged with aggravated assault in January 2002, about a month and a half before her death, which resulted in a restraining order being issued. He allegedly violated the order about two weeks later. And then, days after Ms. Moukhametova filed for divorce, police say, Mr. Boretsky stabbed his wife in the chest. He is awaiting trial and faces the death penalty, if convicted.
It would be easy to use Ms. Moukhamtova’s example to justify keeping quiet, but keeping quiet gives the abuser a free pass and leaves too many women to suffer silently and alone. And it allows one of the most pernicious and heinous of acts to continue. The research indicates that many abusers learn to abuse by watching their own parents, and then pass their behavior on to their children. Abuse becomes the norm it’s the way adults behave, the way husbands and wives interact, the way men and women relate.
It is a vicious cycle that will continue until we all raise our voices and demand that it stop.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected].

