New law comes to the aid of abuse victims
Print Edition
FU Lian’s nightmare of constant beatings by his daughter-in-law is over. She is facing criminal charges for violating a protection order granted by a local court.
Personal protection orders are a powerful legal weapon for victims of family violence and were a major feature of the country’s law against domestic violence, which took effect on March 1 last year.
The law challenges the deep-rooted belief in Chinese culture that domestic violence is a private matter which should be kept within the family to avoid the shame of exposure to police or courts.
Fu lives in a remote village in Huachi County in northwest China’s Gansu Province. The wife of Fu’s younger son would often beat him due to land disputes and domestic squabbles. For a long time, he hid his suffering from all but close relatives.
However, he sought a protection order after being hospitalized following an assault last April. At the time the county’s women’s federation was publicizing the new law.
“In the first few days after the protection order was issued, the woman behaved. But then she thought it was just a sheet of paper. She beat Fu again and left him with a bone fracture,” said Dong Fengling, head of the women’s federation of Huachi, which handed down seven orders over the past year.
As a consequence of violating the order, the daughter-in-law was detained and a court hearing is pending.
The anti-domestic violence law allows victims of family violence or those who face immediate danger to file for a personal protection order from local courts. The courts are obliged to grant or deny one within 72 hours, or within 24 hours in urgent cases.
With the protection order, abusers must stop committing violence. They may also be ordered to stop contacting victims and their close relatives, or to move out of their home.
If abusers violate the order, they face a fine of up to 1,000 yuan (US$145), as well as a 15-day detention, while perpetrators of serious offenses could face criminal charges.
Domestic violence victims are a huge but silent group in China. According to the All-China Women’s Federation, nearly 25 percent of Chinese women have suffered domestic violence to different degrees in their marriages, though only some 40,000 complaints are lodged with the federation each year. Before the law against domestic violence came out, some victims reported abuse to the police or filed lawsuits, but often did not get effective help because of the long processing period and a lack of clarity concerning domestic abuse in other laws, according to Sun Wenjie of the Lingyun Law Firm in southwest China’s Yunnan Province.
“The protection order fills a gap in legislation and enables victims to shield themselves from violence in a timely, effective way,” Sun said.
“The order focuses on protection of the victims, rather than solely punishing the abusers, and it has deterred abusers,” said Fang Zhihong, a chief judge in Guangzhou in south China’s Guangdong Province.
The protection order rule still faces multiple challenges, including its conflict with traditional beliefs and insufficient measures to guarantee its implementation.
Wang Cailing, from Gansu’s Jingyuan County, attempted to kill herself by drinking rat poison because of her husband’s abuse but was saved by doctors. She refused to apply for a protection order as suggested by the county’s women’s federation. “She said she was afraid of retaliation from her husband and worried her family would blame her for disclosing an embarrassing family scandal,” said the federation’s Wu Jingjing.
Such concerns demonstrate the need to raise awareness about the law to promote the idea that domestic violence is illegal and eliminate the sense of shame victims feel, Sun said.
Another factor that has hindered implementation of the protection order rule is that many applicants face difficulty in presenting evidence.
“Some do not even keep basic evidence, such as clinical records. Their neighbors are not willing to testify in court because they do not want to ‘meddle with’ the family matters of others,” said judge Chen Junwei with the Liwan court.
The court issued only two orders during the past year, while 20 victims failed to apply for it due to a lack of evidence.
Chen suggested victims report to the police before applying for a protection order, as transcripts of police inquiries can be used as evidence.
(The names of abuse victims have been changed to protect their privacy.)
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