Posted Monday, August 4, 2003; 18.25 BST
When a woman does break free from a violent partner, her move is sometimes a trigger for new violence. In Lindau, Germany, 15-year-old Verena (German papers have not used last names) died last week, shot by David, her 20-year-old boyfriend of three years, who then shot himself. The apparent motive: Verena was overly enthralled by German pop idol Daniel Kublbock, and left David when he demanded that she stop her infatuation. Tabloids focused on Verena's "pathological love" for a performer whom she did not know personally, rather than on David's pathological, alcohol-fueled reaction to it. "The deeds of men are too often apologized for," says Ruth Syren, who heads a women's shelter in Mannheim. "When a man has an alcohol problem and beats his wife, he has two problems."

"It's too easy to blame unemployment, poverty, alcohol and so on," agrees the E.U.'s Helfferich. "The real problem is that violence is accepted as a private matter and not a criminal matter." But that is changing, slowly, in many places. "We get calls from women who have put up with a lifetime of abuse," says Sandra of Women's Aid. "They were brought up in a generation that says you put up and shut up, you've made your bed, now you lie in it. Nowadays, families and friends are trying to be supportive — and younger women are more aware."

One such woman is Laetitia Bossé, 24, who decided to speak out 18 months ago. Now a volunteer counselor at the Center for Prevention of Marital and Family Violence in Brussels, she left a jealous and violent boyfriend, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin who is the father of their 5-year-old daughter. "After he hit me, he would cry and beg for forgiveness," Bossé says. "And because I loved him, I would forgive him." The most important lesson she has learned is that "you can't change these kinds of people — you have to leave and start over." Adds Bossé: "My daughter won't grow up with a violent father, so she won't accept a violent husband. The circle has been broken."

New laws are on an abused woman's side. A German bill that took effect last year bans violent partners from the home and often other locations frequented by an abused partner and their children. And the Spanish parliament rushed through a bill that gives almost instant protection against violent partners and empowers magistrates to order legal aid and other assistance. Justice Minister José María Michavila wants to see tougher measures against "one of the blackest stains on our society," including making even the first instance of domestic violence a crime, providing provisional custodial sentences for violent partners and permanent loss of child custody.

Isabel Llinas, head of the Institute for Women in Mallorca, still vividly recalls the first — and only — time that her husband of 15 years attacked her. It was an unexpected knife assault two years ago, witnessed by her daughter, then 13. "We had been going through an unpleasant separation and he refused to accept it," she says. Left for dead on the bathroom floor, she was in a coma for two days and lost her spleen. Her husband later killed himself in prison. She considers herself one of the lucky ones. "I was able to go back to work, and I had a job to go back to" as a hotel manager, unlike many women who return to their violent partners because they have nothing to live on and nowhere to go. Llinas blames Spanish machismo for much of the domestic violence in her country. "Latin culture taught women to think that the man was boss," she says. "We have to educate children in the schools that men and women should share domestic chores and that the man is not above his wife."

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