Private Violence

(5 of 5)

The U.S. cannot afford to get smug. Not all American victims are getting help, or even sympathy. "As a society," says Sociologist Gelles of private violence, "we laugh at this behavior." We should not. But indeed, such behavior is not so completely unthinkable that decent folks do not chuckle when Jackie Gleason's Ralph Kramden angrily threatens to sock his ever-loving wife. "I'm gonna send you to the moon," he barks on The Honeymooners, his clenched fist waving. "To the moon, Alice." But if people on the one hand laugh off private violence, they become raving, sputtering mad about it too. "The pendulum swings to two extremes," says A. Nicholas Groth, a Connecticut prison psychologist. "Either people blame the victim, or see the offender as a fiend who ought to be castrated." As the analyses of private violence on the following pages show, the hard duty is to look straight at the problems and, neither laughing nor ranting, figure out what reasonable people can do. —By Kurt Andersen. Reported by Barbara B. Dolan/Minneapolis, with other bureaus