A safe shelter for battered women

Maha got married at the age of 15 in order to stop the domestic violence. Sadly, it was the beginning of another 15-year journey of abuse, this time, at the hands of her husband. She ended up in “Dar El Dyafa”, an asylum in Jordan funded by the European Union.

Sulafa Al-Khatib - Amman, Al-Hayat

Maha couldn’t bear to hear the shouting voices of her old mother being beaten by her eldest son, while her three sisters swarmed around her to protect her thin body only to get a dozen hits themselves.

The almost daily barbarous aggression drove Maha, the 15-year-old girl, to think of the best way to get rid of this tough situation. So she got engaged to the first man who asked for her hand in marriage. Maha thought she was thus bringing an end to years of misery. Unfortunately, it was the beginning of a painful story that took her eventually to Amman, to an asylum for battered women.

“I wasn’t prepared for marital life. What was he expecting from a girl who was kept cooped up indoors during adolescence, and condemned to live separately from society, due to macho mentalities”, says Maha, who escaped at the age of 30 from Lebanon, after 15 years of marriage during which she suffered physically and emotionally at the hands of her husband.

But Maha insisted on resisting the pain in order to protect her three children. She tried to get over the cold feelings of her husband and pretended to believe the allegations he used to justify his continuous absence, as a police agent.

Then, an intuitive thought led her to have doubts about her husband’s fidelity. And this “women’s intuition” was proven to be true; one evening, he entered the house accompanied by a woman holding his arms as if to put things in perspective.

The obligation of escaping
These were a series of painful events that were followed by a divorce. Maha found herself in charge of 3 children, the eldest of which was 15 years old. They missed breadwinner. The misery drove her to think about suicide, but her children were the intercessor that helped her not to commit such an act. Instead, she and her sisters decided to flee heading into the unknown. They ended up in a monastery that brings together women of their kind.

“Our stay there became unsafe after my 4th sister joined us. With the coordination of the persons in charge of the monastery, we escaped and were sent to “Dar el Diyafa” for battered women, a place where we felt safe, protected and able to come back to life”, says Maha in our meeting.

With the assistance of psychotherapists, Maha is looking forward to forget the suffering she experienced in the past. Even though borders separate her from her children, she ensures that there is no way she is going back. She had the choice between death and a ruined family life.

Dar El Dyafa helped Maha rebuild herself and reintegrate into society, through training sessions to prepare her for entering the job market, but also through creating familial atmospheres.

A safe shelter
The asylum was established by the Jordanian Women's Union and funded by the European Union, with the aim to accommodate battered women. According to Haifa Haidar, President of the Jordanian Women Union: “since the establishment of the shelter in 1990, we received 1200 women from different nationalities accompanied by a total of 137 children, mostly aged under 12 years”, adding that “the goal of the refuge is to ensure a secure asylum for every woman who has suffered from abuse at home, and who thus spent days laying in the street away from aggressor”.

“The majority of the residents suffered domestic violence before getting married. A lot of foreign women stayed in the asylum for more than a year and a half, as obtaining legal papers depend on the husband’s acceptance. One of our main priorities is to modify the law on citizenship, so that this issue would be related to the marriage contract and not to the husband’s mood”, Haidar explained.

During the first week, the Union tries to find a common ground to resolve the problem between the two sides, until the asylum becomes the unique solution for the battered women to go on with her life.

“The duration of stay varies between one day and two years. Residents are offered personal and social counseling, judicial assistance, and follow up to their problems, in addition to rehabilitation programs aiming at enabling these women to integrate into the society”, added Haidar.

Maha, who has been in the asylum for more than a year, is waiting for the European Union to help her travel with her sisters to a foreign country, especially since an unknown destiny awaits them in case they returned home. This hope is the only thing they are currently living for.

N.B: Text translated from Arabic by Eurojar team