Men’s experience of intimate partner violence before and during the covid-19 pandemic: a case study of survivors seeking services from men’s forum against domestic violence in Najjanankumbi

Abstract

The results reveal that their various forms of IPV against men during and before COVID-19 and these include included psychological abuse in form of intimidation, humiliation, fear, shame and controlling behaviours, physical abuse in form of physically assault that involves scratching, pulling and slapping and sexual abuse with common form being sexual deprivation by female partners against their male partners during the COVID-19 pandemic. Other forms include economic abuse, neglect and isolation and sexual abuse. The study also highlighted drug abuse, extra-marital affairs, economic factors as the major factors that contributed to the intimate partner violence men experienced during and before the pandemic. Other causes include history of family abuse, desire for power, low education level and ignorance and cultural factors. The research also highlighted the effect of some of IPV on men and these included damage to self-esteem, family breakage, separation, child abuse and family neglect. all The study also revealed the most common response from male victims of intimate partners and we discovered that most of the male victims preferred being silent and distancing themselves from the topic in order to avoid humiliation and shame, others responded through neglect and separation with their family whereas a least number of the male victims had reported the matter to the authority or sought counsel. Despite the effort by Men’s Forum Against Domestic violence to sensitize male victims to come out and report the abuse they are still limited number of men who are willing to open and those who open are either divorced or some are not willing to declare their testimony openly as proof for other men due to fear of humiliation and also not being believed by the authority since most of the abuse are psychological hence can’t be traced. The study concludes by providing various recommendations to various stake holders.