Sascha Wil­son

From a very ten­der age, boys are taught and en­cour­aged in some cas­es to deal with their prob­lems through vi­o­lence.It's one of the ma­jor prob­lems with the way in which young males are so­cialised, says chair­man of the Coali­tion against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att.She was com­ment­ing on Jus­tice Mark Mo­hammed's warn­ing that there would be a "cri­sis of un­told mag­ni­tude" if young men were not so­cialised dif­fer­ent­ly.

The judge made the com­ments on Tues­day as he sen­tenced a man to 12 years in jail for rap­ing his nine-year-old sis­ter.Ma­habir-Wy­att, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said men were so­cialised to deal with con­flict not through talk­ing, but through fight­ing.

Re­call­ing that once she saw her son's kinder­garten teacher teach­ing her son how to fight, she said, "I think Mark Mo­hammed was re­fer­ring to this. It's okay for girls to cry and quar­rel, but boys have not learned how to cry or ex­press their feel­ings by talk­ing about their emo­tions and feel­ings, to say I am hurt and un­com­fort­able or sad."They don't get a chance to ex­press their emo­tions which all hu­man be­ing need to do."

In ad­di­tion, she said, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence in fam­i­lies teach­es chil­dren to be vi­o­lent. "Once chil­dren see their par­ents fight­ing and us­ing force, they think that it is a so­cial­ly ac­cept­able way to deal with stress."She rec­om­mend­ed that pro­grammes geared to­wards help­ing young men deal with is­sues with­out re­sort­ing to vi­o­lence should be in­tro­duced in all schools.

Hazel Brown, head of the Net­work of NGOs for the Ad­vance­ment of Women, be­lieves the me­dia have an im­por­tant role in how males are so­cialised."I think we have to fo­cus on the mes­sages in the me­dia that tell young fel­las that their be­hav­iour is ac­cept­able be­cause they are men and men rule, it's a man's world."Leader of Men Against Vi­o­lence Against Women Dr Rus­sell Foote be­lieves the change in mind­set must be­gin in the home.

"I think for too long we have as­so­ci­at­ed prop­er so­cial­i­sa­tion with pro­vid­ing chil­dren with ma­te­r­i­al things, and more im­por­tant than that is teach­ing them prop­er man­ners, how to be re­spect­ful and cour­te­ous from an ear­ly age."With­out fun­da­men­tal val­ues, he said young peo­ple could be eas­i­ly led astray and "lose con­trol."Mo­hammed al­so called on the State to pro­vide prop­er coun­selling to vic­tims and of­fend­ers of sex­u­al of­fences.

Com­ment­ing on that, founder of the Vic­tim Sup­port Foun­da­tion Loverne Hen­ry not­ed that sup­port and coun­selling, es­pe­cial­ly for the vic­tims, was not on­ly the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the State, but al­so of com­mu­ni­ties, fam­i­lies and the work­place.Hen­ry said there were sev­er­al sup­port mech­a­nisms put in place by non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions.

How­ev­er, she said, what was lack­ing was the sus­tained mul­ti­fac­eted sup­port sys­tem nec­es­sary for vic­tims to "con­tin­ue liv­ing their life, be­cause you can sur­vive the trau­ma, but you don't nec­es­sar­i­ly live again."