Photographer Sara Naomi Lewkowicz didn’t intend to be taking photos of Shane violently assaulting his girlfriend Maggie, but that’s how things turned out. This Time photo-essay is disturbing and well worth your time. For me, the photos showing Maggie’s two-year-old daughter Memphis attempting to protect her mother are particularly heartbreaking.
I had met Shane and Maggie two-and-a-half months before. Southeastern Ohio was still warm that time of year and brimming with small regional festivals. I had gone to the Millersport Sweet Corn Festival to shoot my first assignment for an editorial photography class. Almost immediately, I spotted a man covered in tattoos, including an enormous piece on his neck that read, “Maggie Mae.” He was holding a beautiful little girl with blonde curls. His gentle manner with her belied his intimidating ink, and I approached them to ask if I could take their portrait. [...] Before they drove home, I asked if I could continue to document them, and they agreed. [...]
After I confirmed one of the housemates had called the police, I then continued to document the abuse — my instincts as a photojournalist began kicking in. If Maggie couldn’t leave, neither could I.
After the photo essay, you should definitely read Amanda Marcotte’s analysis, “Photo Essay Shows How Abusers Manipulate Victims,” which is spot-on. Here’s a selection, but please read the whole thing:
The images of the fight itself are arresting and disturbing, but Lewkowicz does more than bear witness to domestic violence. She also chronicled the entire process of domestic violence and how an abuser sets up the opportunity to beat his partner. I thought it might be a useful exercise to go through these photos (with links, because I don’t have the rights to the pictures) and explicate the steps an abuser goes through in order to manipulate the victim into accepting abuse.
1) Whirlwind romance. Shane and Maggie had only been dating a few months, but already they were living together and Shane was aggressively trying to become the father figure to the children, even though the older one was skeptical of him. Abusers commonly try to rush things, because it’s important to them to lock the victim down. They know, if only subconsciously, that if they don’t have it all locked down and they give into the temptation to hit their partner, the chance of the partner walking away goes up. This also helps establish the romantic narrative that their love is “different” from other people’s—more passionate, more romantic—which makes the abuse easier to write off as overblown passion.
2) Create dependence. As becomes clear in this photo essay, despite Shane’s economic woes, he provided a roof over Maggie and her children’s heads and by leaving him, she lost her housing.
3) Isolate the victim from her support network. Again, this makes it harder for the victim to leave, because she has no one to turn to and nowhere to go. From the photo essay: “Within a few months of their relationship, Shane moved Maggie and her children to a trailer park in Somerset, Ohio. The location was farther away than Maggie had ever been from her family and friends before, and she said her feelings of isolation only increased over time.”
Categories: Children of Divorce, General
I’m still having trouble with the concept of standing and taking pictures when something awful is going on. Could the photographer not have done anything to actually stop the violence? Something about it bothers me.
(I’m still having trouble with the concept of standing and taking pictures when something awful is going on. Could the photographer not have done anything to actually stop the violence? Something about it bothers me.)
I’d like to point out that focusing on what the photographer did or didn’t do is a way of avoiding discussion of what happened. I would prefer the moderators not allow this irrelevant point derail the conversation.
Perhaps we could have another thread to discuss that separately.
Why are the photographer’s actions off-topic? It seems to me that if we want to talk about why and how domestic abuse happens, third parties feeling that it is acceptable to stand by and watch is very, very relevant.
I think I’m going to bookmark this post, so that when people ask me what I mean by “patriarchy”, I can refer them right here. This is it, folks; this is patriarchy in a nutshell. There’s more red flags here than there were at Lenin’s funeral.
Let’s be frank here—Shane’s violence was a natural progression from all his other patriarchal behaviors. He wanted Maggie to accept his authority. He wanted to come first in her life, before her children. He felt entitled to this.
From Amanda Marcotte’s post:
I agree that it’s a difficult, knotty question of journalistic ethics when to witness and when to intervene beyond documenting events (which, itself, is a form of intervention as any anthropologist will tell you!). But I also believe that bearing witness and creating a record of what happened was a powerful way to create long-term possibility for Maggie — possibility that might not have been there if the photographer had dropped her camera and tried to physically stop what was happening. All too often, if abusers are not decisively stopped or separated from their victims (by, for example, the victim deciding to leave), having outsiders try to interfere can just escalate violence.
Not only do photographs make it harder to whitewash the experience (for a victim trying to explain to herself what happened while her abuser is gaslighting her), they also provide concrete evidence of the kind often demanded in court or from social services in order to take any sort of action to stop the abuse. My friends who’ve experienced abusive relationships — whether it was a spouse or employer or parent, etc. — the advice was always to document, document, document, so that when you feel brave enough to leave or ask for help, you’ll have a paper trail.
I’m going to address the question of what the photographer “should have done” just once, and then I’ll ask people not to focus on that in these comments, please (as Mont said).
1) The photographer made sure the police had been summoned before she started taking photos.
2) The police said she did the right thing by not interfering:
Thanks to everyone for not focusing on this question.
EDITED TO ADD: Anna Cook, great point about the value of documentation.
I think it’s uncivil to respond to my comment by saying that it’s an attempt to distract from the issues and that the issue should not even be addressed.
I personally could not look at a photo like that without wondering how it was taken and why someone wasn’t acting. I respect the answers to that question that have been given here, but I think it is also a natural question to ask.
(I think it’s uncivil to respond to my comment by saying that it’s an attempt to distract from the issues and that the issue should not even be addressed.)
Please accept my apology.
And yet…you seem to be wondering more about that and not why Shane was beating Maggie to begin with. Please understand, I’m not blaming you or accusing you—I’m just trying to point out the degree to which domestic violence goes unquestioned. How much we take for granted that a certain number of men, a certain type of man, especially in certain situations, is going to react violently and that more often than not his choice of whom to beat is going to be the woman he supposedly “loves”.
I want to be crystal-clear here, because someone was acting—Shane. Shane was acting violently. He was beating up Maggie. He waited to do this in what he thought was private space—”safe” space for him to beat her up without consequences. That he continued to do so while his photo was being taken says that he expected to get away with it. Notice how one of the arresting officers makes the statement that “I know Shane. He’s a good guy.” (zzzt! record skip sound). I know that familiar refrain—”he’s a good guy.”
I also know how difficult it is to fight off an angry man. I don’t know how large or well-trained in martial arts Sara Lewkowicz is, but unless she felt confident in her ability to take him down instantly and without further incident, she did probably the only thing she could have done that wouldn’t have further escalated the situation and/or caused more harm—she called the police. She documented the violence. She offered her word as a witness. That’s not inaction. Had she not been there, the proceedings could have been very different. Perhaps the small marks on Maggie wouldn’t have impressed the police as being evidence of sufficient violence. Maybe Maggie would have been arrested for drinking (she’s only 19). Maybe she would have attempted to defend herself, put some marks on Shane, and they both would have been arrested (that’s my city’s policy—arrest both).
I understand. It’s a natural question. I couldn’t have done what Lewkowicz did, having been through what I’ve been through. But the actions I could have seen myself taking would have made things worse. I know this. I would have been arrested, and henceforth would have been no good as a witness to Maggie. Eventually, the case against Shane would have been dropped. Would that have been better?
What I want: for the natural question to be “what the….” to Shane’s actions. Not just his violence. Also for his being 31 and dating a 19 year old. And convincing her to move far away from anyone she knows. And consistently claiming authority over her and her children. And wanting to be prioritized before her children. Maggie met him while he was still in prison. He was grooming her even before he got out. Why aren’t those natural questions?
@Mont d law – sure.
@LaLubu – Perhaps we don’t wonder why Shane abused her because we see him as crazy and evil and therefore not something we can explain rationally? Somehow it seems harder to understand why the young woman went along with being isolated and why others don’t stop him or think he is a nice guy.
Wait. Stop. Whatever else Shane may be, he isn’t crazy or evil. He’s a bad guy, yeah—but he’s not a fringe element. The only thing that sets him apart from thousands of other everyday guys is his neck tattoo of “Maggie Mae”. Shane was following a very common script—not the one where he made mistakes in his life and set forth on a new path, no….the one where in order to go forth on a new path, he had to be a certain kind of man. A head of household. It wasn’t just Maggie’s youth or beauty that attracted him to her—she had kids. Which meant he could be A Hero. Not an ordinary guy doing ordinary things. He could be a patriarch.
And I’m sure he got a lot of positive reinforcement from his community in that. He was singing in a Christian rock band—wonder if he was going to one of those “muscular Christianity” churches? (I’m really trying not to be cynical and dismissive here—-but that’s what the participants call it!) Anyway, there’s a narrative in the culture about “white knights”, and being the leader of the household and the authority figure.
Meanwhile, there’s other narratives about women relocating for men, not the other way around. “Putting away childish things”. Being sacrificing and long-suffering and finding redemption in that. It isn’t considered unusual for women to give up family and friends and relocate once she’s in a serious relationship. It’s considered unusual (and frankly selfish) if she doesn’t.
I’m just trying to point out that there’s all this “how could that happen” after intimate violence occurs, but all the points leading up to that violence, setting the stage for that violence, not only go unquestioned but are firmly part of the cultural narrative. Maggie didn’t want the role Shane assigned to her, and she probably wasn’t aware it was being assigned to her.
@Diane M: And again, ‘aw, he’s just crazy/evil’ is a way to avoid talking about the real problem: Shane’s choices.
I also don’t think that abusers are universally recognized as “crazy/evil.” The cop, after all, called Shane a “good guy.” A myth that only people who seem obviously “crazy/evil” are abusers is one way to erase the fact that many abusers often actually seem like upstanding people in their communities.
People are rarely 100% good or 100% evil, and we need to break down the narratives that suggest that if a person is good/nice in some contexts that they can’t possibly be bad/mean in other contexts.
La Lubu- you said:
“Let’s be frank here—Shane’s violence was a natural progression from all his other patriarchal behaviors.”
Yes- and one thing that really stood out to me was the way he kept asserting that Maggie’s children, especially her son, “needed” a father figure.
I don’t think it’s rare for abusive men to co-opt that narrative in service of trapping women in abusive relationships. After all, the narrative further goes, if their children need a father, aren’t they a Bad Mother if they “deprive” their children of that?
In my opinion, La Lubu, this isn’t the best example to use for patriarchy, especially if you want to argue that it’s bad in and of itself.
If I were a proponent of patriarchy (or thought that it wasn’t a problem), and you said, “This is patriarchy,” I would respond, “Well, I think this is awful, too. Being controlling or abusive is never okay.”
When I was a kid, I knew a girl who was dating someone who was jealous and controlling (for instance, he would get angry and jealous with her if she spent time alone with her male cousins).
Even though most of the people in her community, though, were conservative and Christian, they all warned her against this guy and thought he was a complete creep.
So… my point isn’t that patriarchy is okay. My point is that, if this is patriarchy, no one is going to defend it. If you think that people will defend it, then, well, you might be right, but those people are beyond the pale.
Another way of saying this is: If you want to persuasively argue against patriarchy to decent people, you should argue against the most seemingly innocuous version if you want to convince them it’s something they are at risk of doing.
You’re right, Schroeder. But the thing is….no one saw a problem with Shane’s behavior at all until the violence. His jockeying for control and setting himself up as authoritarian and disciplinarian were seen as good traits, admirable traits—and they aren’t. Shane is going to have a really hard time coming to terms with the fact he did anything wrong, because he got such strong social affirmation for everything that preceded. In his eyes, he may have gone overboard, but it wasn’t wrong for him to be in control—it was wrong for Maggie to assert her autonomy instead of accepting his authority. And that’s wrong.
Shane was following a script. A script that required Maggie to play a subordinate role so he could be a hero. That script needs to disappear.
I went through the whole slideshow last night, and was actually really impressed at the way the police took this situation so seriously. Instead of the cop talking to Maggie accepting/affirming her narrative of Shane as a “good guy” and therefore letting the incident go, as Maggie considered doing, they documented what happened and pointed out to her that being a “good guy” didn’t let him off the hook for what he’d done. I actually teared up a little through that section because there are plenty of police who wouldn’t have bothered to follow through like that. So kudos to them!
I think that anyone, though, Christian or non-Christian, Conservative or non-Conservative can (and, in at least some cases, would) say that this fact is a huge problem that needs to be remedied. Women (or men) should not be taught that controlling behavior is “okay.” Period.
I think this is great and exactly what they needed to do.
I do believe you, because I’m not in a position to know whether this is true and you are and because I’ve read about police not doing things the right way.
But… I think that when they fail to do the right thing it’s usually a failure of action (i.e. hypocrisy or lack of moral will) not a failure of belief or culture. Do you disagree?
Schroeder,
You make a valid point about the distinction between beliefs about abuse and action. However, several studies have suggested that the rates of domestic/intimate partner violence in police families are actually two to four times the national average. The National Center for Women and Policing offers a good factsheet with links to the sources for those statistics.
I’d argue that a professional culture that, for whatever reason, ignores or enables officers to engage in abusive behavior in their own families likely fosters a passive attitude in general to domestic violence, while obviously there are individual and jurisdictional exceptions to that generalization.