Laughlin: I am not a trained psychologist but very early on in my life I was lucky enough to make this the center of my life, long before Billy Jack. I give seminars and teach psychologists and psychiatrists from Yale to Stanford. One of the specialities is in domestic abuse.
Laughlin: When I was in the third grade, I read, as best I could, Socrates. And I read in there that the unexamined life is not worth living. I had that on my wall. My real love of life is psychology. We went into movies only to make a difference, to try to say things in a popular way. At that time, our concern was Native Americans and racism of every kind and the terrible narrow-mindedness of people who are bigots and the alternate kids who were troubled and trying to find their way. But it was more than that. Billy Jack is macho, ready to die, hold out in that church and he's going to kill everybody. But then Jean comes in and says, "it's very easy to die dramatically. It's a hell of a lot tougher to try to make this a better place to live." And Billy changes. He finally lets the feminine component, his feeling values, the emotions, what's really important come in to his macho persona and he gives up his life in essence so that she can continue to try to make it a better place.
Laughlin: We're talking about making another one. But movie makers erroneously now believe blood and violence and action sell. You can take a Van Damme movie or Blown Away, a non-stop movie where the guns are bigger than the cannons in the Civil War and they're lucky to do $35 million to $50 million at the box office. A Forrest Gump does $350 million. So what does the public want to love? They want decency, they want human caring.
Laughlin: One of the tragedies today is that people have not the slightest clue how serious amd deep domestic violence is. Let me give you a couple of quick numbers. At the University of Miami, of 600 co-eds interviewed, 200 of them felt that being hit by their boyfriend was a sign of love. I say that to give you the level of the problem. If you still have women believing being hit is a sign of love, how do you get to the next step? We just saw it in the O.J. case. Ullman (one of O.J. Simpson's lawyers) would get up in court and say these are just little domestic disputes. In battering, you do not call 911 until it has reached an enormously high level. I have heard of women dragged through the rain naked by their hair across a neighbor's yard who never called. So when you're calling 911, that's now at a very serious stage. Nicole called eight times. They never did anything until the eighth time. So this is dismissed, we trivialize it.
Ullman says these are the usual problems in any marriage. No, battering is not. But it is incredibly widespread. One out of three women murdered this year will be murdered out of a battering situation by a husband, an ex-husband or a boyfriend. One out of three teenage girls is in a battering relationship in high school. And for all of that, you can multiply that by 20. This is an epidemic of gigantic proportions that's not being touched. The treatment modalities today are not very effective and we did stumble across a way that has been effective.
But the problem first has to be recognized and identified. And one of the things of personal concern here was that I'm very concerned about people who want to treat this football star (Lawrence Phillips) by banishing him forever. I'm terrified by that because we can use his case and the Simpson case as an X-ray into how pervasive this problem is. No one would ever suspect O.J. Simpson, the Juice, the most charming human being in America. How could he be that kind of a monstrous batterer? And that's the case. In this county, the rape-crisis center said they had 2,600 arrests last year for battering, so you know the number who didn't call. 2,600 is over 200 a month right here, out here in the middle of safe and secure America. It's here, it's everywhere. To me, the tragedy is, if my figures are right, you have on this campus a good 3,000 batterers, including faculty and students.
Laughlin: O.J. Simpson was my neighbor up the street on Rockingham. He lived at 300 Rockingham Drive, I lived at 100 Rockingham. I've known O.J. forever. This is one of the sickest, sorriest days in our culture, that he was not guilty. His son, Jason, sought refuge at our house many times. I've told him (O.J.) since 1985 he'd end up in jail.
Laughlin: Of course he was in denial. He tried to hide his drinking. He was an alcoholic and a drug addict. He got Nicole on drugs.
Laughlin: You have a really terrific lady here on the rape-crisis hot line. She says the calls went up 400 percent the week after the issue was raised. Then distinguished Dean Ullman comes along and treats eight 911 calls as the normal things everyone has in a marriage, "little bumps along the way" are his exact words. Trivialize, trivialize, trivialize. Eight times she (Nicole) cried out and eight times, because it was O.J. and it was woman-battering, it was dismissed. But now, with the trivialization, people are afraid to call because they don't trust that the system will help them. The fact that he (O.J.) was found not guilty is going to make that 10 times worse. If you can't get help, if there is no justice, if there is no legal system that will help them, where do you go? Who's going to call? Why call if you're not going to get help?
Laughlin: The woman can't tell. For one thing, she'll get beat up worse. And she's ashamed to tell. She's ashamed to admit that she's that weak. The man will never tell, he can't go for help. It's so widespread but there's no preventive. There's no way for the young girl to come the first time to a place where she's absolutely safe, right at the beginning. If you're an athlete or an honors student, you don't want to be seen going into the shrink's place. But occasionally, as it has been with this young man (Phillips), it's broken into the open. What an opportunity sent by God. It isn't violence on the football team. It's ministers, it's corporation presidents, it's school teachers, it's lawyers, it's truck drivers, it's rich and poor.
What if there are 3,000 relationships on this campus that are violent and abusive verbally or physically? What are you going to do about it? Ignore it? What if you're an honors student in chemistry and a batterer? We get rid of him and we feel good but that's not going to save the woman. The woman is going to get it 10 times worse. If we want to protect women, we have to do two things: We have to really find a way to transform the batterer, or use real sanctions. But you try the first. You can kick this kid off the football team or that kid off the band but you're not going to protect the women, not only the woman who is in the immediate relationship, but the future women. Down the road, he's going to batter again.
Laughlin: There are those who criticize Coach Osborne and I had to tell him that allowing this young man on the team at this point was a stroke of genius. You can decide, "let's banish this guy and we all feel good." Or you can say, "wait a minute, how many young women out there now are in danger on this campus, in this town. Is there a way we can use this as an X-ray into how pervasive this problem is and what can we do to change it?" You have to make a decision at this university and in this town. Are you going to say, when we come across the batterer, "dispatch him . . . aren't we clean, aren't we holy?" OK, then all those other women are going to be battered, they're going to pay that price. Or you can say, "this is a serious obligation to educate, to bring consciousness to the batterer and to the woman." I heard there were women protesting, they wanted the kid kicked off the football team. I was sad about that. The fact is you're going to hurt more women.
Laughlin: He should not be rewarded by being allowed to play unless there is real substantive change. I don't mean surface change. If that's it, he should not be allowed to play. But if he does change, then he's not only going to not batter this girl, he's not going to batter the girl he marries at 30 and 35. If he just pretends to change, of course he should not be allowed to play. But the same with the law student, the same with the pre-med student. If he does substantive change, real change, he should be allowed to continue on to grad school. Lawrence has already been sanctioned in ways other batterers on this campus are not. He had a chance for a Heisman trophy. Forget that. He has a stigma attached. Now, you can't take away his right to make a living without giving him a chance to make a transformation for his sake and for the woman's sake . . . I think the coach did a stroke of genius by holding out to the kid the possibility to come back.
Laughlin: What I am urging is that a college or university set up an educational center for violence and domestic violence. The University of Nebraska has an opportunity to educate for emotions and feeling and values and in human relationships. It's not enough to teach geology and literature. You've got to educate and this is the opportunity to take this young man (Phillips) and set up a center and do on-going education into how this happens, what are the key components, how can you recognize them early, what are the modalities of treatment. You do all of that and you have a place where the woman can come quietly and find out what is possible and build a trust. So the victim can come to this place and connect with someone. If you can come in there and deal with this the first time you're hit, the first time you're put down with, "You're stupid, you're ugly, you're nothing without me."
My point is, a person has this really serious, sickening, dangerous
problem. Can you cure it? And again, I get back to the idea of a center
where, if you could nip it before it ever gets to the stage where it
becomes public, you're saving women's lives.
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