‘You shut up. I ought to punch you in the face’: Coming face to face with a violent man - Women's Agenda

‘You shut up. I ought to punch you in the face’: Coming face to face with a violent man

A few days ago Kelly Baker was unloading her son and her two dogs from the car at a park in Sydney’s inner west.

One of her dogs was on a leash but the 5 month old Golden Retriever puppy tore off before she had put a lead on him. He ran across to a man who was kicking a ball with his daughter and son who were between 8 and 10. The puppy came back but then quickly ran over to the family again.

The magazine editor said to her son we’ve got to get a lead on him but before she could, the man approached her.

“He pointed his finger in my face and yelled ‘Get your dog under control’,” Baker said. “I started to apologise and he brought his finger right up at my face again and said “Shut Up. You SHUT UP I OUGHT TO PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE.”

Even recalling the incident a few days later makes Baker teary and fearful.

“I said ‘Listen take your finger out of my face and don’t speak to me like that,”, she said. “I thought this is a man who is on the verge.  He might actually punch me. He’s not mucking around.”

Baker’s son had run away and was crying. The man’s daughter was crying and his son was standing quietly. 

“He was well within his rights to tell me to put my dog on the lead. I was wrong. I should have put the lead on, but it happened so quickly,” she said. “I could understand him being angry but the way he pointed his finger in my face and the way he told me shut up – it’s really difficult to explain. It was emotional and awful. It’s like I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing.”

Eventually he calmed down, when Baker asked him what he was doing when there were children around.

“He asked for my name and I gave it to him. I said call the police. I am good with that. I will stay here until they come.”

He didn’t and Baker left shaken. The incident was so dramatic that people in the park were looking.

 “People were definitely watching and noticing but no one came over,” she says. “If you see a man being so aggressive you need to step up and say ‘Calm down, this is not ok’.”

Baker was later thinking about his son. “He was standing there looking so quiet and small. That’s how this man is teaching his son to treat women. This is how he is saying his daughter could be treated.”

Afterwards Baker spoke with her own son about the incident which he said was really scary.  

“I told him that it was really frightening but when people behave like that they are bullies. And even when you are frightened you have to stand up and say don’t speak to me like that.”

Was that the right approach? Baker isn’t sure.

“He could have punched me in the face so that wouldn’t have been a good lesson but that behaviour isn’t acceptable ever.”

She is not sure whether she did the right thing. Should she have just walked away?

“I do not want my children seeing me abused in any fashion and me capitulating. I did something wrong, there is no doubt. I should have put my dog on a lead but I didn’t deserve that treatment.”  

What sort of person threatens violence that way? In the presence of kids?

I recently witnessed the sort of person who does this and even though I wasn’t the subject of the threat, it was terrifying.

A few weeks ago on the short walk between the bus stop and my home I became aware of a small commotion ahead. It was just before 6pm and because it was during daylight savings there was plenty of daylight. I was on a suburban street scattered with a couple of restaurants with outdoor seating. It wasn’t crazily busy but it was far from deserted. There were plenty of people about.

I had just been quietly admiring a family group who had finished dinner at the Japanese. Two small kids hugged their grandparents goodbye before setting off to the car with their parents. I was thinking how lovely that is and how lucky they are to enjoy it, when I became aware of an audibly hostile voice.

It came from a father who was about 40 metres ahead of me near a car with two children.  As I got closer I saw a girl who might have been 8 or 9 was crying in the front seat and a boy who was possibly a year or two older in the backseat looking pretty unimpressed.  As I passed them it was clear they were getting a talking to. Nothing unusual about siblings getting a talking to, I thought to myself. 

But then shortly after passing the car I heard the dad yelling. “YOU ARSEHOLE!” It was jarring to hear not just because of the choice of words but because of the rage that coated them. My reflex was to turn around. The dad was leaning into the car shaking the boy.

“YOU’RE AN ARSEHOLE! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT YOU ARSEHOLE? YOU ARSEHOLE!”

His words were as violent and angry as his behaviour. I considered intervening – and honestly I wish I had. I didn’t. I was scared. I felt physically sick. I burst into tears the minute I got home. I said to my husband: if he would treat his son like that in public what would he do behind closed doors? 

The man might have been in his 40s. He was dressed in a suit and was driving a sleek and expensive European car.  He was in a pretty genteel suburb at 6pm on a Wednesday. And he assaulted his son. Verbally and physically.

Right there in that moment domestic violence felt as close to me as it ever had. Every statistic, every horror story, every anecdote about the scourge of domestic violence, crystallised. It felt real in a way it hadn’t ever before.

Not because I have ever doubted the reality of those statistics or stories or the prevalence of the problem. But because it can be difficult to logically reconcile violence being perpetrated by and against loved ones if you’ve never seen it. 

I grew up in a family where violence and fear weren’t in the vocabulary. We might have been smacked as very small children but honestly I can’t recall ever being fearful of my parents being violent to us or to each other. In that paradigm it’s almost impossible to contemplate a different paradigm.

Yet, as we know, a very different paradigm exists and persists. A paradigm which is framed by fear, violence, abuse and control. The trouble is this paradigm is largely hidden. It mostly happens behind closed doors. We know it takes place but it’s hard to put a face or a name to the perpetrators. Who would hit or hurt someone they love?

This week, like I did a few weeks ago, Kelly Baker caught a glimpse behind the curtain. Like the man I saw, the man who threatened her was ostensibly well-off. 

I might be mistaken but is it unrealistic to conclude that a man who threatens to punch a stranger in the face in the presence of children might actually punch someone? Perhaps someone he knows?

That’s what Baker has been thinking.

“How does he go home? Does he think ‘I sure showed that woman with the dog of the lead’? How does he justify threatening to punch someone?,” Baker says. “I keep thinking about the childrens’ mother.”

I do too. I felt physically sick at being able to put a face to an individual who was violent to his family. He was attractive, wealthy and violent and I have thought about him and his family almost daily since. Is the son ok? Does he live in fear of his Dad? Was the altercation I witnessed ‘normal’? Would the mother know he has behaved like that? Even once? Where does the Dad work? Was the Dad ashamed? What would the Dad’s co-workers or parents or bosses make of that behaviour? Do they know what he is capable of?

These are the questions I have.

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