On November 25, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, together with professionals, the Amity Foundation provided psychological counseling and legal assistance to victims of domestic abuse in the form of a public welfare project.
According to the Foundation, its future project on guarding against violence, which was initiated together with the Beijing Yuanzhong Family and Community Development Service Center, has been online for free on BiliBili, a trending Chinese video sharing website.
Till now, the project has raised over 100,000 yuan. The anti-violence hotline received 166 calls for help, which the lawyers on duty answered one by one. Inquiries have reached the domestic violence assistance WeChat mini-program (WeChat’s sub-application that can provide advanced features to users) and got follow-up responses. Through the above two channels, the project has provided in-depth legal consulting services for 17 people and formed a client-agent relationship for four legal aid cases. Besides, there are psychological support and psychological counseling services available for this project.
In early November, there was a call for help contacting, “Hello, could you please help me and my child? It was too pitiful for him to watch him beating and insulting me since he was a child. I’d like to take up legal weapons to protect myself and my child.”
The help-seeker Ali has been married for ten years and has been subjected to domestic abuse for nine years. Ali's son, Xiaofei, is eight and a half years old. However, he is particularly afraid of his father, who constantly beats his mother.
In fact, Ali has not always been submissive to the abuses. When the child was three years old, she tried to file for divorce, but it didn't go well. Relevant agencies and departments advised her not to divorce "for the sake of the children." After suffering violence, Ali also called the police, which turned out to be mediated as a "household matter" due to insufficient evidence at the time.
Currently, they have provided legal aid to Ali and have scheduled two lawyers to discuss the case details. At the same time, they contacted the local social work agency to provide psychological support and companionship for Ali and her son, hoping to protect her personal safety. In the next step, the lawyer will work with Ali to apply for and organize evidence and file a divorce case as soon as possible, with the hope of helping Ali get a divorce soon and allowing Xiaofei to leave this violent and uneasy environment.
In this project, those who are in a similar situation to Ali would finally choose to seek help bravely. There are cases including a mother who divorced for domestic violence but fought for the custody of her child with her ex-husband aiming to better raise the child; a workplace newbie was violently harassed, and she eventually got the courage to "speak out,” having the abuser get the punishment; and even a kid who desperately got rid of the abuser’s surveillance and called for assistance for the abused mother.
- Translated by Poppy Chan
