In her very revealing 20/20 interview, Rihanna revealed that, long before she and Chris Brown were dating, she had experienced the heartbreak of domestic violence. The singer told Diane Sawyer when she was a child she witnessed her father beating her mother.
"I always anticipated it happening," Rihanna said. "At night I wouldn't want to sleep, because I was too afraid it would happen. She never went to the hospital, but he broke her nose...Domestic violence is not something that people want anybody to know, so she would just hide it in the house. I always said to myself, 'I'm never going to date somebody like my dad, never.' I always said that."
But last February she found herself in a similar situation to her mom's, where she was repeatedly hit by the person she loved. But, even after Chris' attack, Rihanna couldn't just walk away from her love.
"Lying to yourself again, [I thought], What is he going through? I had to protect him," she explained. "The whole world hates him now. His fans, his career, he lost me-I just need to let him know don't do anything stupid."
She eventually ended things for good with Chris, when she realized she wasn't going to be able to get past the pain if she remained with him.
"I know that he felt really bad," she said. "I just didn't know if he understood the extent of what he did. The thing that men don't realize, when they hit a woman-the face, the broken arm, the black eye, it's going to heal. That's not the problem. It's the scar inside. You flash back, you remember it all the time. It comes back to you whether you like it or not, and it's painful. I don't think he understood that. They never do. They can't know that."
As for what she wants from Chris now, Rihanna simply said, "Nothing. What I want, is for him to accept this as a man would and accept the responsibility, and not find a way to feel sorry for himself."
Do you think children of abusive parents are more likely to enter abusive relationships as adults?
Source: ivillage
Posted on November 10, 2009 10:30
I think when you witness violence as a child against your parents, depending on how the situation is handled it can effect you as an adult especially if nothing was done then you tend to think of it as normal
Posted on November 10, 2009 21:01
So true Raye and its privalent in Jamaica and nobody does anything about it, not even the church.