SAFE BlogArchive

"The most common cause of injury for women between the ages of 15 and 44 is domestic violence - you don't see that for men," said Margo Schaefer, community outreach director at Womenspace, a Eugene shelter and support group for battered women.

"What it's like to be a battered man is not well-known, and it's important to reach out to those men," Schaefer said. "But with women, we have an epidemic on our hands."

If you look at Domestic Violence Factoids, you'll see that this is not true.

With a new wife and a new job, Jade Rubick of Portland is looking to the future.

But that hasn't stopped him from continuing his volunteer work with SAFE, the nonprofit group he formed nine years ago in Eugene after fleeing a two-year marriage in which he says his wife repeatedly beat him.

SAFE stands for Stop Abuse for Everyone. The agency, now based in Portland, advocates for "underserved" victims of domestic violence - men, gay men and lesbians. Rubick, 31, said he remains committed to the group despite some misgivings about its toll on him personally.

"Honestly, it's the last thing in the world I'd like to be doing - it's very hard work, dealing with people in crisis and anger," he says. "But nobody else is really addressing this. When I remember what I went through, I want every victim of domestic violence to be treated with respect."

Rubick grew up in Eugene, Portland and elsewhere in Oregon, raised by his mother in the Baha'i religious tradition. He was a 19-year-old University of Oregon student - majoring in Japanese, Asian studies and computer science - when he married an international student seven years his senior.

The relationship quickly turned abusive, first verbally and then physically, Rubick said. His wife frequently slapped and hit him, struck him in the groin, pulled his hair and threw things at him, he said. The incidents often occurred several times a week, he said.

After about a year of such assaults, Rubick said he began to hit back, striking his wife on her arms hard enough to bruise her. Horror at his own actions, he said, helped him find the courage to eventually leave.

Efforts to locate Rubick's first wife for comment were unsuccessful. Rubick said he hasn't spoken to her since their 1996 divorce, and doesn't know whether she is living in the United States or her native country.

Rubick himself has no criminal record in Oregon, court records indicate. His version of events is partially corroborated by a former employer, in whom he confided at the time, and by his father, Thomas Rubick, an artist and longtime graphic design instructor at Lane Community College.

Rubick, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall, said he weighed about 145 pounds at the time of his first marriage. His first wife, according to a driver's license photocopy, was about 5 feet 3 inches tall and weighed 115 pounds at the time. So how could she possibly have inflicted so much injury?

"It's not about how strong you are but how much strength you're willing to use and the limits you place on your own behavior," Rubick said. "I could have been 8 feet tall and 400 pounds and she'd still have beaten me up unless I was willing to do something about it."

Rubick said he had no context for making sense of the assaults, which he blamed mostly on himself - as did his wife.

"I never even thought of men getting hit," he said. "I knew domestic violence was a terrible thing, but I never considered it could go both ways."

Rubick said he stayed in the relationship "mostly because I felt responsible for her, and she said she would kill herself if I left." He also felt a strong commitment, he said, to his marriage vows. In retrospect, he said, he also understands that he was "pathologically under her control."

The worst abuse, he said, occurred when she told him to put his head on the bed, put her foot on the back of his head, and pulled his hair with both her hands as hard as she could. Rubick said he reluctantly complied, rather than face a long night "of yelling and screaming and more hitting."

When he would ask her later to explain such actions, "she said she needed to do this to feel better."

Ultimately, Rubick's injuries gave him away. A boss noticed the heavy bruising on his legs, and Rubick's efforts to dismiss them seemed suspect. Even with such direct evidence, it was hard to confide, Rubick said. "There's this kind of macho ethic that you're not supposed to show pain, especially to other men," Rubick said. "But he didn't believe me when I tried to lie to him about it."

The former employer, Dan Patch of Eugene, said it took several confrontations on his part before Rubick was able to open up. "I finally just said, `You're not a very good storyteller - tell me the truth,' and he did."

Patch said he and Rubick then spent many hours over several months discussing the situation, and why Patch felt Rubick needed to leave the relationship. The two devised an "exit strategy" for if and when Rubick decided the time had come.

Patch said he got the phone call on a weekday morning at work; Rubick and his wife had just had another altercation, she had just left for work and Rubick wanted out. Patch said he drove to Rubick's apartment, packed his few personal belongings in his car and drove him back to his home, where he lived for about a month.

Rubick's father, Thomas, said he remembers a telling exchange at the time. When he asked his son if he was sure he'd taken everything from the apartment that belonged to him, "he told me, `I hope so, because I don't have a key.' When I asked him why not, he said she didn't want him to have a key so he couldn't leave."

In hindsight, the elder Rubick said he thinks his son found himself trapped in a no-win situation - unsure of what to do, and with no place to go for advice or support. "He's a very sensitive guy, and he was brought up that you don't hit a woman - even if she hits first," he said.

In the years since his first marriage, Jade Rubick has used his computer skills to land several jobs. He began working this month as a Web developer for United Way.

He met his current wife, the former Kate Miller, via an online dating service in early 2002; they were married in August 2003. Kate Rubick, 34, works as a reference librarian at Lewis and Clark College in Portland.

Kate Rubick said Jade disclosed the particulars of his first marriage on their second or third date. "I had some questions for him, I definitely did. How could a woman have so much power over him if he's 6 foot 4," she asked. "But in talking to him about it, I realized pretty quickly that size is only one way that people can dominate and intimidate others."

The stigma that's often attached to abused men has never been an issue for her, Kate Rubick said.

"Jade is not a macho kind of guy, and I've never been drawn to a macho kind of man," she said. "What I require in a partner is someone who'll talk to me about emotional issues, so the qualities he possesses are the qualities I'm looking for. They were positives to me."

- Jeff Wright

There seem to be several reasons for some focusing primarily on female abuse. One, the sole female victim notion seems easier for "the public" to understand. Two, that makes it easier for organizations to obtain government and other funds for publicizing abuse or for sponsoring shelters and other services. Unfortunately, the downside is that those limited funds will be used largely, and in many cases exclusively, for female abuse. The abused men often tend to be uncounted, untreated, and left in the cold, which is a social disservice to all, because it does not reflect the real family abuse situation. It can't be fully cured if it's not fully pictured.