The first women's shelter in Shandong Province, which provides temporary safety and respite for women suffering from domestic violence, has not had a single victim since it opened its doors three months ago. A report from Worker's Daily asks why?

The women's shelter was set up at Jinan Youth Park Block by Jinan Women's Federation on February 27. The shelter is equipped with beds and the daily needs of women who have suffered serious violence in their families.

As a victim of violence, a woman who lives there will get the assistance of the women's federation, and the public and justice authorities who will intervene thereafter on their behalf and provide legal aid. But, in three months that have past, no victim has been willing to come and seek protection.

Sun Jie, director of the women's federation in Jinan Youth Park Block, said the phenomenon did not mean that there was no domestic violence in Jinan, but that the traditional concept of "domestic shame should not be made public" was playing a significant role in the hearts of these women.

The center said that since the women's shelter was established, they have counseled many women, who were exposed to domestic violence, sometimes by phone. For example, there was a woman living far away in Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province, who wrote a letter to the shelter for help.

However, as the shelter staff express their willingness to adopt new measures to help, those women inevitably take a circuitous route to refusing it. Some of them won't give their address or their working unit, while some of them just resist help, being afraid that their husbands will be taken to prison as can be usual with police intervention.

Not long ago, a woman suffering from domestic violence came to the shelter and said that her husband had jabbed her in the buttocks with a scissors. For several nights she wandered the streets as she couldn't stand her husband's assaults. But she came to the shelter just to talk of her trouble. She was worried that her parents would be anxious in knowing it, and she was also afraid that her friends would laugh at her afterwards. The woman just preferred to endure it.

With regard to this phenomenon, Shandong Province began to initiate some activities hoping to alert women suffering from domestic violence and get them to stand up for their rights because nobody deserves to be abused. Some people have called for these women to shake off the traditional concept of "domestic shame should not be made public" and bravely take the strong arm of the law to protect themselves.

(China.org.cn translated by Wang Zhiyong, June 29, 2003)