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Dumb advice from Dr. Phil..
There is a guy on his show who has been abused by his wife for like 5 years - he took a second tour in Iraq to get away from her at some point - an hour before he left she told him she wished he would get killed on the tour. They have two young kids.
She has slapped, kicked, punched him in head, to point he has needed stitches. She has threatened to beat their daughter black and blue and even threatened her daughter that she was going to beat the hell out of her (daughter is 2). She has also used a belt on her daughter.
She has even beaten her mother in law so her mother in law was left with black eyes.
Apparently Dr. Phil is "trying" to "expose" the fact men who are abused have fewer resources, funding, and recognition of their situations. For most of the show he seemed fairly reasonable about things.
This is what Dr. Phil tells him at end of show (bolded parts my emphasis) as copied from his site for today's show:
Dr. Phil addresses Quinn: ?It is premature for you to divorce her at this point. You need to give her and all of my team a chance to find out who this woman really is.? He says Quinn?s job in the meantime is to protect his children. ?Do not, one time, for one minute, under any circumstances, leave those children unsupervised with her. Do not do it, unless and until the professionals who are going to become involved say she is safe to be around those children.?
?I want to remove myself from her. Whether she gets the help or not, there?s nothing that?s going to take away the mental scars that I have and physical scars on my body,? Quinn says.?It?s going to take you longer to do what you?re saying you want to do than it?s going to take for us to turn her in a significant way. Just cool your jets. Your feelings may change, and your children deserve the right for their parents to make every effort to try to work this out in an amicable way. You?ve got the rest of your life to get a divorce. Give me 45 days to make a change,? Dr. Phil says.
Quinn agrees to Dr. Phil?s request.
Other gems:
?You can divorce her, you certainly can, but her children can?t,? Dr. Phil tells Quinn. ?That means that you need to hope to find a way to fix this situation because your children are going to grow up in her shadow, exposed to who and what she is, unless she crosses the line to the point that you terminate her parental rights, and then they grow up without a mother.?
Dude, you don't undo the impact of 5 years of abuse in 45 days. And you don't tell the abused victim to find a way to fix the situation and put the abuser's rights over his AND shift the blame on to him for it for how his children have been/will be affected if he tries to protect himself and those kids.
Re: Dumb advice from Dr. Phil..
My biggest gripe is Quinn said he wants away from her and nothing will undo his scars....and Dr. Phil is like, meh, let me do my thing as I have already planned an update show (not that he says that!).
I don't recall.....has he ever given this same advice to a woman? I'm thinking no.....
"Gimme 45 days and I'll have your physically abusive husband all perfect!"
This is another reason I think Dr. Phil is King of the Whack-a-doodles.
I never watch him, but I can't imagine he would ever give that advice to a woman. Which brings us to the whole point of the episode right? That male DV victims are treated differently than female DV victims and have a lot fewer resources.
I knew someone that was being abused by his live in girlfriend. When he finally contacted the police, he was the one that got arrested. To make matters worse, he was disabled and had to use a wheelchair. The charges against him were dropped and they finally broke up at that point. She got custody of the kid and when he was 2 the dad finally got custody after the ex was found guilty of abusing the kid.
Believe me, I agree with you! I rarely watch the show and usually I am working when it is on (home sick today), but when I do it is generally to see what new whacky "advice" he has!
What a horrible situation.
Wow. I wasn't opening this thread because I was thinking, "well, he always gives p*ss poor advice, so what's new?". But really? Seriously? He just proved to the world that male victims of domestic violence are treated differently. And then he perpetuated it by trying to pretend 45 days of his wacky snake oil therapy will turn this abusive woman in to a meek little housewife.
I hate that there's a large portion of people watching this bull every day.
Even if she miraculously changes, the damage is done. I think it would be terrible to tell someone that you hope they died.
I hope that while she is gone for 45 days, he takes the kids, changes their names and moves away.
Exactly!
Even though I expect him to give terrible advice, I just could not believe he encouraged the abused victim to STAY with this woman after hearing all the horrible things she had done.
She had also cheated on him at least twice, to add to all the other horrible physical, emotional and verbal violence.
Oh, but she was a victim of her OWN childhood of course...so we had to focus on her before her own victim.
OK so I'm new...
I also detest Dr. Phil. However, to play devil's advocate, I wonder if he actually was trying to get the point across that those kids have a high probability of getting stuck with the abusive mother, alone, if dad left? I have seen hundreds of cases where courts put the kids with the mom as the default position until a case was either meticulously proven or there was some egregious, culminating criminal perpetration.
But really, Dr. Phil sucks.