Rape ‘With Different Gender’

Four months of torture sapped 60 pounds and the will to escape from a Spokane man, prosecutors say.

The reason the 170-pound victim didn’t run: battered man syndrome.

“They are just the same as a battered woman but with different gender,” said Spokane County domestic violence prosecutor Jonathan Love.

That analysis, expected to be delivered next week by a domestic violence expert in the rape trial of Theresa Spickler-Bowe, is controversial.

Many experts say it is very rare. Men who claim to have been battered often are manipulative would-be victims who cry wolf to divert attention from their behavior, experts say.

But at least one study concludes that battering occurs equally between the sexes.

Regardless of the dispute, most say the pathology of abuser and abused can traverse genders.

“We know victims of domestic violence don’t run away because the chains that bind them are in their mind,” said Carolyn Morrison, director of the YWCA Domestic Violence shelter.

According to a survey of Sacred Heart Medical Center emergency room records, eight of every 100 domestic violence victims are men.

In Coeur d’Alene, prosecutors don’t recall ever prosecuting a woman for felony rape. Each year, they deal with just a handful of misdemeanor cases involving women charged with assaulting a spouse.

Male victims, like their female counterparts, are often abused as children and have abnormal views of love, according to Herb Robinson, a Spokane mental health counselor who has studied the phenomenon.

Because of low self-esteem, they accept verbal and physical abuse.

“What I’m hearing is, ‘I would never call police on her,’ because she has him on a delicate emotional umbilical chord,”’ Robinson said.

For that reason, battered men don’t use their physical advantage, said Robinson. Their spouses have brainwashed them into believing that no other woman will have them and that no one would believe their story of abuse.

Occasionally, women have the upper hand physically. Robinson recalls a 130-pound man who was thrown to the floor by his 250-pound wife after the man complained about dog feces in the house.

Men, like women, also fear retaliation by their abusive spouse and have little idea who would help them.

In the Spokane rape case, the man’s common-law wife, Eunice Eickhoff, controlled household money, according to Love. Eickhoff told her husband that he couldn’t survive on his own.

Her sister, Theresa Spickler-Bowe, listed in court records as 5-foot-4 and 180 pounds, held a knife to his throat, threatening to kill him if he talked to the police, according to Love.

Mark Meyers, a Spokane authority on male domestic violence victims, is scheduled to testify about battered men.

Such testimony is rare. Spokane County prosecutors don’t recall prosecuting a similar case.

And Morrison, who sees just a handful of men yearly who claim to be abuse victims, worries that Spickler-Bowe’s trial will draw attention away from women’s suffering.

Some men claim to be victims but prove to be abusers, said Erika Ellingson, a Kootenai County prosecutor who handles domestic violence cases.

According to Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the O.J. Simpson case has made matters worse.

“There’s been a backlash of men who claim to be battered, especially during divorce or custody,” she said.

But a controversial study by the National Institute of Mental Health found domestic abuse occurs equally between men and women. Abuse inflicted by men, however, tends to be more destructive and more likely to be reported.

Accurate statistics are impossible to track, in part because the men are ashamed.

“It’s a humiliating thing these guys have been through,” said Dave Wall, operations manager of Union Gospel Mission, who talks to men who say they’ve been battered. “It’s a macho thing that men don’t want to admit.”

, DataTimes