Critics lash out at aggressive domestic violence video that may have opposite effect of that intended

An internet video launched by an anti-domestic violence group has drawn international criticism for what many believe actually encourages rather than prevents the crime.

At hitthebitch.dk, viewers are instructed to play a video ‘game’, where they play the partner to a woman who has just been out for a night on the town.

In the video, the woman tells how much fun she had at a club and that she danced with a man. On the right side of the screen is the partner’s hand, which can be directed to smack the woman after this admission.

At the top of the screen is an LED meter that measures the intensity of the violence against the video’s woman, ranging from ‘pussy’ at the lowest end to ‘gangsta’ at the highest.

As the user continues to strike the woman, she begins to show bruises. And when enough violence has been used to reach ‘gangsta’, she eventually falls to the floor sobbing, at which point the screen shows the words ‘100% IDIOT’.

The group behind the campaign, The NGO for Children exposed to Violence at Home, defended the project, arguing that more aggressive means were needed to reach young men these days.

‘We have to speak the young people’s language,’ Kirsten R. Hermandsen, the organisation’s spokeswoman, told TV2 News. ‘The most important thing for us is that the young men who visit the website talk to their friends about it and spread the word.’

But the campaign, begun on Monday, is being strongly criticised both at home and abroad. Many believe young men are more likely to find the video entertaining and that it will instead encourage them to hit their partners.

American liberal news website The Huffington Post slammed the advert.

‘This seems like the end result of some people sitting around a table trying to figure out how to make domestic violence edgy and attention-grabbing,’ stated the website. ‘Are we really so inured to the standard imagery of wide-eyed kids cowering in the background or the bruised faces of women?’

In its article, The Huffington Post wondered ‘what those behind the advert were thinking’.

International media asked the same question this past summer, when tourist organisation VisitDenmark released a Youtube video featuring a fictional Danish woman supposedly looking for her baby’s father.