October is a busy month. Baseball play-offs. NFL season in full swing. College football has reached the conference parts of the schedules. Professional hockey and basketball seasons start.
But there are two big “awareness” issues in October. National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Domestic Violence Awareness Month. If you can, take a few seconds each day this month and please visit The Breast Cancer Site and click the button to help provide mammograms. (The Breast Cancer Site is a companion to The Hunger Site and others). In this way you can do some small levels of helping others.
This diary however, is about Domestic Violence. I’m not sure when and how this issue first entered my consciousness but it has been there for some years. I think it may have been when I watched a TV movie, The Tracy Thurman Story, about a woman in Torrington, CT who had been seriously injured when attacked by her ex-husband and sued the town of Torrington and the police department for their failures in protecting her, even though she had the restraining orders.
Today’s Hartford Courant has an in-depth article on how the various courts in Connecticut handle Domestic Violence.
Despite an increasing family violence caseload statewide, there remains a wide disparity in the way state courts handle these cases, from pushing defendants to go through intense programs under the threat of jail to going little beyond the standard prosecution.
The Tracey Thurman Law of 1986 made arrests mandatory in domestic violence cases, but the landmark legislation didn’t mandate the way courts should handle the resulting cases. Today, while strides have been made with special family violence dockets in nine of the 20 lower-level courthouses, there is little uniformity in approaches and outcomes.
Today’s Louisville Courier-Journal took a different tack by highlighting:
Teetering in heels, Sgt. Bryan Byrne of the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department made his way along the new Indian Creek Trail at the Harrison County YMCA for Saturday’s “Going the Distance to Prevent Domestic Violence” walk.
“It was painful,” he said. “I have a whole new respect (for women).”
The inaugural walk was sponsored by the Harrison County Domestic Violence/Sexual Assault Coordinating Council and the YMCA, in conjunction with their annual Limeberry Lumberjack Run. Sixteen men and boys donned shiny red or hot pink pumps to raise awareness of domestic violence.
Why should Domestic Violence be a concern to all of us? Because we are supposed to be caring humans should be an easy answer but in case it is not enough, studies have been able to connect Domestic Violence to Child Abuse. Both are part of a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence.
As Attaturk, thebagofhealthandpolitics, and others around the web have pointed out as well, in at least eight states, domestic violence victims are considered to have a “pre-existing condition” for insurance purposes. Combined with the thinking that pregnancy is a pre-existing condition, it does appear that Watertiger was correct in her belief that being a woman is a pre-existing condition for the insurance moguls.
We really should be better than all of this leads me to believe we are as a society. Shouldn’t we?
And because I can:
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Thanks dak. This means a lot, a whole lot.
There are so many issues facing us each day, but this one resonates with me for some reason.
Dakine, every woman thanks you .
Maybe in another hundred years we’ll have equal justice under the law.
thank you dakine01. i volunteered (with a local dv shelter) as a safe home for a while when i lived in tx. it was heart-rending and after a while i just couldn’t do it anymore.
something only sorta related, but might be of interest, is the chart in paul rosenberg’s post at OL from a couple of weeks ago: Hissy Fits In Historical Context–Health Care, Racism & The Authoritarian Divide-Part 2
A good start would be equal pay so that women can leave the abuser.
Thank you Dakine. I’d like to add that domestic violence is found in dating relationships, too. Some studies suggest that one in five teenage girls will experience violence–either physical or sexual– in a relationship. And rates of domestic violence in same-gender relationships appear to be similar to rates of violence against heterosexual women.
The National Domestic Violence Hotline has this to say about its services
Alot of abusers do not allow their victims to work.
My recent Seminal diary would make good companion reading to this post.
I love your name. And, yes, I am old enough to remember the product. You gave me a laugh.
And welcome to the Lake. I think this is the first time I have seen you.
Used to be a huge problem in military areas. Lots of talk about reform – wonder if it truly happened.
great post, dakine.
By now a lot of you might have seen the “wedding dance” parody on The Office. But the original JK’s wedding dance youtube hit asked people to please donate to preventing domestic violence.
A great twist of irony given that the song everyone danced to was “Forever” by girlfriend rougherupper Chris Brown.
Persons of ALL ages, genders, and gender preferences can be victims of domestic violence. Don’t presume the victim to be female.
Thanks dakine
This is true but the reality is, even in the one area where there are significant numbers of male victims, death, it is still two to one female to the male victims with male victims being 33% of all deceased victims of domestic violence.
I used the video above tongue in cheek, but I’d guess of those 33% where the male is the victim, it would have a significant percentage of those having the female victim of beatings get just fed up enough and believe that the only way she can escape is via killing her abuser, which then makes the perpetrator of the abuse, now show as a victim of domestic violence.
Yes, men can be victims of women without this but it is a far smaller percentage of the overall problem.
Men can also be victims of their male partners and women of their female partners, tho, at rates quite similar to the rate of women harmed in heterosexual relationships. And it’s important that shelters, law enforcement, the justice system and families realize this.
dakine is correct in her acknowledgment that women are more often the victims of domestic violence and that the cases of male victims are overwhelmingly smaller. (Look at the homicides for women by intimate partners. They account for 1/3 of all victims whereas the same circumstances for male victims only account for a mere five percent.) I bring this up not to diminish the experience of the men who have been unfortunate enough to be in this situation, but to illustrate how large the impact is upon women. You are right, however, to bring up the point that these situations can occur in non-heterosexual relationships as well, though, and that the community needs to be aware of it.
I can tell you as a victim of DV who has attended many years of support groups that I have seen awareness of this issue growing in the dv agencies and sat alongside these victims in groups so the awareness is burgeoning.