Last week the U.S. Congress approved legislation that gives more women legal recourse and better services against instances of abuse. President Obama is to sign the bill into law Thursday. ABUSE IS A dirty word. People are ashamed to admit they have been abused, as if they are somehow guilty. Less than 20 percent of battered women seek medical treatment for their injuries, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. It’s estimated about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes occur every year.
The Violence Against Women Act was first enacted in 1994, and was reauthorized in 2000 and again in 2005. Current authorization was left to expire in 2011. For more than a year, Congress has stalled on its re-enactment primarily because it has been broadened to include Native American women living on reservations, immigrant women and gays and lesbians.
Kansas Representatives Lynn Jenkins and Kevin Yoder voted for the Act’s passage, while Tim Huels-kamp and Mike Pompeo voted against it. U.S. Senator Pat Roberts was against it, while Jerry Moran voted aye.
The purpose of the Act is to help provide services for victims of abuse as well as increase awareness about domestic violence and how it tears at the country’s social fabric.
Designed by nature, women are the weaker sex and thus more likely to be victims of physical violence. We cannot hold our own. But we are victims only as long as our country does not protect that difference.
The most effective recourse women have against instances of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking, is through the courts and social services that help abused women and children get back on track.
As a country we need to continue to raise awareness about how devastating to the human psyche abuse is. Children and youth who witness family violence are emotionally damaged, and paradoxically, are more likely to replicate the behavior, which is learned, in their adult lives. Women who experience physical abuse as children are at a greater risk of victimization as adults, and men have a far greater likelihood of perpetrating abuse.
Young women, low-income women and some minorities are disproportionately victims of domestic violence and rape. The U.S. Justice Department estimates one in five women will experience rape or attempted rape during their college years, and that less than 5 percent of these rapes will be reported.
Victims of abuse, no surprise, tend to want to drop out of life, robbing the rest of us of their gifts. As a country we lose by lost productivity and connectivity.
Passage of the Act keeps the commitment to women that though we may be weaker, we are no less valuable and that violence against us is a crime against all mankind.
— Susan Lynn
Violence against women affects an entire community
