January 14 2015

Domestic Violence

By: ROZZ Editorial

"What will people say?", "People will think I'm weak or stupid for letting him do this to me?", "I don't want my children to know what their father has done."

Ray Rice and wife Janay Palmer

This is just one example of the many instances of domestic abuse against women. All too often the perpetrators of domestic violence are not charged because women are too scared and ashamed to even report the incident. Worse yet, many women accept the abuse either because they think it is the man's way of showing that he "loves" her or because he provides a home for her and her children.

Police Officers are restricted by the law but the law needs to change to empower police to go ahead with prosecution even when the female partner refuses to testify against the abusive spouse/partner.

GET OUT BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!
A heated conversation between partners can quite quickly turn into a crime because it is often driven by passion. Notice the signs and remove yourself from the situation before it escalates. In many cases, women who lose their lives at the hands of a partner have been in that situation for a long time and have been abused more than once.

Victims of domestic abuse need a safe haven, be it someone to talk to who won't judge them and/or a new home (and sometimes financial assistance) where they can feel safe and start to rebuild their lives without threat to themselves or their children.

US statistics
Below are some of the stats from 2012 which highlight the prevalence of Domestic abuse in the US. The study covers homicides involving one female murder victim and one male offender, and uses data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Report. [Source:http://www.vpc.org/studies/wmmw2014.pdf]

For homicides in which the victim to offender relationship could be identified, 93 percent of female victims (1,487 out of 1,594) were murdered by a male they knew.

Thirteen times as many females were murdered by a male they knew (1,487 victims) than were killed by male strangers (107 victims).

For victims who knew their offenders, 62 percent (924) of female homicide victims were wives or intimate acquaintances of their killers.

There were 267 women shot and killed by either their husband or intimate acquaintance during the course of an argument.

Below are the 10 states with the highest rate of females murdered by males in single victim/single offender incidents in 2012:

1 Alaska
2 South Carolina
3 Oklahoma
4 Louisiana
5 Mississippi
6 Nevada
7 Missouri
8 Arizona
9 Georgia
10 Tennessee

To view the full report, visit www.vpc.org/studies/wmmw2014.pdf.

If you have been physically or emotionally abused please speak to someone you are close to and can trust.
Report all incidents of physical violence to the police. This will provide a record against the perpetrator and will prove useful should you need a restraining/protection order issued.
Get yourself and your children to a safe location.
Don't blame yourself! You are not responsible for violence against you.