I was molested as a child. There was no ominous stranger or dark alley. This abuse was perpetrated by someone I knew and by someone who knew me -- a family friend. Sadly, these events of my youth would only be the beginning of a lifetime of experiences with abuse and violence.
When I was in high school -- an ambitious young woman, very focused on my education -- a young man joked with his friends and made a bet that he could "bed the egghead." He took me out on what I thought was an innocent date with the boy that I liked, and when he got me alone, he forced himself on me. It was my 18th birthday. I don't even think he thought it was wrong. He and his friends thought it was a rite of passage, nothing big. But it altered the course of my life.
These memories hold much pain and haunted me through many phases of my life. But it is partly through these experiences that I found my calling -- to be an advocate for the many nameless, faceless and voiceless women and children who endure this abuse everyday throughout this country.
No mother, no sister, no child should ever have to suffer the physical, psychological and emotional abuse that I and so many others were forced to endure. Yet, each day there are hundreds that do. In fact, nearly one in five women in the United States has been sexually assaulted in her lifetime.
As legislators and as Members of Congress, it is our obligation to speak up for those who are being ignored in our society. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) does just that.
I spoke recently about what this Act would have done for me, had it been enacted before the time of my assault. This legislation, originally passed in 1994, strengthens the ability of the Federal Government, States, law enforcement, and service providers to combat domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. The new VAWA legislation has provisions that include protection and resources for all women, including undocumented immigrants, same-sex couples and those on tribal lands. Moreover, it would create a community that promotes education on how to prevent domestic violence.
Domestic violence is a cancer that has infected our society, crossing all ethnic, socioeconomic and party lines. Protecting those victimized by domestic violence should never be a partisan issue. Yet as with many other pieces of common-sense legislation, this Congress has pushed this bill into partisan corners. Recently, when the Violence Against Women Act was brought to a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, every single Senate Republican on that Committee voted "no." And to add insult to injury, these Senators justified their votes based on purely ideological objections that should be set aside if we are truly serious and committed to aiding victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault.
Thankfully, President Obama has recently taken action on this issue, directing federal agencies to develop policies for addressing domestic violence in the federal workforce. These policies will build on ongoing efforts of federal agencies to improve workplace safety, and outline steps employers can take to provide support and assistance to employees whose lives are affected by domestic violence.
It is time we stop playing partisan politics with the Violence Against Women Act. This is real life, with real women and real consequences. Until this Congress decides to take the safety of women, children and families seriously, our country will continue to spiral through a vicious circle of denial that will sadly only lead to more violence and abuse.
Women are waiting for this Congress to come together to pass this important legislation. Until that time, I along with my Democratic colleagues will continue to fight the good fight so that the Gwen Moores of this world no longer have to live in fear.
Follow Rep. Gwen Moore on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RepGwenMoore
What Rep. Moore said about her experience and its impact on her life rang true for me.
A male neighbor "friend" abused me three times when I was fifteen.
And after 40 years of working at it, I still don't feel fully recovered.
Some compassion for our struggles would be appreciated.
Can you provide some non-obvious things people need to be educated on to "prevent domestic violence?"
In any case, I think you may have a good case for a charitable cause here, but it doesn't sound like something I think the state needs to be involved with or where it would be beneficial for the state to do it. A private charity could manage the education and care much more efficiently than bureaucrats.
VICE-PRESIDENT BIDEN was involved with getting the original bill passed into LAW, so wouldn't HE be theee perfect spokesperson to enthusiastically and loudly call out the TeaPubs on this issue?! ...
I think I will write and ask him why he is so silent on this while on the campaign stump! A V.P. can go on every news talk show, if he CHOOSES, just by picking up the phone.
it is a shame
We have to face the truth that we've failed in our effort make the world safe for our daughters, sisters, etc. Can you honestly say that your wife is safe whenever she travels alone? When your daughter or sister goes off to college, you know that there is an excellent chance that she will be assaulted. Why do we continue to put up with this? Do we hate half of our family?
Legislation like VAMA should not be necessary. But, because men like me have not done enough to educate younger men, we've created a vacuum in which the only way our daughters can defend themselves is by literally fighting off violent males...often alone and without the help of dad or a husband or a male sibling. Thus, VAMA is really just one more weapon women are trying to use to defend themselves as we (men) watch the women in our lives fight off creeps all by themselves while we just stand by and let it happen.
In short, if you hate VAMA, then you need to do more to protect the women in your family. Otherwise, even our moms will be the victims of cowards.
Guys, try genuinely sharing power with women. Try treating them as precisely equal. Women's liberation? It liberates men.
" READY, FIRE, AIM!!"
But your point about insisting on knowing what happened after she was raped is nonsense. It's part of why she strongly supports the re-authorization of the VAWA, but the details are none of your business. There are many different circumstances surrounding sexual assault; not all women press charges - for a complex variety of reasons - and not all rapists get arrested. Those circumstances, which occurred when she was a teen, have nothing to do with whether the VAWA should be supported.
Sounds to me like you just are very curious about some extremely personal information.
Where is the quality in jail sentence.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/28/christine-mccallum-sex-with-student-sentenced_n_1385559.html
Unfortunately, the results of scientific studies do not receive media attention. Americas press is seemingly more interested in political correctness than scientific accuracy. Therefore, the public perception, and the perception of many well-intentioned domestic violence activists, is radically skewed away from the more balanced perception of social scientists.
How about addressing the perpetrators of violence, instead of the victims? Self-defense is, for the most part, a complete fallacy, a straw man...how many men fall prey to violence? How is a women supposed to defend, reliably, against a surprise attack coming from someone so much bigger, stronger and well-prepared?
And why do we have a country where this happens so damned much? Those are the questions, not you sitting there mired in your privilege telling women to take self-defense classes.
Are you suggesting that we should wait for society to find a way to prevent the creation of monsters who would commit these crimes? Wait for the legal system to insure all victims, men, women, and children, will be taken care of before a crime is ever committed? Or that if an assault has already occurred, that the memory of the attack can just be erased by knowing that the criminal has been dealt justice of a few years behind bars?
Your comment, to my viable solution that is statistically supported by the FBI and every other support groups for women's' action (http://www.aware.org/selfdefense.shtml), is the real straw man, and you are living in a straw house.
A violent criminal is a violent criminal; even a trained police officer and military soldier can be killed in a violent act (a fact I state in every women's self-defense program I teach). Would you suggest that we have no police or military to defend us just because of their human vulnerabilities to violence?
If I were you, I would not presume to tell a victim/survivor of rape, who has also effectively used self-defense against an attacker, that self-defense is a "fallacy." To question the quality of the "country where this happens so much" is shear ignorance on your part. As much as the laws try to protect victims, as well as protect someone from being wrongfully accused, it can only be as effective as the legal system will allow.
But in between all of the child molesters, date-rapists, abusive husbands/wives, environments of sexual harassment, abduction, and violent crimes, A BEST FIRST STEP WILL ALWAYS BE SELF-DEFENSE, practiced in both mental preparedness and physical practice. Statistics prove your response irresponsible, as well as supporting that IT IS PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO INSTRUCT SUBMISSION TO ASSAULT instead of someone like me who is at least trying to help people!
Comparative Spousal Violence Data From Three National Studies
Definitions Of Spousal Violence MINOR VIOLENT ACTS: SEVERE VIOLENT ACTS: 1. Threw something 1. Kicked/bit/hit with fist 2. Pushed/Grabbed/Shoved 2. Hit, tried to hit with something 3. Slapped or spanked 3. Beat up 4. Threatened with gun or knife 5. Used gun or knife
Spousal Assaults Expressed As Rate Per 1000 Couples Minor Assaults: Year Assault by Assault by husband wife 1975 98 98 1985 82 75 1992 92 94
Severe Assaults: 1975 38 47 1985 30 43 1992 19 44
Wives Report They Have been severely assaulted by husband 22 per 1000 severely assaulted husband 59 per 1000
Husbands Report They Have been severely assaulted by wives 32 per 1000 severely assaulted wives 18 per 1000
Husbands & Wives Both Report wife has been assaulted 20 per 1000 husband has been assaulted 44 per 1000
Every 9 seconds in the US a woman is assaulted or beaten.
Around the world, at least one in every three women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused during her lifetime. Most often, the abuser is a member of her own family.
Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women—more than car accidents, muggings, and rapes combined.
There are several similarities between lesbian and heterosexual partner violence. Violence appears to be as common among lesbian couples as among heterosexual couples. In lesbian relationships 1 in 5 women will be asaulted by there female partner,
[W]hen we look at injuries resulting from violence involving male and female partners, it is categorically false to imply that there are the same number of “battered” men as there are battered women. Research shows that nearly 90 percent of battering victims are women and only about ten percent are men…[T]here are very few women who stalk male partners or kill them and then their children in a cataclysmic act of familicide. The most brutal, terrorizing and continuing pattern of harmful intimate violence is carried out primarily by men.
My estimate is that there are about 100,000 battered men in the United States each year – a much smaller number than the two to four million battered women – but hardly trivial.
Despite the fact that indeed, there are battered men too, it is misogynistic to paint the entire issue of domestic violence with a broad brush and make it appears as though men are victimized by their partners as much as women. It is not a simple case of simple numbers. The media, policy makers, and the public cannot simply ignore – or reduce to a parenthetical status the outcomes of violence, which leave more than 1,400 women dead each year and millions physically and/or psychologically scarred for life.” - Richard J Gelles
Then you can say you are gender neutral