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domestic violence
The Violence Against Women Act Turns 30 Today—But Are We Still Failing Survivors?
Last week, Rebecca Cheptegei's children watched their mother burn right before their eyes. This type of horror happens in the United States, too.
Sep 13, 2024
As we commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) this September 13, the horrific death of Olympic runner Rebecca Cheptegei, who was set on fire by her ex-boyfriend just last week, reminds us that the fight against domestic violence is far from over. While domestic violence is sometimes portrayed as a scourge relegated to developing countries, it remains a significant and deeply troubling issue right here in the U.S., too, affecting individuals and families across all communities, regardless of socioeconomic status. Each day, three women die in the United States because of domestic violence; a woman is beaten by an intimate partner every 9 minutes; and 1 in 4 women will experience severe intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Yet headlines still manage to get their stories wrong and movies like the recent blockbuster It Ends with Us do a disservice to correctly capturing the experience of victims. The Violence Against Women Act, when it was passed in 1994, was a landmark step in addressing this issue. But the challenges that survivors face have changed in the last thirty years - while the paltry protections offered them have largely remained stagnant. We have a long way to go in supporting women, particularly in terms of enforcement and support for survivors.
On any given day in the United States, 13,335 requests for victim services go unmet due to a lack of funding. Of those unmet requests, 54% are for safe housing. Intimate partner violence has worsened in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, with calls to domestic violence hotlines spiking. Affordable and safe housing is one of the biggest barriers that survivors face when leaving an abuser; in fact, domestic violence is one of the main causes of homelessness for women and children - 63% of homeless women have been victims of domestic violence. In 2023, the federal government gave out $43.1 million in grants for transitional housing for domestic violence victims – but this is pennies compared with other federal grants, such as the $7.5 billion currently allotted for electric car charging stations. Having an immediate place to live is a matter of life and death for many victims. More funding, particularly for shelters and permanent affordable housing for victims and their children, is absolutely essential in 2024.
In addition to increasing funding for services, we must enforce laws that are already on the books. When a gun is present in a home where there is a domestic violence situation, a woman is five times more likely to be killed. Nearly half of the 4,484 women killed in 47 major U.S. cities from 2008-2018 died at the hands of an intimate partner. Many victims seek protection for themselves through civil restraining orders, but their abusers still have access to firearms because of poor enforcement, loopholes in licensing laws, such as the boyfriend loophole, and the proliferation of ghost guns (firearms assembled from kits without the usual serial numbers and background checks on purchasers). In my twenty years as an attorney representing victims of domestic violence, I cannot recall a single case where a defendant was forced by the courts or law enforcement to give up his guns. Shockingly, we operate on the “honor system,” which relies on abusers to voluntarily relinquish their firearms.
The result is that, this summer in Chicago, a 31 year-old mother of three was shot in the chest and murdered by her ex-boyfriend. Back in 2022, she had obtained a restraining order and requested seizure of his firearms, which the judge outright ignored. In July 2020, a California man shot and killed his wife in front of their children. The victim had an active restraining order at the time, and had informed the court that her husband had a gun and provided details of him threatening her with it in an application for a restraining order. Yet the judge accepted the man’s answer of “no” when asked whether he had any firearms. In 2017, a woman in St. Louis was shot by an ex-boyfriend four times through her apartment window. Police found an active restraining order lying on top of a microwave just a few feet from her body.
These homicide victims did everything they could under the law to protect themselves, but our system failed them. The landmark gun case decided by the Supreme Court in June, United States v. Rahimi, should have shined a spotlight on this gap – the defendant Rahimi was found in possession of firearms months after a civil restraining order was issued against him (arising from domestic abuse), which specifically banned him from having them. The Supreme Court validated the constitutionality of stripping him of his Second Amendment rights in this context. But we are not actually stripping abusers of their guns. There is a simple fix: when law enforcement serves a defendant with a protective order, and the victim has affirmed under oath that he has access to guns, these guns should be confiscated on the spot by the police.
Life is devastatingly complicated for victims with children. Many women make rational decisions to remain in abusive situations because the alternative may be worse for themselves and their children. Abusers use the court system to control their victims, by filing for custody for example, if their victim dares to leave. Under the current judicial climate, the “default” order is shared legal and physical custody, even in domestic violence situations. I see this time and again as an attorney – victim parents are not believed and are forced to comply with custody orders that perpetuate the abusive power dynamic. Over a decade ago, a study by the Department of Justice found that abusers do, in fact, use decision-making in shared parenting to regain control (by not agreeing to anything the victim wants, for example) and that they use visitation exchanges to harass and assault victims. But still we issue orders that have little regard for this evidence. Taken to the extreme, this results in outrageous situations like the one recently faced by a Colorado woman: Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins was jailed last week for refusing to comply with a custody order that provided for visitation to her ex-husband who had been criminally charged for sexually assaulting their daughters.
The myth that contact with an abusive parent is always beneficial for a child must be dispelled. Cases with two safe parents are not the same as cases with an alleged abuser. Tragically, a 2023 study found that in the last 15 years, over 900 children involved in contested custody cases (ones litigated in court) had been murdered, mostly by abusive fathers. In many of these cases, judges disbelieved or minimized reports of abuse and gave the killers the access they needed to their children.
Finally, providing family court judges with generalized “training” in domestic violence, as we do now, is not effective. Professionals without more specialized training tend to believe that women make false reports and that abusive parents pose little safety to their children. Moving forward, judges should be required to undergo more rigorous and comprehensive training in the nuances of domestic violence and the risks to victims and their children of post separation custody orders.
Just last week, Rebecca Cheptegei’s children watched their mother burn right before their eyes. This type of horror happens in the United States, too. "I was bleeding on the baby"—this is what the Chicago mother told the judge when pleading her case for an emergency restraining order prior to her murder in July. These monstrous deaths—everywhere around the world—are a vile reminder that domestic violence does not discriminate by geography, profession, or status. We must commit to combating this epidemic, strengthening laws like VAWA, and ensuring that they are backed by sufficient resources and legal mechanisms which actually work to protect victims.
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'Truly Evil' Clarence Thomas Offers Defense of Guns for Domestic Abusers
"The Thomas dissent is only further proof that he is simply a threat to America," said the father of a mass shooting victim.
Jun 21, 2024
"Thank goodness. Also, Clarence Thomas is truly evil."
That's how one progressive pollster responded Friday to the U.S. Supreme Court's 8-1 ruling in United States v. Rahimi, which upheld a law prohibiting individuals subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm.
Critics across the political spectrum called Thomas' lone dissent in the case "insane" and blasted the right-wing justice as "fucking awful," a "corrupt lunatic," and a "contemptible POS" who "continues to undermine the safety of women and disgrace the court."
Some pointed out that after Thomas was nominated to the court in 1991 by then-President George H. W. Bush, during the Senate confirmation process, Anita Hill accused the future justice of sexually harassing her. More recently, Thomas has faced demands for his recusal or even resignation because he took gifts from right-wing billionaires and declined to report them.
Journalist Matt Fuller highlighted a portion of Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion that describes various instances of Zackey Rahimi behaving violently with a weapon, including a December 2019 interaction with C.M., the mother of his child.
"C. M. attempted to leave, but Rahimi grabbed her by the wrist, dragged her back to his car, and shoved her in, causing her to strike her head against the dashboard," Roberts wrote. "When he realized that a bystander was watching the altercation, Rahimi paused to retrieve a gun from under the passenger seat. C. M. took advantage of the opportunity to escape. Rahimi fired as she fled, although it is unclear whether he was aiming at C. M. or the witness."
Amid expressions of relief that the court's other members joined Roberts' majority opinion—with several also writing concurring opinions—Moms Demand Action founder Shannon Watts said that "the Rahimi case should never have been taken up by SCOTUS. To even question whether domestic abusers should have access to guns shows just how extreme this court has become."
Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter Jaime was murdered in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, said that he was "glad to see the Supreme Court got it right" in Rahimi, compared with the 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
"This case only existed because of the horrible Bruen ruling, a decision written by Justice Thomas who was the lone dissent here," Guttenberg noted. "I am hoping that they cleaned up some of the Bruen issues with this case. The Thomas dissent is only further proof that he is simply a threat to America."
Bruen struck down New York state's restrictions on the concealed carry of firearms in public but had a broader effect on various gun control laws—which legal experts said could be further disrupted by the new decision. Slate's Mark Joseph Stern explained Friday that while "both the majority and several concurrences are attempting to narrow and refine Bruen," Thomas "says everybody else misunderstood his opinion" in the 2022 case.
Thomas wrote Friday that after Bruen, "this court's directive was clear: A firearm regulation that falls within the Second Amendment's plain text is unconstitutional unless it is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue."
However, given the majority, Stern predicted that "A LOT of lower court decisions that interpreted Bruen as a maximalist cudgel against virtually all modern gun safety measures—and struck down a bunch of laws accordingly—are about to get vacated and remanded by the Supreme Court for reconsideration in light of Rahimi."
"This is a win for the gun safety movement and another loss for the gun lobby hellbent on putting lives in danger."
Gun control advocates cheered Friday's ruling—which overturned a decision from the far-right U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit—and what it could mean for future court battles.
"Today, we're celebrating that the Supreme Court ensured that the lives and safety of millions across the country will be protected over the desires of gun rights extremists. This is a win for the gun safety movement and another loss for the gun lobby hellbent on putting lives in danger," declared Moms Demand Action executive director Angela Ferrell-Zabala.
Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who has worked on gun violence prevention since surviving a 2011 shooting, said that "this is a win for women, children, and anyone who has experienced domestic abuse," and it "would not have been possible without the work of gun safety and domestic violence advocates across the country."
People for the American Way President Svante Myrick called out the "extreme, ultraconservative 5th Circuit" and stressed that while "we're glad" the justices "made a reasonable ruling" in Rahimi, "we can't lose sight of the fact that far-right majorities on the Supreme Court and a lower court set the stage for what could have been a disaster."
"In fact, the majority of the court made clear that they may well invalidate other gun safety rules under Bruen even after today's decision," he warned. "That's why we have to keep courts in mind when we go to the polls in November."
In the November election, Democratic President Joe Biden is set to face former Republican President Donald Trump. While Trump's three appointees to the high court sided with Roberts in Rahimi, they were also part of the majorities in Bruen and Garland v. Cargill, a ruling from last week that struck down the Trump administration's bump stock ban.
Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday that "while President Biden and I stand up to the gun lobby, Donald Trump bows down. Trump has made clear he believes Americans should 'get over' gun violence, and we cannot allow him to roll back commonsense protections or appoint the next generation of Supreme Court justices."
"This case is yet another reminder that some want to take our country back to a time when women were not treated as equal to men and were not allowed to vote—and husbands could subject their wives to physical violence without it being considered a crime," Harris added. "Trump is a threat to our freedoms and our safety, and we must defeat him in November."
The U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. It offers 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
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Study Links Abortion Restrictions and Intimate Partner Homicide
"In thinking about pregnancy itself as a risk factor for homicide, it follows that the ability to prevent or end a pregnancy" could have "immediate implications" for the safety of pregnant people, said one researcher.
May 08, 2024
A new study links abortion restrictions to an increased risk that pregnant people will be murdered by their intimate partners—and since researchers examined laws that were in place before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and cleared the way for statewide abortion bans, the authors warn that the threat may be even greater than the analysis shows.
In the study released Monday, researchers at Tulane University looked at five separate abortion restrictions and compared them to the intimate partner homicide rates reported by the National Violent Death Reporting System at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For each of the abortion restrictions, all of which were in place from 2014-22, the rate of intimate partner homicide among women and girls of reproductive age rose 3.4%.
The researchers found that extrapolated across the United States, an additional 24 women were killed by their intimate partners over the time period.
The study controlled for domestic violence risk factors including income inequality and gun ownership.
Intimate partner homicide is "consistently among the leading causes of death in pregnant and postpartum people," lead author Maeve Wallace, an associate professor at Tulane, toldThe Guardian.
Because it is still relatively rare, however, the research team used girls and women of reproductive age as a proxy for victims of violence who were likely pregnant or postpartum.
"In thinking about pregnancy itself as a risk factor for homicide, it follows that the ability to prevent or end a pregnancy" could have "immediate implications" for the safety of pregnant people in states with severe abortion restrictions and bans, Wallace told The Guardian.
The newspaper reported that the research "is almost certainly an underestimate of the potential risk to pregnant and postpartum women, because intimate partner violence is generally underreported."
The study is the latest research illustrating "the horrific reality for women in America," said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
Another study published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in February found a 75% higher rate of peripartum homicide—the murder of a pregnant person or within a year of their giving birth—in states that restricted abortion access from 2018-20.
Reproductive justice advocates have pointed out that at least four states with abortion bans in place also ban divorce for married people who are pregnant.
"An abusive partner oftentimes views pregnancy as a loss of control, that their victim will now not be solely dedicated to them but will have somebody else that diverts their attention away from the abusive partner," Crystal Justice, chief external affairs officer at the National Domestic Violence Hotline, told The 19th last month after the Arizona Supreme Court reinstated an 1864 abortion ban, which has since been repealed by state lawmakers but still could be in effect for part of this year.
"Not only is the state now saying with this harmful and antiquated law that you must stay pregnant against your will," Justice said, but "during that pregnancy, the state is not going to let you legally divorce your abusive partner. I can't think of anything more outrageous or cruel."
The U.S. National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), by texting "START" to 88788, or through chat at thehotline.org. It offers 24/7, free, and confidential support. DomesticShelters.org has a list of global and national resources.
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