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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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US-Trained Military in Uganda Targets Oil Pipeline Protesters
"The arrest of climate activists against EACOP is a blatant move to silence crucial advocates for change," said Fridays for Future Uganda.
Aug 26, 2024
Police and soldiers from Uganda's U.S.-trained army cracked down on demonstrators at two Monday protests against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, continuing the globally condemned oppression of EACOP opponents.
In the capital city of Kampala, where protesters tried to march on Parliament and the Chinese Embassy "there are 21 people arrested, they included 19 males and two females," defense attorney Samuel Wanda toldAgence France-Presse. They were taken to the city's central police station and charging details were not yet available. Eight protesters would be directly impacted by the project.
As AFP noted, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation has an 8% stake in EACOP, which is set to carry crude nearly 900 miles from Uganda's Lake Albert oilfields to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. Ugandan and Tanzanian state-owned companies each have a 15% stake, and the remaining 62% is controlled by the France-based multinational TotalEnergies.
"The arrest of Stop EACOP activists in Kampala today is an attack on democracy and the right to protest," said climate campaigner and environmental consultant Ashley Kitisya on social media. "We condemn this crackdown and call for the immediate release of all detained activists. Peaceful voices demanding justice must not be silenced. #StopEACOP."
Fridays for Future Uganda declared that "the arrest of climate activists against EACOP is a blatant move to silence crucial advocates for change."
"Many affected are misled and unaware of the true risks," the youth-led group added. "We must oppose this injustice and demand EACOP’s immediate halt to protect people and the environment."
Hundreds of peaceful pipeline opponents—including breastfeeding mothers—also gathered in Hoima City, according to the Kampala-based Monitor. They were at a Kitara Secondary School (SS) and planned to demonstrate at regional EACOP offices but "were surrounded by heavily armed police" and Uganda Peoples' Defence Forces (UPDF) soldiers "who foiled the protest."
As the outlet noted last year, declassified U.S. State Department data shows that from 2019-21, Uganda received $8.5 million in military training assistance from the United States, and from 2012-16, the African country got grants for equipment worth $21.9 million .
On Monday, Christopher Opio told Hoima Resident City Commissioner Badru Mugabi that the project affected persons (PAPs) he represents had not received a government response to an April petition "so, we decided to say we can again put our concerns in writing. Today, we were taking our petition to the offices of EACOP, and Petroleum Authority of Uganda (PAU) peacefully."
As the Monitor detailed:
Mugabi responded saying: "If you have a court case and the court has not heard you, please come to our offices. We shall put these courts to order, or we shall appeal to their supervisors. But walking to these offices will not change the status quo legally."
Later, Mugabi selected a few PAPs' representatives and escorted them to deliver their petition to the offices of EACOP and PAU while the rest of the aggrieved locals were left at Kitara SS under tight security.
In a series of social media posts, the StopEACOP campaign called out law enforcement for blocking the peaceful protest in Hoima, highlighting the threats and intimidation faced by PAPs and local climate activists.
Despite the oppression in Uganda, protests are planned in Tanzania on Thursday, according to the global climate organization 350.org.
"The EACOP project threatens local communities, water resources, biodiversity, and efforts to curb climate change while providing little to benefit ordinary Ugandan and Tanzanian people," the group said Monday. "Already, tens of thousands of people along the pipeline's route and near its associated oil drilling sites have been forcibly displaced, losing their land, livelihoods, and traditional ways of life. Many have been relocated to inadequate homes on infertile land, making it impossible to grow crops or sustain their families. Others have received inadequate compensation or none at all, leaving them unable to rebuild their lives."
"Additionally, community members and activists face escalating threats, including violence, intimidation, arrests, harassment, and even abductions for resisting the project," 350 added. "Impacted communities and land, human rights, and environmental defenders in the project's host countries are taking to the streets to demand an end to EACOP and justice for the harm that has already been caused."
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Africa Pipeline Foes Demand Accountability After Brutal Detention of Ugandan Activist
"Speaking up for frontline communities should never lead to this," the #StopEACOP movement said following the release of Stephen Kwikiriza, who was held for a week for opposing the TotalEnergies/CNOOC-led project.
Jun 10, 2024
Opponents of a highly controversial oil pipeline under construction in East Africa on Monday demanded an investigation into the Ugandan army's treatment of an environmental activist who was hospitalized after allegedly being severely beaten while he was detained last week.
Stephen Kwikiriza, an activist with the Kampala-based Environmental Governance Institute (EGI), was found dumped on the side of a highway about five hours' drive from the Ugandan capital Sunday night following a weeklong detention by the country's army.
"Unfortunately, he is in poor condition after enduring severe beatings, mistreatment, and abuse throughout the week," EGI said, according toAl Jazeera. "Doctors are conducting various examinations."
Like other climate and environmental campaigners in the movement to stop the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), Kwikiriza is believed to have been targeted for his activism against the project, which is being built by the French fossil fuel giant TotalEnergies in partnership with the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), the Uganda National Oil Company, and others.
The Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said Kwikiriza was apparently abducted by Ugandan army officers in civilian clothes in what the group called a "particularly worrying escalation of repression."
FIDH said 11 activists have been "kidnapped, arbitrarily arrested, detained, or subjected to different forms of harassment by the Ugandan authorities between May 27 and June 5, 2024," part of what critics call a government campaign targeting StopEACOP campaigners that goes back years.
"Speaking up for frontline communities should never lead to this," the StopEACOP movement
said on social media following Kwikiriza's release. "We urge human rights organizations to hold Ugandan authorities accountable and ensure human rights and environmental defenders can work safely."
"We also ask TotalEnergies and CNOOC to investigate the injustices done in their names as alleged," the coalition added. "You can still make profits without harming communities or enabling human rights violations."
A senior Ugandan military official told Agence France-Presse that Kwikiriza "was taken into custody for questioning regarding his illegal activities, including mobilizing fellow activists to oppose the oil pipeline."
In a statement to
Reuters, TotalEnergies said Monday that the company "does not tolerate any threat or attack against those who peacefully defend and promote human rights."
If completed, the $3.5 billion, nearly 900-mile EACOP project is expected to transport up to 230,000 barrels of crude oil per day from fields in the Lake Albert region of western Uganda through the world's longest electrically heated pipeline to the Tanzanian port city of Tanga on the Indian Ocean.
A July 2023 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) detailed how EACOP has devastated the lives and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people in its path while exacerbating the climate emergency.
"The Ugandan government needs to end its harassment of opponents of oil development in the country, such as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project, which has already devastated thousands of people's livelihoods in Uganda and, if completed, will displace thousands of people and contribute to the global climate crisis," HRW senior environmental rights advocate Myrto Tilianaki said in a statement issued during Kwikiriza's detention.
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