Expanded DV Protections for Gay Couples

The US Justice Department has directed federal prosecutors to enforce the provisions of the Violence Against Women Act with gay and lesbian couples as well.

Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said that the office’s conclusion had been sent as guidance to federal prosecutors around the country.

Ms. Schmaler said she could not answer questions about the context of the request because it was a matter of internal deliberations.

But Brian Moulton, the chief legislative counsel of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and lesbian advocacy group, said his group asked the Obama transition team after the 2008 election to have the office “clarify” for prosecutors that the Violence Against Women Act covers violence that might arise in same-sex relationships.

“It’s a step towards equality and recognizing that our relationships exist and are subject to the same sorts of issues that face other committed couples,” Mr. Moulton said. “Unfortunately, sometimes that is domestic violence and other issues that need to be dealt with through the criminal justice system.”

Congress first passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994. Among other things, its provisions made it a federal crime to cross state lines with the intent of committing domestic violence, stalking, or violating a protection order. Lawmakers have since expanded the act several times.

The federal government’s treatment of gay and lesbian relationships has been a matter of sharp dispute against the backdrop of efforts to legalize same-sex marriage.

A 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act, requires the federal government to define legal terms like “marriage” and “spouse” as categories that can exist only with a union between one man and one woman.

But Mr. Barron argued in the memorandum that although the Violence Against Women Act defines possible victims as including the “spouse” of the abuser, the act also includes terms not covered by the Defense of Marriage Act, like “dating partner” and “intimate partner.”

Moreover, he noted, the text of the act uses gender-neutral language, like saying “another person” instead of “a woman.” He cited such language as proof that Congress intended the protections to cover same-sex couples as well as heterosexual ones.

Domestic violence in same-gender relationships is a serious issue that occurs at approximately the same rates as violence in opposite-gender relationships. Additional barriers exist for GLBT individuals, however, because they may fear homophobia from law enforcement, advocates, or even other residents of the shelter if they try to seek help. Regardless of your gender identity or sexual orientation, no one deserves to be abused. GLBTQQI survivors in the Atlanta area can call the United 4 Safety helpline at 404-200-5957 or our 24-hotline at 404-688-9436. We will help you create a plan that takes into account your unique needs and barriers and helps you create a new life of safety for yourself.

Where Domestic Violence Comes From

Today in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd paints a disturbing picture of the culture that produced George Huguely V, the Virginia lacrosse player who has been charged with murdering his girlfriend Yeardley Love.

It was set up like a fantasy football league draft. The height, weight and performance statistics of the draftees were offered to decide who would make the cut and who would emerge as the No. 1 pick.

But the players in this predatory game were not famous N.F.L. stars. They were unwitting girls about to start high school.

A group of soon-to-be freshmen boys at Landon, an elite private grade school and high school for boys in the wealthy Washington suburb of Montgomery County, Md., was drafting local girls.

One team was called “The Southside Slampigs,” and one boy dubbed his team with crude street slang for drug-addicted prostitutes.

The young woman who was the “top pick” was described by one of the boys in a team profile he put up online as “sweet, outgoing, friendly, willing to get down and dirty and [expletive] party. Coming in at 90 pounds, 5’2 and a bra size 34d.” She would be a special asset to the team, he noted, because her mother “is quite the cougar herself.”

Before they got caught last summer, the boys had planned an “opening day party,” complete with T-shirts, where the mission was to invite the drafted girls and, unbeknownst to them, score points by trying to rack up as many sexual encounters with the young women as possible.

“They evidently got points for first, second and third base,” said one outraged father of a drafted girl. “They were going to have parties and tally up the points, and money was going to be exchanged at the end of the season.” He said that the boys would also have earned points for “schmoozing with the parents.”

His daughter, he said, “was very upset about it. She thought these guys were her friends. This is the way we teach boys to treat women, young ladies? You have enough to worry about as a 14- or 15-year-old girl without having to worry about guys who are doing it as sport.”

Another parent was equally appalled: “I think the girls felt like they were getting targeted, that this was some big game. Talk about using people. It doesn’t get much worse than that.”

This would have been the perfect time for an intervention. If the school had taken this predatory behavior toward women seriously enough and the boys had seen a meaningful consequence for their actions, this could have been a turning point. Men can be shown how their behavior negatively impacts the women in their life, and they can be persuaded to change. However, some of the parents don't think the boys were sufficiently punished. By not punishing young men when these mindsets and behaviors are discovered, we are telling them that punishment is not warranted and that what they did wasn't all that bad.

Maybe, to some, this wasn't all that bad. But this is just the early stage of a man seeing women only as sexual objects to be obtained, not as partners with feelings of their own. If a young man continues down this road of not seeing women as full people, something much worse could happen.

A gunman who shot and killed his wife and three other women at a South Florida restaurant before committing suicide was the half-brother of former baseball star Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez.

Police said the shooter bypassed at least two men when he fired at the women inside. Three women were hospitalized in critical condition, Hialeah police Detective Eddie Rodriguez said.

"He went straight for the women," Rodriguez said.

Four women are now dead, and three others are injured in what is only the most recent in our nation's history of gender-motivated mass murders.

This time it was Gerardo Regalado, half-brother of former baseball star Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez, and the crime took place in South Florida. Last year it was George Sodini in Collier County, PA, who opened fire in an all-female aerobics class in an act of misguided revenge for a sexually frustrated existence. Before that, it was Cho Seung-Hui, the mentally unstable stalker of women at Virginia Tech, who ended up being responsible for the worst school shooting in U.S. history. In 2006, it was the school shootings in Amish country and in Colorado’s Platte Canyon. And in 1998, it was the murder of four elementary school girls and their female teacher in Jonesboro, AR.

I am sick to death that I have to keep writing some version of this same article or blog post on loop. But I have to, because in all of these cases, gender-based violence lies at the heart of these crimes — and leaving this motivating factor uninvestigated not only deprives the public of the full, accurate picture of the events at hand, but leave us without the analysis and context needed to understand the violence, recognize warning signs, and take steps to prevent similar massacres in the future.

Those steps are exactly what parents of the girls targeted by the Landon boys were advocating. They wanted the predatory mindset punished early. They took it seriously because they saw the negative impact on their daughters. The family and friends of the women murdered and injured in Florida will be taking the punishment of predatory behavior seriously, because they have also seen the negative impact. We take it seriously, because we see its impact every day. Won't you take it seriously, too?

You Are Not A Failure

Marketing a domestic violence agency is hard because people don't want to be depressed all of the time. People want to give their time and their donations to a cause that is hopeful. They want to make things better. They want to see success.

But "success" and "failure" are subjective. Is a woman a failure if she returns to an abusive partner? Even when so many of the cards are stacked against her?

We'll be honest. It's tempting to gloss things over. It's tempting to make it sound easy to rebuild your life in 90 days in a strange place that you share with many other families. If we make it sound easy, our program looks successful. And if our program looks successful, you'll give us more money that we can use to help more women. But if we do lie, if we do make it seem easy, what happens when it isn't?

Even if we raise $10,000 more dollars that we can use to pay rent, or utilities, or childcare costs for survivors of domestic violence, how does it feel to them when everyone assumes it was easy for them to pick up and start over? And how does it feel when you're at day 75 in your 90-day stay and it hasn't been easy, and you haven't found a job, and people are wondering what is wrong with you that you're still living with your children in a shelter? How do we convince those with power that we need more funding for childcare subsidies, more affordable housing, second chances at jobs, second chances at bank accounts, and work that pays a living wage when we've told them that starting over is a snap?

So we don't lie. But we also can't spend all of our time laying out the myriad of ways that women are told every day that they can't make it on their own. It's not uplifting to acknowledge the hundreds of times each day a battered woman staying in a shelter probably thinks about going back to her partner if that partner can put food on the table for her children. When her food stamp application is rejected, when the doctor won't take Medicaid, when her phone gets cut off, when the judge won't grant her restraining order, when she gets turned down for the 92nd job, when her mom blames her for her marriage falling apart, when it's raining while she's waiting for the bus, when her pastor says God hates divorce, when her baby just won't stop crying, when her children want to see their dad, and when the bruises heal and she can almost forget for a moment what it was really like at home, she thinks about going back. For most people, going back doesn't count as a success.

If she gives in, does that make all of us failures? No. A thousand times no. Because the next time she leaves, she knows that WRC will welcome her back, no questions asked. And the next time she leaves, she knows what she is facing. She knows how hard it will be and she knows that all of that hardship is better than what she is leaving. She is running from something, but this time she knows where she is running to.

So we're going to tell you about it. We're going to walk that tightrope between uplifting and depressing with honesty and integrity. Because if we make it seem easy, it makes it harder for her. So we're willing to do the hard work. We're willing to raise money for a cause that can sometimes seem hopeless. We're willing to look foundation representatives in the eye and say, yes, sometimes the women go back. And we won't keep stats about a "95% success rate!" because we refuse to call any women failures. We'll do this hard work so that it's a little easier for her. We'll do this hard work so that, when she makes it, she gets the applause that she deserves.

Pregnancy and Abuse

When thinking about teen pregnancy, most people think about preventing it. That debate usually centers on sexual education and what a sex ed curriculum should contain. Not long ago, the media took notice of some teenage girls who actually wanted to be pregnant. But very rarely do we hear about teenage boys who want to get their girlfriends pregnant, with or without their consent.

Leyla W. couldn't figure out where her birth control pills kept going. One day a few tablets would be missing; the next, the whole container. Her then-boyfriend shrugged and said he hadn’t seen them. She believed him—until she found them in his drawer. When she confronted him, he hit her. "That was his way of shutting me up," says Leyla, who is in her mid-20s and living in Northern California. (For her safety, Leyla wishes to withhold her last name and hometown.) He also raped her and, most days, left her locked in a bedroom with a bit of food and water while he went to work. (A roommate took pity and let her out until he came home.) Thanks to the missed pills, she got pregnant twice, the second time deciding against abortion.

Leyla's story turns a modern fable on its head: that of the woman—call her the femme fertile—who conspires to get pregnant, perhaps by "forgetting" to take her birth control pills, as a way to “trap a man” and force marriage—or at least keep him in her life. In reality, experts researchers on dating violence and unintended pregnancy say, it’s Leyla's version of that story is all too common. Two new studies have quantified what advocates for young women’s health have observed for years: the striking frequency with which it is in fact young men who try to force their partners to get pregnant. Their goal: not to settle down as family men but rather to exert what is perhaps the most intimate, and lasting, form of control. (“Control” may also include attempts to force both pregnancy and abortion, even in the same relationship.) Together with earlier small-scale studies and reports by those in the field, the new figures help fill out the picture of a long-known, but under-addressed, phenomenon now referred to as "reproductive coercion,” in which abusive partners subject young women already at risk of violence to the additional health risks of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. The new data confirm that we must expand not only our assumptions about who’s forcing whom to get pregnant but also our understanding of the meaning and causes of “unwanted” pregnancy. “If we are serious about stopping unplanned pregnancy in this country, we simply must address the sexual violence and reproductive control that often cause it,” says Esta Soler, president of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, which has been a leading advocate on the issue.

A new study has found that among 71 women aged 18-49 with a history of intimate partner violence, 74 percent reported having experienced some form of reproductive control, including forced unprotected intercourse, failure to withdraw as promised or sabotaging of condoms. Women who became pregnant were coerced to proceed in accordance with the wishes of their partners, who in some cases threatened to kill them if they had an abortion. Study authors Ann Moore, Lori Frohwirth and Elizabeth Miller, MD, recommend that service providers in women’s health clinics ask questions designed to identify women who may be experiencing reproductive coercion, and should be aware that some women may need birth control (such as IUDs) that can be hidden from partners.

Though this article focuses on teens, the issue isn't limited to one age group. Many adult women who come to us for services report similar tactics being used against them, and unplanned pregnancy has profound consequences for their lives too. It is a lot easier to flee an abusive home with one child than with three. It is a lot easier to find a job that supports three people than five. And it is a lot easier to stay completely away from someone if you don't have children linking you together forever. Pregnancy also increases the intensity of family violence and makes just being in the relationship even more dangerous. Teen or adult, if you suspect that your partner is sabotaging your birth control or is trying to get you pregnant against your wishes, please call us at 404-370-7670. We'd like to help before things get worse.

If you are outside the metro Atlanta area and need help, call the GA statewide hotline at 1-800-33-HAVEN (42836). Elsewhere in the US, you can call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233).

Campaign in England Targets Abusive Attitudes

A new education campaign in Wales is taking on the same challenge as this blog: trying to help the public connect every day behaviors that are demeaning to or dismissive of women to a culture that perpetuates violence against those women.

A TV advert shows "abusive" behaviour towards a woman, including being leered at and enduring sexist comments.

Social Justice Minister Carl Sargeant said while that could seem harmless to men, women can feel threatened.

Welsh Women's Aid said tackling "widespread social attitudes" was crucial.

The advert shows a gang of men in a van sounding their horn and gesturing at the woman in the street, a male office colleague ogling her, and two strangers in a bar making suggestive remarks as she passes.

The video ends with her being followed down a dark street by another man, with the headline One Step Too Far.

It then asks: "To you it's nothing, but it all adds up. Where does 'harmless' end and 'abusive' begin?"

The Welsh Assembly Government said the campaign aimed to "stamp out unacceptable attitudes and behaviour towards women before it leads to more violent forms of abuse".

Mr Sargeant said: "Whilst the odd comment or gesture may seem harmless enough, to the woman on the receiving end they can feel threatening and abusive.

"Any behaviour that intimidates a woman should not be tolerated. If the campaign makes people stop and think then it will have served its purpose."

Campaigners say social attitudes towards woman must be challenged Paula Hardy, chief executive of Welsh Women's Aid, said the campaign linked "everyday behaviours which demean women (and the attitudes underlying these behaviours) with the epidemic social problem of violence against women.

"The link is essentially gender inequality - which the assembly government now recognises as both a cause and a consequence of violence against women."

Click through to the BBC here to watch the ad.