Human Diversity in Domestic Violence
Humanity’s diversity knows no boundaries; and, in the world of domestic violence, it is no different. Domestic violence can occur in a home of wealth or poverty; urban or rural settings; educated and uneducated; from females as well as males; victims can be adult or children; in homosexual and transgender relationships as well as heterosexual relationships; and, in all ethnic backgrounds as well. “Justice” (the “doing what I right for another person, or ensuring that what is right takes place” ) or (the “administration of law that determines what is right, based on principles of equity and correctness, and rewards accordingly” ), in the domestic violence arena, seems ever daunting to the victim; but, some victims actually eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel to a more peaceful lifestyle – getting there seems like a forever task to get through though.
“Dear God, I just want someone to love me, someone to talk to when I need to talk. Someone to cry on when I need to cry. Most of all someone to love me and walk as far as they wish through my life. Amen.”
The above prayer written by a kid in the Covenant House Chapel , is an example of the impact that domestic violence makes upon everyone. Children of domestic violence validate the prevalence and types of incidents of domestic violence through an array of statistics, such as:
• A child under 12 lives in 43% of homes where violence occurs
• 50%-70% of men who abuse their female partners also abuse their children
• 5% of abusive fathers threaten to kill their children’s mother during visitation and 25% threaten to hurt their children
• Children often fail to report physical or sexual abuse out of fear or belief that the abuse is their fault
• 96% of rape victims under age 12 and 85% of victims 12-17 were raped by a family member, friend, or acquaintance
Children are definitely not on the only victims though, as horrendous as that is. Victims are never just black or white; it is never quite that simple, or else domestic violence would be long annihilated by now.
Throw into the pot any other issues such as sexual orientation, whether an adult or a child, can make a tough situation even tougher. For instance, when I read a passage out of Same-sex Domestic Violence: Strategies for Change , I was certainly taken back by the similarities of emotions gone through in comparison to a heterosexual relationship. See for yourself:
“Although I felt that we were slowly drifting apart, Gary continually surprised me with renewed vigor and intensity about the relationship. He would simply forget all the bad things that had happened and expect me to still be in a committed relationship with him. To contradict his perspective was to ask for conflict. Once, as I was reiterating the reasons that I could no longer trust him, he punched me in the face. He immediately apologized and swore it would never happen again…”
“…Over the course of the next year, we had scattered encounters….although I knew I could not let my barriers to come down, I felt a little safer. … A little more than a year and a half after I had left, I got a call from Gary. He wanted to get together. I was firm. I said that I could not see him. Four days later, his lover called and told me that Gary had hanged himself over the weekend. A wide range of emotions went through me during the week that followed as I went to his funeral and met the people who had been part of his life over the previous two years. Mostly, I found myself overwhelmed with sadness because I was finally able to allow myself to remember the good, the wonderful aspects of Gary that I had buried while he was alive for fear that I would not be able to stay away. It is because of his death that I am able to tell my story publicly.”
Honestly, in reading the passages would you not have thought it was written by a woman? It was not. In fact, the author in the midst of the passages stated that “I also discovered that no shelters were available to me. Because I was a gay male victim of domestic violence I was left to fend for myself. … During this time, I had to disappear from all of my friends.” It is clear to see that, while the homosexual acts may be morally or Biblically incorrect, it is still a matter where the homosexual issue needs to be set aside and the humanity aspect needs to be explored a little more closer in order that their feelings are also validated and allowed to go through the cycles of grief/ pain/ recovery processes that any other human would experience in any situation, and especially through the domestic violence circumstances.
A program here in Austin, Texas, called the Political Asylum Project of Austin (or “PAPA” as it is commonly referred to), has a motto stating that “No Human Being is Illegal” (or “Ningun ser Hermano es Ilegal” as translated in Spanish), advocates and supports those who are immigrants to petition for legal residency under the provisions guided by the VAWA (Violence Against Women Act) of 1994. Elena Yang, Coordinating Attorney, spoke in a Williamson County Crisis Center Staff & Volunteer Training program one night in Fall 2004 and stated that, pre-1994, there was an apparent increased power and control over battered immigrants because the batterer controlled the filing of for the papers of residency, the batterer could withdraw the petition at any time, and the batterer of a immigrant was unlikely to be prosecuted. Getting the message to the immigrants that their status is legally irrelevant to obtaining protective orders, shelter, custody, police assistance, and emergency medical care AND that all immigrants are eligible for:
• emergency medical care, Medicaid, immunization, diagnosis and treatment of communicable diseases, emergency mental health and substance abuse services;
• WIC;
• Summer food programs and school lunch;
• Public education;
• Short-term non-cash disaster relief; and
• Any program necessary to protect life and safety and is not income conditional (shelter, food banks)
is sometimes difficult to convey to those immigrants in need of protection. Elena further stated that the VAWA of 1994 became an empowerment too to do a self-petition wherein the victim is allowed to self-petition, the information from the abuser cannot be used against the victim (nor could a 3rd party information be entered into the file), non-citizen children of the victim are also protected, and the self-petition leads to the legal proof of residency; therefore, the batterer holding that level of control over the victim is relinquished of that control. The petition is not an easy endeavor because it is required to have supporting documentations (affidavits, police reports, hotline reports, self-journaling, personal written statement, photos, medical records, etc., etc.) of the victim being subjected to battery or extreme cruelty (ie, emotion, economic, sexual, or physical abuse; coercion and threats; using citizenship or residency privilege; intimidation; social isolation; degradation; possessiveness; and minimizing, denying and blaming) by a US Citizen or lawful permanent resident spouse or parent; who has resided with the abusive spouse and had a “good faith” marriage; and be of good moral character. Later, in 2000, Congress also passed “U Visas”, also authorized under the revisions of the VAWA, designed for “non-citizen crime victims who have suffered substantial physical or mental abuse flowing from criminal activity and who have mustered the courage to cooperate with the government officials investigating or prosecuting such criminal activity”. From my personal observations from my trip to Guatemala in 2003, it is clear that this can be a huge hurdle for them to do since their own images of their own police mixing with armies in the civil war putting many of their own family members in mass clandestine graves, or a pure lack of trust from their own experiences with their own police.
When one goes to the PAPA website, the offer some statistics of the diverse nature of what they are up against: Statistical & Demographic Information. What is interesting about the above statistics is that only .69% were not reported, but I would suspect that these statistics are merely based on the clients that they see come through their office. The fact that not everyone completes a case, would seem to indicate that there are many, many more that continue to go unreported because they are not aware of the law, or they simply have not mustered up the strength and courage to do so just yet (hopefully, the courage is the only thing holding them back!).
Austin, Texas, has discovered that Collaborative Community Response (“CSR”) teams can provide “a mutually beneficial and well defined relationship entered into by two or more organizations to achieve results they are more likely to achieve together than alone” and created the Austin-Travis County Domestic Violence Task Force in 1989 by the Chief of Police. It was determined by an Austin Police Department’s in-house study that they were receiving many repeat callers and the hope was, through agencies working together, arrests could be paired successfully with early intervention that would include counseling and referrals for the victims, as well as the perpetrators. This task force has been continually meeting since that time with the number of participating agencies growing all the time, which has resulted in benefiting the victims by simplified process applying for the protective orders, increase law enforcement of protective order violations, increased domestic violence arrests, increased referrals among the agencies, increased cross-training among agencies, and increased communication on specific cases and system-wide changes.
Sister Mary Rose McGeady of the Covenant House replied in her book, Are you Out There,God?, by stating, “The answer is: ‘Yes!’ God is out there – and He’s also inside each one of these kids, waiting to be revealed. You see, I have discovered that even in the most desperate child, there is hope. It may be only the very smallest of sparks – impossible to see at first. Finding it often takes time and patience, requiring us to carefully scrape away the overlapping of scars, pain, hurt, rejection and suffering to find the hope, which abides in every human heart. The child may not even know it’s there. But it is. And at Covenant House, everyone from counselors to our cooks, shelters this tiny spark, feeds it, nurtures it…”
“Humanism” is defined as “a philosophy that elevates mankind to a pre-eminent position and celebrates man’s freedom. When humanism is non-theistic, dismissing the significance of God, it is often referred to as secular humanism. Secular humanism is a prominent philosophy in America today.” Studying this in connection with criminal justice, and more specifically focused today on domestic violence, reiterates to us all that the boundaries of domestic violence are blind – they affect everyone on this Earth in varying capacities. Unfortunately, justice cannot be had in every case because there are so many other mitigating factors that hinder one’s pride, self-esteem, courage, etc powerless with respect to the control of the abuser; and, when they arrive at the point that they finally decide that they have had enough, they have taken the biggest step in their lives in an effort to break the cycle of abuse (which sometimes take an individual as many as seven times of breaking away before they decidedly cleanly break away forever). We should therefore, rid ourselves of any prejudices and/or biases and reach out in an effort to every domestic violent victim with extended arms to assist them through the hurdles. Once the victim(s) admit that they have a problem and make it publicly known to the shelter, police, and/or any other individuals/agencies, the person (and the family) should be treated as domestic violence victims striving to empower them to move forward with their lives. What is essential is that we learn to listen without seeing their entire packages that they carry with them; working to empower them to combat one issue at a time. It isn’t important about their nationality or sexual orientation, their society status or whether they are a primary or secondary victim, etc; what is important is that they are a victim and they have the rights to be treated as a human being and it is the job of the counselor, police office, shelter guide, etc that comes in contact with these victims to reiterate their humanistic rights and the rights to be treated just like any other human being on this earth and empower them with the tools to improve their quality of life. Another child at the Covenant House couldn’t have described it better as in their poem:
Learn to Listen
“Learn to listen like a teddy bear,
With ears open and mouth closed tight.
Learn to forgive like a teddy bear,
With an open heart, not caring who is right,
Learn to love like a teddy bear,
With arms open and imperfect eyesight.
Do not ask for your life’s load lightened,
But for courage to endure.
Do not ask for fulfillment in all your life,
Do not ask for perfection in all you do,
But for the wisdom not to repeat mistakes.
And finally, do not ask for more,
Before saying, “Thank you,”
For what you have already received.
If you’re looking for somebody to blame –
Look in the mirror.
There is no challenge that cannot be met,
And dream that cannot be achieved.”
We can learn lots from our children about humanity, can’t we?!!???
1 The Complete Book of Bible Literacy, Mark D.Taylor, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton IL, 1992, pg 327
2 Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton IL, 1997, pg 756
3 “Are You There, God?”, 1st Ed, 2nd Printing, Sr. Mary Rose McGeady, Covenant House, 1999, pg 22
4 Law Enforcement Strategies for Successful Prosecution, by Capt Harold Q Thomas, Odessa Police Department, Criminal Investigations Bureau, pg 3
5 Same-sex Domestic Violence: Strategies for Change, Beth Leventhal, Sandra E Lundy (Editors) Sage Series on Violence Against Women, Sage Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks CA, pgs 12-15
6 Same-sex Domestic Violence: Strategies for Change, Beth Leventhal, Sandra E Lundy (Editors) Sage Series on Violence Against Women, Sage Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks CA, pgs 14
7 Elena Yang, Coordinating Attorney, Political Asylum Project of Austin, One Highland Center, 314 E Highland Mall Blvd., Suite 501, Austin, TX 78752, ednay@papaustin.org
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 www.main.org/papa/ABOUT.htm
12 Systems Coordination: Implementing a Coordinated Community Response to Domestic Violence, Sarah Kihneman, JD, MPAff Director of Legal Services Safe Place, Travis County Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Survival Center, POB 19454, Austin, TX 78760, skihneman@austin-safeplace.org, pg 1
13 Systems Coordination: Implementing a Coordinated Community Response to Domestic Violence, Sarah Kihneman, JD, MPAff Director of Legal Services Safe Place, Travis County Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Survival Center, POB 19454, Austin, TX 78760, skihneman@austin-safeplace.org, pg 3
14 “Are You There, God?”, 1st Ed, 2nd Printing, Sr. Mary Rose McGeady, Covenant House, 1999, pg 7
15 The Complete Book of Bible Literacy, Mark D.Taylor, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton IL, 1992, pg 275
16 “Are You There, God?”, 1st Ed, 2nd Printing, Sr. Mary Rose McGeady, Covenant House, 1999, pg 70
posted by Kat Davis @ 11:09 AM
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