Domestic Violence Rages On

One in four women in the United States report intimate partner violence.

Unless you’ve been hiding underneath a rock, it is almost impossible for you not to be aware of increased cases of what many are calling police brutality or excessive use of force. It seems we see stories about this nearly every day.

Then there were these little known facts:

1. “There is a one in three chance that a high school age girl will experience violence in a dating relationship.
2. Women who are homeless experience a 63% chance of being abused. If she has children, that number goes up to 92%.
3. According to the American Bar Association, the number one cause of death for African-American women between the ages of 15 to 34 is homicide at the hands of a partner.
4. And one fact that blows our mind is that an abuser, on average, hits his partner 35 times before she makes a police report.
5. In the United States domestic homicide and suicide tied to abuse are the number one and number two causes of women’s deaths during pregnancy.”

In our first story the authors make the claim that domestic violence takes place in 40% of law enforcement families and that the problem is mostly ignored. Police officers who commit domestic violence do so largely in complete secrecy, while their family member victims have very little hope of help. In one U.S. survey 40% of cops acknowledged that they had been violent with their spouse or children in the previous six months. That survey was corroborated by a second survey where 40% of officers admitted they had committed domestic violence in the previous year.

According to the story, domestic violence is the most common reason that the public calls 911. If a woman does call 911 and gets a police response, there’s a 40% chance that the officer is an abuser himself and thus is much more likely to look the other way. You may have heard of the “blue wall” or other nicknames for the famous strict unwritten code of cops protecting each other. Some of them call it extending a “professional courtesy” perhaps a euphemism for “it didn’t happen” or a cover up.

This, in part, explains the actual increase in the manifestation of brutality against civilians. Perhaps we need to look at the underlying requirements for policing our society where controlling people is a major draw for applicants. It is also the main driver for domestic violence.

In a story out of Houston, Texas Domestic Violence calls to their hotline have jumped 20% in the last year. There is only one women’s center as a domestic violence resource in a County of ½ million people.

In Harris County, the combined number of domestic violence cases filed in 2013 and 2014 surpassed 20,000. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story: many domestic violence incidents go unreported.

“It’s an epidemic,” said Debi Edge, the Montgomery County center’s director of client services.

In the space of one year from 2013 to 2014 the number of domestic violence fatalities rose from 119 to 132.

The number of women killed in Harris County alone by husbands or boyfriends has increased 20% this year, from 19 to 23, representing double the increase statewide.

In this story from CBS news, Illinois officials are looking to beauty salon workers to help spot potential domestic violence victims. Lawmakers are proposing to require a mandatory hour of training for nail technicians and hairdressers to help spot signs of abuse when they renew their license every two years. If a suspected domestic abuse case is spotted, their job would be to refer them to a resource for victims which are in every state and online.

In a separate story from NBC, Dallas Domestic Violence is still an urgent problem according to the Mayor’s Domestic Violence Task Force. The Mayor formed the task force in 2013 after a rash of domestic violence murders. As with every other community in the country, domestic violence in the Dallas metropolitan area affects every sector of their community-it is everywhere. The premise of the task force is that you can’t change something if you don’t have quantitative information about it. To give you an idea, there are four main Dallas domestic violence shelters with 352 beds. According to the survey, an average of 152 victims are turned away each night for lack of space. The result is these women and their children, if any, are forced to live on the street if they don’t have any supportive family members.

This Colorado website called ‘Close To Home’ makes a statement that domestic violence is the primary cause of homelessness for women and children. According to them, 92% of women who are homeless report having experienced physical and/or sexual assault at some point in their lives with 50% of all women who are homeless reporting that domestic violence was the immediate cause of their homelessness.

One of the best ways that you can defend against a domestic abuse assault is with a self-defense product such as one of our close to 200 different pepper sprays. They can disable an assailant for as much as 10 minutes-long enough for you to get away and seek help.

 What is your experience with domestic violence? Have you or anyone you know been a victim? Did you ever try to defend yourself against an attack? Share your knowledge or experience so that others may benefit from it!