Domestic violence rising during virus lockdown but still hidden in our own back yards
As published on AL.com
When it comes to domestic violence, most of us assume it doesn’t happen in our neighborhood, and if it does, it’s easier to look away. But during the past two months, calls to the YWCA’s domestic violence hotline in Birmingham have doubled.
A recent NBC News Survey of 22 law enforcement agencies across the country found a rise in the number of domestic violence calls, and France has experienced a 30% increase in domestic violence reports since the March 17 lockdown, according to the interior minister.
Even in Alabama during normal times, data compilation for domestic violence incidents throughout the state remains spotty at best. The stigma surrounding this issue also creates a shroud of silence as far as crime statistic reporting is concerned. Take the recent article in which The Hoover Suncited their 2019 crime statistics. The headline reads “Robberies hit 20 year plus low: overall crime down 3% in 2019,” and the entire article extols the decline in major crimes, such as property crimes and burglary
In the wake of the high profile, domestic violence related murder of Hoover resident Megan Montgomery, whose body was left in the neighboring suburb of Mountain Brook, the news article neglects to mention Hoover’s third largest crime: domestic violence. Not one word about the 11% increase (from 419 to 465) last year in reported domestic violence cases in a city of approximately 85,000. Not one word in the city newspaper where her family still lives.
Failing to acknowledge domestic violence as a problem means victims and their families are revictimized. If city leaders and law enforcement refuse even to name the issue as part of responsible reporting, this silence becomes a significant part of the problem, and this dismissal an integral factor behind the reason abusers aren’t held accountable.
The failure to even acknowledge this crime sends the message to abused women living in Hoover that law enforcement doesn’t see them or hear their cries for help. If local leaders don’t view domestic violence as a newsworthy crime, why would any woman go to the police – a terrifying proposition fraught with very few guarantees of safety --- in the first place? Who will believe her?
According to the World Health Organization, domestic violence is a worldwide epidemic. Here in Alabama, a woman is at a greater risk of being killed than women in most states in the country, in part because we cannot even recognize that controlling, terrorizing, and assaulting a woman isn’t a man’s right. In the well-heeled suburbs of Birmingham, we believe domestic violence is a private matter relegated to what happens behind closed doors.
Mountain Brook, home to roughly to 20,381 residents, was where Megan’s body was found. The city also published its recent crime statistics in its local newspaper, Village Living, where they include family violence reports as 19 last year. Chief Ted Cook comments that this one homicide is the first one in 17 years, emphasizing the victim and apprehended suspect, a former Mountain Brook police officer from many years ago, weren’t residents. Homewood’s crime report doesn’t mention domestic violence, and Vestavia has yet to release its crime statistics.
Without reliable data, the problem of domestic violence can’t be addressed, and effective solutions tracked and measured. Currently, data is collected by different law enforcement agencies throughout the state and compiled through the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (their last year of reporting is 2017), advocates, and courts. The YWCA, for instance, reports its data to the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, as it’s the gateway for federal funding. The Firearms Technical Assistance Project at One Place, a collaboration of various agencies reviewing firearm protocols, is another potential avenue for compiling data.
On the Hoover Sun Facebook page, Police Captain Greg Rector praises Hoover police for doing a fine job of taking the bad guys off the street and contributing to the decline in crime stats. But what about the bad guys living in our homes? In a home where there’s an abuser, the threat of violence, actual violence, and other types of intimidation threaten women, children, and their extended families around the clock.
Abusive attitudes and behaviors are passed down through the generations in our culture. Demeaning women is part of how we socialize boys and girls. Violence against women is what we entertain ourselves with through movies and music. Hurting women is the mainstay of pornography. The irony is violence against women is an entertainment staple for millions of consumers, yet the reality of men abusing women is ignored as a shameful situation occurring only in the poorest of neighborhoods and families. The cultural norm in affluent Southern neighborhoods is to look away, and to enforce a code of silence around uncomfortable subjects, such as domestic violence. It’s easier to pretend it doesn’t happen here.
How city leaders, law enforcement, and reporters frame domestic violence affects the public’s perception and understanding of it. More often when domestic violence is covered, there’s victim blaming, the violence is sensationalized, and the complex nature of the problem is oversimplified. The problem must be named, and journalists need to delve into the patterns and trends, as well as systemic gaps, in response to domestic violence. Otherwise, silence means death. Real death. Someone’s wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend or relative.
Domestic abuse survivors need us to remember. The families of those murdered at the hands of intimate partners beg us to remember. The perpetrator hopes we forget. Apparently, so do law enforcement and the media. As communities, we must bear witness to the burden of the survivors’ pain and their families’ pain. How can we do that if those in a position to protect and report look away?
Of the 465 reported domestic violence incidents in Hoover last year, it’s unclear if this number includes only first-time assaults or second or third time assaults with the same abuser, known as “frequent flyers.” In domestic violence with multiple episodes, the time between the assault and when the abuser coerces the woman into returning lessens, a phenomenon referred to as a “slow homicide,” since for too many women, the abuser ultimately kills her. How can any woman get help if she’s not being heard?
Now more than ever, silencing women, their voices, their stories, is violence against women. Silencing the domestic violence problems in Hoover is a slow living death for women seeking help from those very people charged to protect them, leaving too many traumatized women frightened and defenseless.