DOMESTIC VIOLENCE RATES FALL

The US Department of Justice has issued a report that indicates that domestic violence rates have fallen by more than fifty percent from 1993 to 2004. The sharp decline is attributed to a number of factors including better enforcement of existing laws, more aggressive prosecution, jailing of first time offenders, refusal of police and prosecutors to allow the victim to drop the charges and education of the public on the issue.  A link to the full article is posted below.

As a child I grew up in a home where my mother was physically abused on an occasional basis and the entire family was regularly terrorized by the anger and potential violence that my father threatened.  Someone who has not lived in this type of scary environment cannot understand the long-term damage this does to everyone in the family, including the violent party.  At that time in the 1940s and 1950s local police did not like getting involved in what was then treated as “family issues”, unless a serious assault was taking place.  While the police would stop a specific violent event, they would generally not arrest the perpetrator.

Decades later, as a Child and Adolescent therapist, I visited the homes of the kids I worked with and saw the damage that domestic violence and living in a unstable, threatening and dangerous homes can do to children.  Even though rates of domestic violence have fallen substantially, we can still do much better.  One day I made a visit to the home of two teen brothers I was working with to meet with the mother.  When she opened the door I could plainly see the black eye and split lip on her face that she had received from her boy friend the night before.  The boys were home and had to endure the embarrassment of seeing their battered mother try to talk to me about the whole range of family problems that were affecting them at school with her recent injuries still fresh on her face.  All crime rates for women are increasing and domestic violence is no exception, but men continue to be the primary perpetrators and women the primary victims.

Domestic violence tends to be an intergenerational problem.  Children, particularly boys, are at danger of repeating the domestic violence pattern in their adult lives, and girls are primed to be future victims.  Much more public and individual education and is needed to continue reduce the rate of domestic violence, as well as continued emphasis by the police to lock up the perpetrators.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16383696/