Brooklyn Boro

OPINION: Domestic violence is everybody’s business

November 7, 2017 By State Sen. Kevin Parker in collaboration with Nicole Sharpe For Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Nicole Sharpe. Photos courtesy of Sen. Parker’s office
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Every nine seconds a woman is assaulted or beaten in the U.S. Just think about this for a minute. 

Alas, in the time that it has taken you to think about this statistic, another woman was assaulted. Undoubtedly, statistics have a way of bringing us to a new kind of consciousness about a particular issue. Hence the common practice of using statistics to make a point. However, when we hear the same figures over and over again, it can sometimes have an alternative effect of numbing us to the issue being discussed. So, let me give you this same statistic from another view. It means that the time it has taken me to write this article, close to 400 women were ostensibly victims of domestic abuse/violence. 

Similarly, here is another view. According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 12 million men and women are survivors of rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in the U.S. over the course of a year. This amounts to 24 people every minute. Comparatively, this equates to the passengers of 63 767 airliners being injured or killed every year. Now I ask you: Do you think if we had 63 airline crashes every year in the U.S. alone that there would be a new standard of dealing with the catastrophe? What about the kind of responses we would have from government at all levels in the (unlikely, though) event that we experience such a cataclysmic event in the U.S.?

Looking at our national domestic violence landscape through this lens allows us to see that we can no longer take quick peeps at the problem from behind our flowered curtains. Certainly, it calls our attention to the need to address this growing plague as we become aware that domestic violence is everybody’s business. No longer could we capitulate to the old mores of this being “people’s private business.” Especially, as more and more of our children are being affected. 

As a state legislator, I continue to do what’s in my power by introducing legislation aimed at addressing issues surrounding domestic violence/abuse. This year, I have tabled a package of 14 bills which address issues such as the creation of the New York Civil Gideon Act; a bill relating to the entitlement to unpaid leave of absence for victims of domestic violence and setting a mandate that requires general hospitals to establish policies/procedures regarding domestic violence; establish training programs and designate staff to coordinate services. 

Even so, I am still alarmed every year as we examine the statistical data more closely during October’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month. This year, the statistics that scorched my consciousness as hot lava was that surrounding the impact of domestic violence on children. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, one in 10 high school students have experienced physical violence from a dating partner in the past year.  About one in five women and nearly one in seven men who ever experienced rape, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner, first experienced some form of partner violence between 11 and 17 years of age. The statistics are staggering for our youth and thus a need for reform.

One such child survivor of domestic violence is my good friend Nicole Sharpe — founder of the Heather Hurley Foundation for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. Nicole also sits on the New York State Advisory Council for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. 

Nicole was orphaned when as an adolescent she witnessed the death of her mother at the hands of her father. According to Nicole, the murder was a culmination of years of physical and emotional torture, which she witnessed from a very early age. Motivated by her harrowing childhood, Nicole became an advocate for domestic violence awareness, thus establishing her foundation in her late mother’s name.

With the healthy existence of government and community partnerships which have engendered in the 21st Senate District, which I represent, I am happy to have collaborated with Nicole and her organization to promote a new educational platform in Brooklyn schools called Bloom365. Bloom 365 is a peer-driven, teen-dating prevention curriculum which began in Peoria, Arizona through the Purple Ribbon Council and has proven to be extremely successful. Like Nicole, I believe that educating adolescents about domestic violence will have a positive correlation on the development of healthy relationships in their individual futures and improve the statistics; thus lending to a more progressive and safer society as a whole.

Too often we assume that children aren’t aware of the violence happening at home. But according to a survey conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 90 percent of children exposed to intimate partner violence directly saw the violence happening as opposed to hearing it or other indirect forms. According to The Center for Women and Families, one in 15 kids are exposed to domestic violence and a heartbreaking 90 percent are eyewitnesses who will feel the effect for the rest of lives. 

If we are to alleviate these figures, we must all move beyond awareness to action — as we recognize that indeed, domestic violence is everybody’s business.

 

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