House Approves Resolution on National Domestic Violence Awareness Month

On September 25, the House approved, 395-0, H. Res. 590, a resolution supporting the goals and ideals of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, commemorated each October, and expressing the sense of the House that Congress should continue to raise awareness of domestic violence issues.

Sponsored by Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX), the resolution contains a number of findings, including:

women ages 16 to 24 experience the highest rates, per capita, of intimate partner violence;
thirteen percent of teenage girls who have been in a relationship report being hit or hurt by their partners and one in four teenage girls has been in a relationship in which she was pressured into performing sexual acts by her partner;
middle schools, secondary schools, and post-secondary schools must educate students about the issues of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking;
landlords frequently deny housing to victims of domestic violence who have protection orders or evict victims of domestic violence for seeking help, such as by calling 911, after a domestic violence incident or who have other indications that they are domestic violence victims;
Americans suffer 2.2 million medically treated injuries due to interpersonal violence annually, at a cost of $37 billion ($33 billion in productivity losses and $4 billion in medical treatment); and
there is a need to increase funding for programs carried out under the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 [(P.L. 109-162)], aimed at intervening and preventing domestic violence in the United States.“Preventing domestic violence is critical in addressing and breaking the cycle of violence,” said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY). “And it is a cycle. Whether the violence is found in a dating situation or in married life, the strongest risk factor of violent behavior continuing from one generation to the next is if children are witnessing this violence. Evidence shows that children who witness domestic violence at home are more likely to engage in violent behavior, do poorly in school, use drugs and alcohol, and at an early age engage in risky sexual behavior and develop mental illness issues.”
“My father was six-foot eight, and my mother was five-foot-and-a-half inches tall, and he used to beat her so badly that we couldn’t recognize her,” said Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN). “He would tear her clothes off of her in front of me and my brother and sister, and then if we said anything he would beat me. He went to prison for trying to kill her, and one of the reasons it went that far, in my opinion, is because there wasn’t enough attention paid to what he was doing in the first place…I can remember when she would throw a lamp through the front window when he was beating on her or me and scream for help so loud that you could hear it for blocks away and nobody came. Nobody’s light went on. Nobody paid any attention, and that’s the crime.”