Thank you Mr. Green for organizing this special order hour and thank you Mr. Poe, Ms. Edwards, and Ms. Ellmers for your continued leadership on this important issue.
I rise today to speak out against domestic violence and to demand that Congress act in a bipartisan manner to fight back against this plague on our country.
The domestic violence statistic rates in our country are staggering. One out of every three women will be the victim of domestic violence in their lifetime,
and four women are murdered by their intimate partner every day in the United States. Further, a woman is battered in the U.S. every 15 seconds -- that’s 240 incidents every hour.
We as a society have a responsibility to work to protect the most vulnerable among us and must do everything we can to address these unacceptable rates of domestic violence. That is why one of the first pieces of legislation I cosponsored as a Member of Congress was the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act. Protecting people from violence by their partners should not be a partisan issue and it was appalling that in the last Congress, such vital legislation got caught up in partisan gridlock.
With that in mind, I am thrilled to see members from both sides of the aisle speaking today on this important issue, and you will notice both Democrats and Republicans wearing purple pins or purple ties today to highlight October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic violence is not a partisan issue and not just a women’s issue – it is a family issue, a community issue, an economic issue, and a moral issue.
That is why I specifically recruited my male colleagues to participate in this special order hour, and you will see many of them today wearing purple ties. We as men can help draw awareness not only to how important it is to work toward ending domestic violence, but also to the fact that domestic violence is an issue that we have a responsibility to engage on and not to dismiss as only a woman’s issue. As role models to other males we have a crucial part in this fight, and stopping domestic violence will only occur when the main perpetrators of these crimes, which are men, learn to stop hurting their partners. We as men not only can but we must make addressing this issue a priority.
On International Women’s Day, I hosted a roundtable discussion on domestic violence prevention at a shelter in my district called SafeSpace where I heard from both survivors and advocates about the challenges they face to keep women and children safe and the importance of federal funding to keep programs operating. This roundtable highlighted the urgency of working together to address this pressing issue and I am honored to have Jill Borowicz, the CEO of the shelter that hosted this important roundtable, be in attendance here today and want to take this opportunity to thank her for her work on behalf of the survivors of domestic abuse.
Unfortunately, what we are doing here today almost was not able to take place due to the government shutdown. Jill knows all too well that the shutdown disrupted more than this event. One of the less talked about effects of the shutdown was its impact on shelters and services like SafeSpace that were forced to close their doors and suspend services for more than a week because VAWA funds were inaccessible.
Let me repeat – the government shutdown directly prevented women and children who were facing the threat of domestic violence from receiving services and shelter. This is unconscionable.
While the crisis may have been manufactured, the shutdown had very real consequences and has shown that partisanship and dysfunction in Congress are a serious threat to the prevention of domestic violence, and I hope we can all agree that this should no longer be tolerated.
I look forward to working together with my colleagues, both male and female and members of both parties, to continue to fund important programs that help provide assistance and shelter to the victims of domestic violence, resources to law enforcement to help them adequately address these issues on the ground, and investments in programs that can help stop and break the vicious cycle of domestic violence in our communities.