With October dedicated as Domestic Violence Awareness Month, it creates the opportunity to bring all things pertinent to this complex issue into focus, once again.
We remain distant from our goal of bringing peace to island families. Of course, we have daily triumphs, one family at a time. The larger landscape, however, is not yet within reach.
On Sept. 13, 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) into law. It was a major victory. Programs, procedures, practices and partnerships were born in rural and urban communities across the country. That was a long time ago. Today, the reauthorization of VAWA is stalled. Congress broke for summer and for the election without acting to pass the Violence Against Women Act.
As important as the successes of VAWA have been, they are at the same time insufficient.
Today, three women are still killed every day as a result of domestic violence. Sexual assault remains at epidemic levels in this country: 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men have been raped in their lifetimes, and the overwhelming majority were victimized before the age of 25.
Teens and young adults suffer the highest rates of dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. And domestic violence takes its toll on our economy as well. Even by conservative estimates, domestic violence costs our economy more than $8 billion a year in lost productivity and health care costs alone.
We need a newly invigorated VAWA that will help us reduce domestic violence homicides, improve the criminal justice response to sexual assault, and take bold new steps to prevent dating violence and sexual assault on college campuses. And, we need a VAWA that protects every victim.
Families are at the core of communities. Communities are home to each of us. So it is in the best interests of all of us to do what we can, in our capacity as parent, teacher, banker, policy maker, police officer, doctor, funder, neighbor or employer to remember that violence happening in our community breaks the spirit, well-being, bank and future of our community.
Take five minutes this Domestic Violence Awareness Month to let your elected congressperson know that VAWA must be passed.
And closer to home, take five minutes to reach out in one way that makes a difference, in the life of a victim, child, survivor, perpetrator or community program. You will have re-joined the community in its efforts to bring safe island families back to the forefront of our discourse and at the top of the list of community priorities.
We owe it to our families, our community and ourselves.
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Nanci Kreidman is chief executive officer of the Domestic Violence Action Center in Hawaii.
