White Sulphur Springs

To the editor:

In her October 10th Letter to the Editor, Elizabeth McAllister appropriately confronts the absence of any reference to Domestic Violence Awareness Month in the Democrat’s October 6th edition. The oversight was not an isolated one. The United States typically meets the issue of domestic violence with a dangerous level of silence, stigma or total lack of awareness.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. But the horrors of domestic violence are not confined to October for the 10-12 million victims in the United States. Victims live with domestic violence every day of their lives, while the American public looks on or looks away in silence and embarrassment.

Additionally, domestic violence agencies advise their clients to keep silent - about their circumstances, their identities, their addresses, their activities, and their pasts. That silence is intended to protect the victim. But in reality, silence protects the perpetrator, who uses it as his most powerful weapon against the victim.

While domestic violence is frequently overshadowed by more “urgent” causes, the epidemic of domestic violence constitutes a national crisis:

• “On average, 20 people per minute are abused by an intimate partner in the United States.” (National Coalition Against Domestic Violence)

• “Women in the U.S. are in nine times more danger in their own homes than they are in the street.” (Santa Clara, CA Office of the District Attorney)

• “Around 68% of mass shooters either killed their family and intimate partners, or they have a history of domestic violence.” (April Zeoli, Ph.D., associate professor and policy core director at the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention)

• Domestic violence is not limited to physical abuse. It may include “acts or threats of physical or sexual violence, as well as intimidation, humiliation, isolation, verbal abuse and economic control.” (New York State Department of Health)

• “Financial abuse occurs in 99% of domestic violence cases.” (National Network To End Domestic Violence)

• “The national economic cost of domestic and family violence is estimated to be over 12 billion dollars per year.” (National Institutes of Health)

We, the victims, cannot live silently and anonymously forever. Recognize that we are here among you and that we have voices. We have value. For us, silence and stigma are dangerously isolating and socially, emotionally and economically crippling - as deadly for many of us as a perpetrator’s gun.

We, the victims of domestic violence, do not need more ways or places to hide. We need to work with you toward ending the perpetrators’ freedom to abuse, so that we no longer need to hide.

And please - resist calling us “survivors” until our perpetrators’ freedom ends and our freedom begins.