The coming year could easily be filled with struggles between a Democratic-controlled Legislature and a Republican governor. Amid the anticipated contention, however, there is one issue that should bring Democrats and Republicans together rather than divide them: reducing rates of domestic violence.
In 2013, the Maine Legislature, Gov. Paul LePage and support groups must work together to find specific ways to help prevent domestic violence and sexual assaults. They have already begun good work: such as to require judges, not bail commissioners, to set bail in certain domestic violence cases and to ensure funding for the Victims’ Compensation Fund, which provides financial reimbursement for losses suffered by victims of violent crime and their families.
Much more, of course, can be done. Reducing rates of sexual and domestic violence and protecting survivors will require compassion and acknowledgement of the complexity often surrounding abusive situations. It could involve creative projects — such as involving hairdressers in a nationwide program called Cut It Out, to be trained how to watch for and respond to signs of abuse.
Most of all, though, finding answers will require everyone’s help: community groups, schools, legislators, police, churches, men and women, young and old. Dealing with such multi-faceted, far-reaching problems like domestic violence and sexual assault necessitates many different solutions.
Here are a few ideas and questions to consider along the way:
1. Improve existing collaboration between domestic violence advocates and mental health providers. Should mental health providers be required to receive education relating to domestic violence outreach?
2. Focus on bullying in schools, where the roots of future domestic violence may form. How can Maine better teach its young people that identity is not defined in any way by violence? Athletic coaches have the power to help, as do student-led groups.
3. Disarm batterers. In Maine a judge may order firearms to be removed from offenders ’ possession when issuing a protective order. But it is offenders’ responsibility to surrender the firearms, often for safe keeping with family. How can gun seizure laws be improved to better restrict offenders’ access to deadly means?
4. Begin an electronic monitoring program to ensure abusers comply with protective orders. Maine is on its way to developing such a program, and legislation is anticipated this session. A responsible monitoring program, where defendants are required to wear tracking devices if they exhibit certain risk factors, is greatly needed. Too many abusers ignore no-contact orders, and victims, who fear reprisal, may be hesitant to inform police, especially if they lack evidence of the violation.
In 2013, the BDN will continue to look at ways to help prevent domestic violence and protect survivors. We invite you to write to us at erhoda@bangordailynews.com with your specific ideas about what should be done to address one of Maine’s most pressing problems. We will consider your ideas and may feature them in future editorials. Eliminating sexual and domestic violence will require everyone’s help.
Easy. Arm EVERYONE!!!!
Is that you Mr. LaPierre?
Don’t allow people the sale off allens coffee brandy in maine.
Require a competency exam to have a kid. Maybe we can have some adults who are adults?
Enabling mental health workers to have more extensive training in domestic violence is a WONDERFUL idea and would translate into better support and safety for those suffering domestic violence! Now Mr LePage, please provide the necessary dollars and cents to back up your stance on domestic violence instead of continuing to cut our already bare-bones mental health budget.
Education starting at an early age. Enhance the programs for Mental Health Workers and Hairdressers, both worthy efforts. Disarm abusers and increase the bail amounts and follow through with stiff jail sentences.
Maine’s Home Visiting program assess for DV with every family they visit. We are a great resource for the front line defense against DV. Stop cutting funding for Home Visiting (which is funded with tobacco settlement money, not tax payer dollars) and we can make a difference.
How about putting out as much copy in your paper about batterers and child abusers as you do about consensual sex between adults for starters?
Education.
Jobs. Families are putting under incredible strain when their finances are in a shambles, and an uncaring political environment that blames the victims for the failed policies that have been killing the job market does nothing to relief that stress. Economic inequality and the financial insecurity that comes out of inequality has a direct destabilizing effect on society… Domestic violence is a symptom of this insecurity and inequality.
Exactly. There is a direct correlation between unemployment, financial insecurity and domestic abuse.
Income disparity is an important issue of course, but that sounds almost like you’re providing for an excuse for domestic abusers – taking responsibility from them and putting it to the state. Every demographic is vulnerable to domestic violence. There is no excuse for anyone that chooses to beat their spouses and or children.
No excuse, but a lot of DV comes out of the stress of financial insecurity, arguments that esculate into physical contact by one or both parties. Take care of that and there will be that much less DV. It has lots of other causes for sure, that is just one stressor in relationships, and a big one.
I buy it to some degree in regards to spousal arguments – though how it could ever translate into violence against ones own innocent children is not something I can comprehend.
Break the poverty cycle, and there’s still the abuse cycle to consider. How is that broken?
As a survivor of abuse, I’d like to see stiffer punishments handed out. I have not gone to court or made any sort of legal effort to get my abuser behind bars, thankfully I have a long number of years left for statute of limitations so I can change my mind any time in the next 20 or so years.
The reason so many survivors are afraid to speak up is that we don’t see any justice delivered; so many perverts are let out in a matter of months while the victims are scarred for life. And I don’t have any evidence of what happened to me (other than the diagnoses of therapists I can no longer afford and maybe an old journal) Even if I had reported it the same day, there may not have been any physical evidence. Why would I think a court would believe me? Especially with the BS sentences doled out in this state for sex crimes!
More than 50% of all sexual assault incidents were reported by victims to have occurred within 1 mile of their home or at their home (http://www.rainn.org/get-information/statistics/sexual-assault-offenders), so I’d say this falls under domestic violence, wouldn’t you?
If Maine judges actually put abusers in jail for longer than 90 days for once:
-survivors could find closure
-survivors that would otherwise stay quiet would speak up and those abusers that would otherwise get off scot-free would be punished for their crimes
-it would be a deterrent to abusers if there were ANY punishment handed out at all in Maine.
I can’t even read the BDN sometimes because I am avoiding those articles, you know the ones. It makes me more than upset, I literally weep for the survivor (and for myself), sometimes I’ll be upset for days after reading those articles. In 2013, I’m planning on writing one letter per week to a judge in Maine that let an abuser off with next to nothing of a sentence. Hopefully hearing a survivor’s plea will wake a few of them up, give them an experience to shudder at while sentencing abusers.
This ended up being really ranty, which isn’t my writing style at all but shows how passionately I feel that Maine is screwing the pooch in this area. Hope it’s coherent enough.
90 days? more like 90 hours, if the victim is lucky. Maine is a great place to live if a person is a criminal spouse beater.
From the “Examiner.com” ” An extensive 2004 report by the National Institute of Justice found that the rate of violence against women increases as male unemployment increases. When a woman’s male partner is employed, the rate of violence is 4.7 percent. It’s 7.5 percent when the male experiences one period of unemployment. It’s 12.3 percent when the male experiences two or more periods of unemployment.”
Please tell this poor ignorant fool why “domestic violence” is worse than other kinds of violence. Isn’t the violence the main problem? Maybe we should begin to refer to this problem as “Violence at home.” Putting the “violence” first clarifies the problem.