This file was prepared for electronic distribution by the inforM staff. Questions or comments should be directed to inform-editor@umail.umd.edu. Violence Against Women: A Week in the Life of America Prepared by the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee September 1 September 2 September 3 September 4 ... October 1992 ************************************* INTRODUCTION Senator Joseph R Biden, Jr. Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee October 1, 1992 For some time now, I have shared the view of others that the nation does not fully comprehend the magnitude and severity of the problem of violence against women. Two years ago, I began a series of hearings held during 1990 and 1991 on the topics of rape, domestic violence, and existing legal protections. In tandem with those hearings, I introduced the Violence Against Women Act -- the first comprehensive legislation attacking the problem. Through this process, I have come to believe more firmly than ever that this nation will be powerless to change the course of violence against women, unless and until its citizens fully realize the devastation this violence yields. Today, we release a report that graphically portrays the human tragedy of a single "Week in the Life of Violence Against Women." Data we have collected from across the nation shows, for the first time ever, the terrifying extent of violence in the home every single week of the year. Projected nationally, we have found that: * In 1991, at least 21,000 domestic crimes against women were reported to the police everv week; * Almost 1/5 of all aggravated assaults (20%) reported to the police are aggravated assaults in the home; * These figures reveal a total of at least 1.1 million assaults, aggravated assaults, murders, and rapes against women committed in the home and reported to the police in 1991; unreported crimes may be more than three times this total. A Week in the Life of Violence Against Women Unfortunately, statistics like these have not always spoken loud enough in the past. Rather than focusing on a list of statistics or tables of facts and figures, we decided to look for the human face behind these statistics. From a cross-section of cities and towns across the country, we have gathered the stories of individual women who survived violence during the first week of September. These stories show, in gripping detail, the tragic human face of violence -- a violence that destroys individual lives, rips apart families, and sends children on to repeat the violence of their parents. Our snapshot of one week in the life of violence against women demonstrates not only the extent but also the depth of the brutality experienced by individual women. Over and over again, in trying to understand violence against women, we heard stories like these: * A 26-year-old Connecticut woman is attacked by her boyfriend of five years; he breaks her right arm with a hammer. * A 46-year-old New Mexico woman is beaten and pushed out of a moving car by her husband. She spends three days in the hospital recovering from a broken tailbone and other injuries. * Two Nebraska women go to play tennis on a university campus early in the morning, where they are attacked by three men, who rape them. The victims report that their attackers later brag to them that they had been stalking them and they had similarly attacked other women. * A Texas woman is stabbed in her apartment by a stranger who enters through sliding glass doors in the middle of the night. * A 29-year-old Connecticut woman is assaulted with an axe by her ex-husband; he threatens to kill her and then rapes her. * A 14-year-old Florida babysitter is sexually assaulted by the father of the children she is babysitting. * A 21-year-old Florida woman is beaten in the head by her father with a three-inch diameter pipe. He is arrested after neighbors call the police. What do these stories tell us? At the most basic level, they tell us that no one is immune. Violence happens to young women and old women, to rich women and poor women, to homeless women and working women. Our survey includes stories from women attacked in fast food restaurants, in public parks, at bus stops, in taxi cabs, in parking lots, and on tennis courts. They were attacked at 7 in the morning and at 11 at night, at lunch and dinner, in the middle of the day and just after breakfast. Unfortunately, our timeline represents only the tip of the iceberg. Our snapshot of violence against women takes 20 pages of text to describe, yet it represents just a fraction of the crimes that occur in a single week. Based on our projection of the total number of domestic crimes against women, we have concluded that: * The 200 incidents in our survey represent less than 1/100th of the violent attacks against women reported to the police every week. If we were to have included every reported incident, our timeline would be 2,000 pages long -- just for a single week. And if we were to add all the unreported crimes, our timeline would have be extended by over 7,000 pages. The Violence Against Women Act I hope that this story will mobilize us to take affirmative action, to move forward toward creating an America that is a safer place for women. I had hoped, that by the time this report was ready for publication, I would be able to include in this Introduction a schedule for debating the Violence Against Women Act on the floor of the Senate and then passing the Act. Unfortunately, at this time of the Senate's session, floor time is exceedingly difficult to obtain unless there is assurance that a bill will not be the subject of extended debate, and I have not been able to obtain this assurance. Reluctantly, therefore, I am not able to announce such a schedule today. Notwithstanding, this legislation -- while only one step in changing the way this nation's legal system addresses violence against women -- remains a top legislative priority for me, and I shall diligently pursue its expeditious passage in the 103rd Congress. The Violence Against Women Act includes: * $300 million in increased aid to police, prosecutors and victim advocates to help survivors navigate the legal system successfully; * Model education programs in our public schools on domestic violence and sexual assault, starting as early as junior high school; * Rape shield protections for civil cases (like sexual harassment cases) and all criminal cases (current law does not apply to crimes other than sexual assault); * New programs to increase the arrest and prosecution of spouse abusers and to encourage states to experiment with legal reforms to aid victims of spouse abuse. And, most importantly, the bill would for the first time: * Permit women to bring civil rights suits for attacks committed simply because of their gender, just like existing law provides civil rights remedies for attacks motivated by racial or religious discrimination. Conclusion As I release this report today -- with its horrifying tale of what women in America face each week -- I think of the individuals who have bravely survived the violence reported here. I hope that the accounts and descriptions in the report will help illuminate the pervasive and serious -- indeed, truly tragic -- dimensions of violence against women in our society. The point of retelling these stories is not to sensationalize this problem, but to advance our understanding of it. Then, I trust that this understanding will motivate others to join the ranks of those seeking to change this pattern of suffering and victimization. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the members of my staff who spent so many hours on this report: Kim Amick, Kathy Malowney, Marc Parsons, Lisa Robinson, Steven Segaloff, Nancy Solomon, and Jennifer Vollen. Special thanks to Don Long, Lisa Monaco, and Joel Vengrin for coordinating everyone's efforts and to Sally Shafroth for her patience and tolerance of this project. I would also like to thank Chris Putala, David Lavallee, and Evelyn Lieberman for their insightful comments. Finally, I owe much to the extraordinary commitment and dedication of Victoria Nourse, whose expertise guided all aspects of this report's preparation. Without the combined intelligence and diligence of all of these persons, this report could never have been written. Senator Joseph R. Biden, Jr. October, 1992