The violence of a recession: Closing off options for women in abusive relationships

Good post from Daisy Hernandez at the ColorLines newsmagazine.

I do think we need to be careful when we talk about "economic abuse," though. The bad economy doesn't "cause" domestic violence, though many casual observers talk as if it does. What a bad economy does is cut off options for abused women and children--which Hernandez rightly points out. The abuse was already there. However, I also think that we need to acknowledge that increased violence against women and children is just as much an "economic issue" as the unemployment or foreclosure rate.

The point that Hernandez makes about domestic violence statistics NOT being released every month like the economic data is VERY IMPORTANT. Data is NOT neutral. It tells a lot about social priorities when certain "facts" are regularly pulled out, processed, and analyzed to death in the news media, while other "facts" are seldom acknowledged and are frequently buried.

http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=700

The Violence of a Recession
By Daisy Hernández

Our economic crisis is about a lot more than lost jobs and evaporating 401Ks. It’s closing off options for women in abusive relationships.

March 31, 2010

Today marks the end of Women’s History Month and I spent these last couple of weeks at colleges across the country talking about feminism, racial justice and media. From Michigan to Florida to Minnesota, I heard students debate what activism looks like for their generation while fielding their questions about immigration and hearing their fears that when graduation comes they might not find a job.

The conversation that stayed with me though took place in Michigan, a state where the economy has imploded spectacularly.

A student at Eastern Michigan University, Laura Hoehner, 24, works part-time counseling women who are getting beat up by their boyfriends or husbands. Sometimes the violence is physical; always it’s emotional and psychological. Increasingly, she says, it’s economic.

“He has the job; she doesn’t. She has to ask for an allowance,” says Laura. “He gives her X amount for groceries. He’s the dad in the picture.”

She points to one of her clients as an example. The woman had given birth to the couple’s first child and her partner’s family gave him $300 to help with groceries. But her partner, who received the cash, lied and said it was only $100, only enough to buy milk, eggs, juice and a Swifter mop. The new mom was left to dip into what money she had to provide groceries for the family of three. Money had become one more weapon for the abuser.

Advocates call it “economic abuse” and it’s part of the rise in domestic violence that they report happening nationwide in this recession. The last data available on the issue is a 2004 report by the National Institute of Justice, an agency of the Department of Justice, which found that when unemployment rates go up among men so does violence against women. This is of particular significance for Black and Latino communities where unemployment rates are in the double digits.

Stats on domestic violence though aren’t released every month along with unemployment data. As such, we’re trained to place the major issues of the day into their little silos: Women’s rights over here. Job issues over there. Health care to the left and the war in Afghanistan to the right. But the stories Laura shared with me suggest that if we don’t pay attention to the so-called women’s issues then our chances at a real economic recovery are nil because creating more Dunkin Donuts-type jobs isn’t going to save women (or anyone else for that matter).

Last month, for example, our ColorLines video team released a half hour TV show on race and the economy. In it, Tisha, a single Black mom in Connecticut, spoke about reaching a point where she had to go back to her child’s father, an abusive partner. In one of the show’s most poignant moments, she said she felt she had no other option because she knew he could help pay the bills.
Low-wage jobs—in the absence of access to higher education, child care and a political education—simply keeps women vulnerable.

In Michigan, one of Laura’s clients left her abuser and moved in with a sister. Now that her sister’s losing her house in a foreclosure, the young woman is trying to decide if she should go back to the abusive ex or move to a shelter.

And then there’s the safety plan.

Safety plans are what advocates create with women in domestic violence situations. The idea is to have a plan in place for when a woman is ready to leave. This can mean putting an extra set of keys, copies of birth certificates and clothes in a safe spot like the trunk of the car. Ideally of course it means putting aside any little bit of money, a task that’s hard with low-wage jobs and impossible when those jobs disappear.

These problems won’t go away because Walmart or Starbucks start opening more stores and hiring more people. As Siobhan Brooks wrote in a ColorLines essay years ago, when she took part in union negotiations she realized she had never thought of making demands on any system. It was a classic moment of the feminist personal is political ethos, of realizing that what a person can fight for at work is closely tied to what they believe they can have in their personal lives. And men need this just as much.

The year my own father started working as a janitor after almost two decades in manufacturing as a union member, he seemed to come undone in new ways, snapping at me when I just asked about his work. I don’t think it was that cleaning other people’s dirty plates alone hurt his self-esteem, although clearly it did, but it was also that there was no collective work, no union, no organizing, no sense that he could do anything about what was happening.

In the end, economic problems, as well as domestic violence, are expansive and complex. If our solutions are going to last—and if we really want to honor the histories of the women who’ve come before—then we need to step outside the silos and start thinking about these problems in ways that are much more intricate.

Rising economic stress cited in domestic violence increase (Boston, Massachusetts)

Depressing information from Massachusetts on the rising tide of domestic violence. Note the first case, an UNNAMED DAD who shot and killed his wife and duaghter before killing himself. This was the SECOND domestic violence murder in suburban Westford this year.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/02/03/rising_economic_stress_cited_in_domestic_violence_increase/

Rising economic stress cited in domestic violence increase

By Peter Schworm and John M. Guilfoil
Globe Staff / February 3, 2010

The Westford man who shot his wife Monday, critically wounding her, before fatally shooting his daughter and himself is the second to allegedly kill a family member in this suburb in less than a month, and the fatal shootings are the latest in a rash of domestic killings in Massachusetts this year.

Since Jan. 9, at least five women have been killed in domestic violence. Two others were severely wounded in the total of six different incidents.

The violence has alarmed authorities and advocates for women, who point out that women’s groups are reporting dramatic increases in domestic abuse in Massachusetts and across the country.

“I haven’t seen this level of violence - and it’s not just the homicides, it’s the assaults and attempted murders - and I’ve been doing this for over 30 years.’’ said Joanne Tulonen, director of the YWCA/Battered Women’s Resources organization in Leominster, where a domestic dispute led to a knife attack on two women Sunday morning.

There seem to be few common threads in the deadly domestic violence that began Jan. 9 in Westford, where a man allegedly shot his 43-year-old wife before turning the gun on himself. In Spencer the following week, a man facing a foreclosure auction took his own life after shooting and killing his sick wife and their horse, setting fire to their home, and torching his pickup truck.

On Jan. 16, a Fall River man allegedly shot his wife at a Westport restaurant before killing himself. His wife survived. The next day, a 23-year-old Seekonk man and a 20-year-old woman died in an apparent murder-suicide at a motel in North Attleborough after police tried to arrest the man on an outstanding warrant.

A Fitchburg State College freshman, Allison Myrick, 19, of Groton, was stabbed to death Jan. 23, allegedly by her 19-year-old boyfriend, Robert Gulla of Shirley. Gulla stabbed and shot himself, but survived, police said. In Leominster on Sunday morning, a 23-year-old man allegedly slashed the throat of his girlfriend

Women’s advocates said they believe that despite the varying circumstances, at least one underlying cause is an unforgiving economy that has intensified family disputes, inflamed some men’s abusive tendencies, and left some women more reluctant to leave violent relationships.

“The story behind the story is the economy,’’ said Suzanne Dubus, executive director of the Jeanne Geiger Crisis Center, a domestic violence organization in Newburyport. “Bad economic times do not create batterers, but they do exacerbate problems. And women who are lying in the dark at night, thinking about leaving, they have no idea how they’ll support themselves and their kids on their own.’’

Advocates cite economic problems for a rise in requests for assistance from women who believe they are in danger. At the Women’s Center, a domestic violence agency in New Bedford, calls for assistance are up more than 25 percent over the past 18 months, and three emergency shelters are full. Last week alone, a Brockton group took five women and six children into safe homes.

In many of the cases, women reported that a host of financial pressures had made their husbands or boyfriends more prone to anger and violence.

“If there’s already a simmering situation, it escalates it,’’ said Pamela MacLeod-Lima, who directs The Women’s Center in New Bedford.

At the same time, advocates worry that vast numbers of women are remaining in abusive relationships out of fear they could not support themselves and their children in the current economic climate.

“They feel trapped,’’ Dubus said. “The economy may create further stress in abusive homes, but it also creates a lot of fear. I think a lot of people are sitting tight and waiting.’’

Brian Namey, a spokesman for the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said, “We’re hearing about more severe and extreme cases of domestic violence in every corner of the country.’’

In May, a survey of more than 600 domestic violence shelters from Mary Kay Inc. found that three-quarters reported an increase in the number of women seeking assistance since September 2008. About the same percentage attributed the rise to financial issues.

Murder-suicides are about 30 percent of all partner homicides, said Toni Troop, a spokeswoman for Jane Doe Inc. Nearly all are perpetrated by men.

In Arlington, where a woman was nearly beaten to death last month, allegedly by her boyfriend, police have teamed up with Belmont and Cambridge to create a domestic violence team that will try to identify potential victims of domestic violence before it occurs.

“We recognize that the criminal justice system alone cannot get over the barriers that any victim is faced with,’’ said Arlington Police Chief Fred Ryan. “Research has shown that within six months of an assault that rises to the level of police involvement, a person is very likely to be revictimized.’’