Domestic violence: A perfect storm
America is facing a “spiraling crisis” of domestic violence, said Julie Bosman in The New York Times. With women and children “cooped up at home for months” with abusive husbands and fathers during government-imposed lockdowns, evidence is mounting of a surge in domestic violence. A new study from Brigham Young University found a 10.2 percent increase in domestic violence calls across 15 large U.S. cities. Houston saw five domestic violence deaths over the Memorial Day weekend alone. The National Domestic Violence Hotline said at least 5,000 people have called since mid-March and cited the pandemic as a trigger. In Los Angeles and New York City, authorities say calls to hotlines are actually down, probably because women can’t call while confined “in such close quarters with their abusers.” Unfortunately, women’s shelters no longer are accepting new residents, to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Sara Hirsch, who staffs a victim hotline in New York, said of her clients, “It feels like there’s no escape.”
“It’s hard to imagine a set of circumstances that would facilitate abuse so much as the ones we’ve been living under,” said Ashley Fetters and Olga Khazan in TheAtlantic.com. Beyond being simply isolated, “people are stressed,” with job losses causing financial worries and their kids home 24/7. Soaring unemployment rates make it more difficult for victims to flee a family breadwinner. A 2017 study by Oxford University linked a 1 percent rise in U.S. unemployment with a 25 percent increase in child neglect and a 12 percent increase in physical abuse. The news from the front lines is not good, said Adiel Kaplan and Wilson Wong in NBCNews.com. A survey of 35 domestic violence support groups in 19 states found that most reported “major disruptions” in their ability to help victims. “Hotline calls became shorter and callers more frantic.” In some cases, the calls suddenly grew “eerily silent as trapped victims” had to hang up.
As a child, I got a taste of “the brutal reality” people are surely experiencing, said Wendy Knight in USAToday.com. For years, I was trapped in the house “with a man who slapped, shoved, cursed, threatened, and belittled” my mom. “What I didn’t see, I heard from my bed or the closet where I hid.” It left me with lasting trauma that haunted me for years, as it does for so many kids. “Decades after the bruises fade,” the pain of this terrible time will endure.